INSTITUTE INDEX: Voter suppression on trial

By Chris Kromm / July 24, 2015

Voter suppression was on the minds of those who marched on the opening day of the voting rights trial in North Carolina earlier this month. (Photo by Allie Yee.)

Date that the North Carolina House passed an initial 16-page version of H.B. 589, a bill requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls: 4/24/2013

Date that the U.S. Supreme Court struck Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required 40 counties in North Carolina to gain federal approval for major election changes: 6/25/2013

Date that N.C. Republicans introduced an expanded 57-page "omnibus" version of H.B. 589 with dozens of additional election changes, including eliminating same-day voter registration and reducing early voting days, which eventually became law: 7/23/2015

Date that a federal trial began in Winston-Salem, N.C. over the law: 7/13/2015

Number of N.C. citizens who would have been blocked from voting in 2012 if there had been no same-day voter registration, according to state election chief Kim Strach, who testified this week in the federal trial: 96,529

Number of N.C. voters "disenfranchised" in the 2014 elections due to the election law changes, according to the watchdog group Democracy North Carolina: 30,000

Number of provisional ballots alone that were rejected in 2014 due to the N.C. voting law, according to Democracy North Carolina: 2,344

Percent of those votes were cast by African Americans: 38

Percent of registered voters in N.C. that are African-American: 22

Number of verified cases of voter fraud in North Carolina between 2000 and 2014, according to a researcher at Rutgers University: 2

Number of votes cast in North Carolina during that time period: 35 million

Weeks before the federal trial that state lawmakers passed a last-minute measure to soften North Carolina's voter ID requirement by allowing alternate forms of ID to be presented: 3

Number of people that descended on Winston-Salem for a march and prayer service called by the NAACP on the first day of the voting trial, declaring "this is our Selma": at least 1,200

Number of states that have passed new voting restrictions since 2010: 21

Number of states where these restrictions will be in effect for the first time in a presidential election in 2016: 15

Number of those states that are in the South: 7

(Click on figure to go to source.)

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