Author Says North Carolina Has Moved Backward On Voting Rights

Investigative journalist Ari Berman spoke Wednesday at Wake Forest University. Berman, who writes about politics for The Nation, is the author of “Give Us the Ballot.” The book tells the history of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the challenges it has faced over the years.

WFDD's Paul Garber spoke to Berman about access to the ballot and the central role that North Carolina has played in the voting rights debate. Berman says he became interested in writing about the Voting Rights Act when the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to it in 2012.

“(The Voting Rights Act of 1965) enfranchised millions of people,” he says. “But what I also wanted to show is that this was never a settled debate.”

Berman says North Carolina had been seen as a model for voter access until the legislature changed the voting laws after the Supreme Court's decision in 2013.

“The fact that it happened so soon after the Supreme Court ruling – and that it was so sweeping in scope – it really got a lot of national attention.”

In the wake of the court's decision, he says a lot of attention has fallen on swing states like North Carolina.

“Obviously, these are the states where the restrictions are going to have the biggest kind of impacts,” he says. “Because if 10-, 20-, 50,000 fewer people are able to vote, that could have a very dramatic impact on the election. This was a state remember – North Carolina – where President Obama won in 2008 by fewer than 20,000 votes.”

Berman would like to see some national election standards to reduce the variability in voting access from state to state.

“What I'm concerned about is we're heading into a situation where it's quite easy to vote in Oregon and it's much harder to vote in Texas,” he says. “And I don't think that's a good recipe for democracy.”