Alice Ollstein for Think Progress:

One of the areas with the longest lines this week — Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County — offered 22 locations for the first day of early voting in 2012. This year, they offered only 10. Voters reported waiting for more than three hoursto cast a ballot.

North Carolina state and county officials pursued these cuts despite the overwhelming popularity of early voting. More than half of all the votes cast in the 2012 election were cast early and in person, and black voters in particular favor early and in-person voting. A federal court found that before trying to eliminate the entire first week of early voting, the state requested data showing “African Americans disproportionately used the first seven days.”