“More early voting would ‘waste tax dollars,’ Wake County GOP says”

News & Observer:

The Wake County Republican Party is calling on its members to lobby against expanded early voting opportunities, arguing more sites and hours “only creates additional opportunity for chaos.”

Party leaders sent out the message in an email and Facebook post Friday, in advance of a State Board of Elections meeting next week to vote on Wake’s proposed early voting schedule.

“The Democrat request will greatly increase the cost to taxpayers,” the message says, calling the spending a “waste.”

“It has been proven that additional days and locations do NOT increase the number of voters who vote early.”

The email does not include a source for that claim.

County election boards – which all have a Republican majority under state law because North Carolina has a Republican governor – have developed new early voting schedules in response to a federal court ruling that threw out the state’s voter ID law. In addition to revoking the state’s photo ID requirement, the ruling requires counties to offer 17 days of early voting…

Carter Wrenn, a longtime Republican campaign strategist in Raleigh, recently told The Washington Post that the GOP’s stance on early voting is “political.”

“Look, if African-Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Wrenn told the paper. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.”

Share this: