When they say “efficiency,” watch your back
by Tom Sullivan
When you start hearing “efficiency” used around the office, watch your back and update your resume. It’s like “shareholder value” that way. When Republicans in government start using “efficiency,” same difference.
On Election Day 2014 while Democrats across the country were getting clobbered, there were a couple of bright spots in North Carolina (believe it or not). Democrats picked up a net 3 seats in the state legislature, including sending home an ALEC board member. But in a sweep election where Republicans should have won it all, Democrats won 3 of 3 contested state Supreme Court seats and 2 of 3 contested Appeals Court races. Republicans couldn’t have that. The GOP-controlled legislature responded in 2015 by changing the way judges are elected.
It was just one of many tweaks they have made to change how elections run. Some of them are not so obvious. At the Daily Kos Connects Asheville Conference last weekend, DocDawg, aka Bill Busa, presented findings on how Boards of Elections across the state began “to reshuffle the polling places in the name of ‘efficiency’ and ‘cost-savings’.” Busa’s presentation last Saturday revealed how elimination of early voting places disproportionately increased the distance black voters have to travel to the polls.
Joan McCarter writes:
Most of the voter suppression actions taken by the new Republican majority legislature and McCrory have been very transparent, very apparent to the public: redistricting to corral black votes; voter ID; reducing early voting days; eliminating same day registration; and, particularly damaging to the black voter, eliminating voting on the Sunday before the election, the traditional “Souls to the Polls” activity of black churches. All of that was well publicized. This, however, this eliminating and moving of polling places was done very quietly. In Busa’s words: “There was no systematic ‘we’re going to go into one hundred counties, we’re going to steal polling places from blacks in all one hundred counties.’ What there was was a rather more efficient and slimy way of doing the same thing.” It was done under the radar of everybody but Busa and his partner, who sniffed out the problem and have the statistical analysis chops to document it.
Busa is the data scientist who earlier this year broke the story that voter registration at NC social services agencies fell off dramatically after Gov. Pat McCrory took office. Having worked with our local Board myself, finding suitable, public polling locations is rather tricky business; using non-public locations like churches requires tying up . There are handicapped access and other physical requirements. Placing one where the data say there should be one (for fairness) is easier said than done. Still, Busa’s analysis is a way of seeing how these quiet decisions affect voters in a way I have never considered before. Video at the link.
It is not unlike “precinct consolidation.” This too is occurring around the country in the name of efficiency and cost savings. Very similar to what Busa found with early voting sites, precinct consolidation seems to disproportionately impact minority voters’ distance-to-polls travel by increasing the physical size of precincts and the number of voters a single precinct has to process on Election Day. Longer lines, you think? How is this offset by early voting and vote-by-mail programs, etc.?
Coming soon to a GOP-controlled state near you?