Where the hell did all the voters go?

by | Dec 17, 2015 | 2016 Elections, Editor's Blog, Voting Rights | 16 comments

Back in December 2012, North Carolina had about 6,624,000 registered voters. Back then the state had about 9,750,000 or so. Today, it has over 10 million people but there are only 6,431,000 registered voters.

Where the hell did all the voters go? We gained 250,000 more people in the state and lost almost 200,000 voters. That doesn’t seem right.

Democrats took the biggest hit. They lost 226,246. Republicans lost 86,020. Independents gained 108,257. Granted Independents have been gaining ground but the state should still be registering voters.

So was there a purge of the voter that eliminated 3% of the registered voters? That seems steep. Previous purges didn’t eliminate nearly as many voters. When they did purge, the registration numbers always rebounded quickly. Maybe voter registration drives leading into the presidential year will get the numbers up again but 200,000 voters is a lot to make up. To account for population growth, the numbers should be much higher than 2012.

From 2004 to 2008, registration increased by 1,202,745 voters. From 2008 to 2012, we gained 341,561 voters. By the end of this year, we should probably have at least 6,800,000 or so registered voters. If not, you can assume those voter suppressions laws are working.

16 Comments

  1. Avram Friedman

    There’s good reason to believe that some of this can be attributed to North Carolina’s voter suppression law passed by the Republican General Assembly and signed into law by Governor McGrory.

    But, it’s also true that many people feel disenfranchised by the lack of good candidate choices in either party. Even prior to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision corporations were buying candidates in both parties and ordinary people were left to feel unrepresented in the state and federal governments. After this court decision that legitimized corporate political campaign contributions as a form of “free speech” protected by the 1st Amendment, things only got worse. We are too often left with the choice at the ballot box between the lesser of two evils, each representing the interests of Duke Energy, Art Pope, the Koch Brothers, the fossil fuel industry, the pharmaceutical industry or some other major donor associated with the American Legislative Exchange Council. It’s a difficult argument to convince young people and new potential voters to register just so they can help perpetuate this Oligarchy.

    Once in a lifetime we get a candidate running for President like Bernie Sanders who refuses Super PAC money and actually does represent the voice of ordinary Americans, and is willing to fight the corporate Oligarchy. We’re undeniably witnessing how his candidacy is bringing people into the process who weren’t previously interested. Maybe the Democratic Party will learn something from this, if the goal is to register more voters. if people are motivated, they’ll register regardless of the obstacles thrown at them by the suppressors. That’s one big reason to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Primary and hope he wins the Democratic Nomination. He’ll increase the number of registered voters who vote for Democrats down-ticket, as well.

  2. William Turnier

    You can gerrymander districts but you cannot gerrymander a whole state. To control that you have to suppress the other party’s likely supporters. So, that is what the powers that be have been doing.

  3. Greg Dail

    Who knows what happened but I hope they “purged” the dead, the illegals the double voters the fraudsters and of course the always Democrat voting dogs and cats.
    “North Carolina voters roll shows that the Tar Heel State has 2,214 voters that are 110-years-old. Most of these voters are democrats and most seem to live in four democrat-controlled counties. Some of these aged voters have already voted absentee.”

    • Kevin Farmer

      Actually, they are 115 years old now (but not really). For whatever reason, the registration dates for all of those voters were lost, or never recorded. They were all assigned a registration date in 1900. I don’t know why. It might have had something to do with computers.

      Anyway, those voters are not 115 years old, and this in no way has anything to do with voter fraud. It’s just a bookkeeping glitch.

      It’s on the NC State Board of Elections that this persists as an ongoing source of suspicion. A couple of paragraphs on their web site would take care of the problem.

      • Randolph Voller

        Agree with Kevin. Arbitrary bookkeeping glitches create incorrect impressions in government and private enterprise. For example, my firm has had an account with T-Mobile and its predecessors (Suncom, etc.) since the 1990’s, but their records claim we have been an account holder for only ten years.

        This is due to an internal company program assigning the ten year number when accounts migrated between corporations during their mergers, etc.

        The far right wing response to policy issues across the board is eerily the same regardless of the issue and/or the fact pattern: hyperbole, hysteria, and fear. (And to be fair, on a few issues the far left has exhibited similar characteristics.)

        Voter fraud is not the real problem.

        Fair and equal access to the ballot box is the problem.

        For some reason certain members of our society would rather create mechanisms to disenfranchise citizens under the guise of ensuring the integrity of the vote than actually reforming the system, ensuring the integrity of the voting machines and the legal processes to vote, and providing open and equal access to the ballot box

        The fear and hysteria around purported “voter fraud” just feels like the same distorted propaganda-like messaging that the far right pushes out on immigration, reasonable background checks for purchasing firearms, etc.

        It is an inductive rather than deductive way of addressing the policy problem.

    • Norma Munn

      Your information is in quotes, so I assume you can provide the source? I read pretty carefully and a wide range of sources, and have never seen that information. Please provide.

      • A. D. Reed

        If he didn’t make it up himself (always a possibility with right-wing trolls), he found it on one of the right-wing “news” sites like Breitbart, which made it up for him.

  4. Kevin Farmer

    You can see the process in action here: http://www.wral.com/asset/news/state/nccapitol/2014/04/02/13534230/SBOE_JointCommittee_April_2014.pdf. It’s impossible to know without looking at more data.

    I’m sure they would argue that they’ve just gotten better at list maintenance, finding death records, things like that. But there is also a section in the power point about Interstate Crosscheck, the notorious firm run by KS Sec’y of State Kris Kobach–and notorious for its bad data. But I don’t know in what capacity SBOE used Interstate Crosscheck’s services, or if they used them at all.

    There are some instances now where a returned mailing will result in the denial of your registration, instances that used to just land you on the “inactive” rolls. That might account for some of the increase.

    There’s some data on slides 26 and 27: 213,291 purged in 2012, 328,556 in 2013. Most of the increase was removal after missing two Federal elections while on “inactive” status.

    Little bit of this, little bit of that.

  5. Randy Voller

    Excellent question, Thomas.

    The logic must be “If you can’t beat ’em then suppress ’em.”

    Another worthwhile study, BTW, is the evaluation of how many registered voters (citizens) had their provisional ballots tossed out due to the operation of law and thus effectively lost their right to vote.

    For example, say a citizen moved from one county to another county in NC in 2012 and failed to file an address change with the Board of Elections.

    They could have shown up to vote, been given a provisional ballot on election day and then voted for just the President, US Senator and Governor (all statewide races that are not specific to precinct) and yet due to the technicalities of the law had their vote eliminated.

    Does this make sense?

  6. Apply Liberally

    Everything has been set up by the NCGOP to keep the numbers of voters down. From their so-called “anti-voter fraud” law, to cutting down voting days/hours, to ending the teen voter education and pre-registration program, to putting polls in more-difficult-to-get-to places, to giving only tacit attention to the national “Motor Voter” law. Today’s N&O article (at:
    http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article50147160.html) reports that:

    “In 2012, there were more than 40,000 voter registration applications sent to elections offices in North Carolina from agencies providing public assistance. The figure was similar to those in 2008 and 2011. But in 2013, the number dropped to 18,758, and in 2014 it dropped to 13,340.”

    Compared to other states, NC MV registrations are declining. The only rational explanation is that state agencies–in the hands of the GOP since 2010–are not making a clear, overt and concerted effort to give the people they serve and interact with the chance to register.

    • Ebrun

      Maybe some state officials were reminded that you have to be a U.S. citizen to register to vote. And BTW, A.L., state agencies have not been in the hands of the GOP since 2010. Bev Purdue, a Democrat, was NC Governor until January, 2013.

      • delow241

        This is a great point. Since it mainly affects Democrats, you can assume there are fewer illegals on the rolls, and probably dead people too.

      • L Newton

        And the NCGA was dominated by which party?

        • Ebrun

          It’s doesn’t matter which party controls the NCGA when it comes to setting policy at the executive agencies. DMV and the State Board of Elections are controlled by the sitting Governor and his/her Party. Democrats controlled these agencies until Bev Purdue left the Office of Governor in January, 2013.

    • Progressive Wing

      To be accurate, NC executive agencies have only been in GOP hands since January 2013. And as the N&O reports, the drop-off in Motor Voter reggies really became severe starting in that year. Hard to believe anything but complicity by state agencies in that fall off…..

      • Charles Hogan

        Yes, right you are. The agencies are now in the hands of GOP friendly new hires and appointees. these are most likely encouraged by management to inhibited voter registration anytime they think that they can get away with it to help the Cause.

        All the better reason to start a Anti -” Election Fraud” campaign pushing hard for “Automatic voter registration” in North Carolina as many States in the country have already gone to’

        The more the Republican party resist the idea of Automatic Voter Registration , the more intend they will appear to both the public and the courts on comitting Election Fraud in the next election in order to win.

        For the Democrats not to be pushing “Election Fraud”, just as hard as the GOP pushed their “voter fraud” to get their voter suppression laws passed by triggering fear in their base voters would be gross negligences by Democratic party leadership.

        The also need to challenge the last minute voting place relocations and closing that made it as hard a “Legally” possible for minority voters to get to the correct voting location. ( which was also the real intent of restricting voters to just one “Official” location that they could vote at rather that the most convenient location.

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