The Improvement Association - Ep. 2
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These first two episodes of the improvement association are free, but here the whole series, you'll need to subscribe to the new york times, where you'll get access to all the serial productions and new york times shows and is super easy. You can sign up through apple podcast or spotify. And if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done. From sero productions in the new york times. This is the improvement association .

chapter two, where's your choice in the .

chair of the blading county .

board of elections is a pretty intense job in a place where accusations of election fraud, or as common as american flags, all the accusations come to the board and then they have to sort out what to go after, in which just election noise. In twenty eighteen, the year of the big congressional race, crackup, the chair of the election's board was a man named Bobby, republican White guy. He'd served on the board of elections three years.

And during early voting that year, Bobby noticed something unusual was happening with absented ballot request forms. Bladen always saw in an unusually high number of absented ballot request come in, and Bobby knew that a local elections guy who crave doubles had some people working for him, dropping off of request forms in big stacks every couple days. That's not illegal and employing county, not that weird.

But one day workers at the board of elections were going through this pile of request forms and came across this one absence y ballot request for the ninety four year old mother in law of someone who worked at the board of elections, a person they knew did not vote. One of the workers reported this to babi ludlum, the chairman, and he said, bring me the stack. That story .

going through them, and I always said, here's my grandson. And he he has absolutely no intention of voting error. So I called hardly my grandson and so hardly did you sound a request for a have some a ballot basically said was say.

Bobbi loblaw explained to his grandson hardly what an absentia let request form was, and hardly said, oh yeah, I remember what happens.

He said two women came to, he was in his room, house, and they were in the pool. And he, he said, when the latest got out, the van came up making them to Sandy and they refused to send them.

Did did .

he worked and her .

name .

was just a dala.

有有 justa。 Dallas is married to a distant relative of mcrae dallas SHE was working, formed during the election, the signature on the request form was not by his grandson signature, but somehow the form had a social security number on IT. So Bobby called the state board of elections, which had already been hearing some things about bleeding county that year, and they sent investigators to bleed in to look into what was happening. The result was the big state board of elections hearing, where workers from crit ellis testified, the'd been paid to pick up people's ballots, sometimes fill in other people's ballots, which LED to endangers. But the reason I tell you this story is because Bobby ludlum, Bobby, whose own grandson was a victim of alleged election fraud, Bobby, who was overseeing elections in bleeding county boby, thinks mcrae got a right deal because .

the improvement route has done at least as bad and maybe worse.

Bobbi thinks the bladen county improved association, and specifically horrible mn as the head of its political ARM, the bland improvement pack has been up to election china against for years. So many people in blade in have said something like this to me.

I'd ask about the twenty teen congressional race and absent he ballots and cradle, as they'd say, yeah, but what about the other side? The democrats? They were just as bad, worse, and they've gotten off. But things .

happen to them.

One day I was an Elizabeth town, the county y seat. I was down there reporting on a special election, standing outside the polling place at the gym with couple TV reporters, and this woman flew up the black at us and just launched into IT.

I'm sorry, but i'm tell you, i've had a tough enough. What i've had, a north evolved crazy me, are here in this colony, and I will take something else. I have reported IT every year as the judge .

that I served a poll judge, yeah.

And the records, rob there and rally the records of there, the board and let me taste something that wasn't the republican party. That's what I think. And I don't care if you type of me.

Oh, i'm taping you. I told her I had my microphone out. This is gene pete. A long time republican genes been pretty upset since a cradle las gun trouble SHE share. Craig guy targeted only because he was working for republicans, when for years democrats have been doing .

the same thing. Let me take something. There were two people in the election before the last one that they could have actually brought charges against. And dan IT, was that not okay name go to the board yet their names so that I think .

that was a blame improvement association.

right?

That's pretty sure. That's what who they were. We have if you really want to do a story on the us, when they just sit down and talk and I am all of my files.

I am doing a story on this. So let's talk from serial productions. I'm so chase. This is the improvement association, a true story about election fried.

When horrors first called me down to our CarOlina, he told me republicans keep accusing the blame improvement pack of cheating in order to deflect scrutiny. Y, from the questionable stuff mcrae doulas has been doing for years here. That's his story.

Jane pay and others in bladen have a different story that the election cheating in blading county began with the blame improvement pack. That the pack is establish a culture of breaking rules in the county that goes on to this day. I wanted to know, is that true? What specifically were people seeing the pg do? So accept genes, invitation to come over and checking files.

But anyway, did you get a chance to write?

So I started, well, not all of IT by started looking. I was wondering, soon as I arrive, jane gets right into what he is seen. Her complaints are organized in a folder of papers she's laid out on her dining room table .

for me to look through when .

I bargain on people like this, looking for something specific. Lots of times the rest of their lives are right there too, right next to us in genes living room, the furniture was all pushed back against the wall to accommodate her niece, dialysis machine jane analysis steed in genes living room, while her father was dying. Jeans last several family members over the last few years. Just recently, her brother, she's grieving. Gene admits that grief feel some of her rage right now about .

local politics conversion.

the paper he has out our formal letters that she's right to the county board of elections .

about problems he .

fewer than I expected, to be honest, but he says a lot of her complaints over the years have taken the form of phone calls that some of what she's written.

or just bullet pots, name and address verification procedure not followed. Voter was not required. As for help passes stated in the law.

virtually all her complaints are about the pack, the blame improvement association, which definitely makes its presence known at the polls, every local election. I've seen a few elections here myself at this point, i've seen how the pack works.

They always have people outside the main polling place during early voting, in an election day, under a tent, chatting with voters, handing out of voter guide, offering voter assistance to anyone who needs IT. Gene and I spent more than three hours talking to her papers. Some of them go back ten years, each incident, each complaint in detail.

And what I get from hearing her walk through them is less of a smoking gun and more a general vibe of conversion or intimidation. The genes, James, things, the pack, what they're really doing, their presence at the polls, IT, isn't helping or supporting black voters. It's harassing them, pressing them into voting a certain way, like this story I wrote .

about what was going on. Tell me, well, that's RAID IT to you.

great. Gene reads from her notes an incident where he says he saw the harassment in action. She's still mad about IT.

I was disturbed. And that's putting IT lately to see that. Well, I was there work on tuesday through saturday, all curb sad voting was taking place beside the blade improvement, packed, tired at the top of the front line of the library.

This dispute between jane and the pack workers they got deep in the weeds was over where the pack set up its tent outside a polling place in north CarOlina. Voters can vote curbside theyve trouble walking. For instance.

They can just fill out their ballot right in the car. An election worker will bring you out to them and then bring you back inside once they are done, jean says. The pack had set up its ten right next to the space reserved for the curbside voters to park much closer than they are allowed to by law.

He says. The cars are pulling up right there.

She's moving a coffee mug around the table in front of us to show me how close the pack tent was to the people who are pulling up to the curb to vote.

And the people from the ten are having easy x sales and they're taking IT.

The problem was, he says, they were handing out the voter guides too close to where people actually vote. Jane raises this with one of the pack volunteers, apparently, and he disagrees. And they start giving people conflicting directions about where to park their cars for the curbside voting, like worrying valleys at a hotel. All the while, he says pack workers were continuing to hand out the packs of voter guide, which is fine, sort of you may take .

their voter guard. I've actually taken democrat voter guards. There are used, no, because you're not prolapse.

But the .

point of the whole thing is I might take something from someone and not use IT. That's my choice. Or I might use IT, okay, if the ten is here and you're out there within one day up, i'm literally one step o okay? They can see everything you're doing.

I can hear every word that say IT. And somebody comes from your community around there and says, this is, this is what we want you to do. And they stand right there.

Will you do IT or I stick their arms inside the car and help you do what? Where's your choice? You tell me where the .

choice is to picture this when gene is saying, somebody comes from your community, which means the black community, like black voters pulling up in a car and black pack workers coming up to them with a voter guide hovering by the car wind, while someone's voting just being too close, it's pressure, SHE thinks, that could manipulate the voter to vote the tax way. What's unclear to me with jane story though, is if that manipulation is what's actually happening.

well, here's here's what I would say that sounds very intimidating if you .

don't want IT exactly. And I was going to say this and my husband might would say you, hey, had worked for judge for goodwill. And he said that people of certain community will come in.

okay. Now watching is something he says her husband saw when he was working as a pull judge, how people from the pack would interact with voters inside the polling place, when they provided voter assistance. Now, voter assistance is a thing at the polls, voters with certain disabilities, for example, they're allowed to have someone to help them inside the voting booth. But as jean's husband side pack members were practically forcing voters to let them help.

And h, they've sun bi fan, I need to help you vote. I need to help you vote all the way in the let me help you vote all the way into the the pressing and the person may may not agree, but if they disagree, they turn around and say, I don't need to help me out. I need to help you vote. I don't need you to help me vote.

Black people just .

pack people yeah pet people um the pack had another help and um they would um far other people were into the into the um present I I guess .

like I was saying that sounds very intimate.

IT is timidity if .

you don't want .

IT if you don't want .

IT is sent him a dating.

The reason I keep saying if you don't want IT to gene is because she's making this obvious p in these incidents where he goes from seeing rules possibly being bent, broken, to assuming how voters were feeling about what he says was happening, that they were feeling bullied, jee thinks what's happening at the polls.

The dynamic is that pack workers intimidate black voters into accepting assistance, whether they needed or night, in order to control how they boat. Even if the voter asks for help, is not legit to gene, because you can't know if their social pressure, the way he sees that voter assistance is more like votes stealing. A lot of the time, the person assisting the voter taking the vote from the vote.

whatever happened, one may and one vote that takes that and flushes IT down the commode. So you may think, well, that that looks fairly harmless. They wanted that person in there with them, did they?

So, of course, leader, I looked for complaints about this testimony from a voter somewhere saying the pack assisted them or harass them and they didn't want IT. I didn't find anything. Neither have investigators from the state who have also looked for precisely that. But I think for gene, the lack of official complaints proves your point. IT shows how much control this group is exerting on black voters at the polls.

And and you know, this is human, human, this is human stuff. You live in a community, in your tight community. Again.

SHE means the black community.

and this whole community is working toward go. So it's the political goal I can watch go work how to go and you not going along with IT and you go have, however, mainly people want to go along with met at you rat OK. So there you get I think .

this is at the heart of a lot of people's complaints about the blame improvement pack, their suspicion of the group, the idea that the pack keeps black people for making their own choices as voters.

So there's the social pressure, but there's also this other possible coercion. I heard about another theory and how the blame improvement pack per swedes, black voters to vote along with the pack. Something more direct during .

my time is a grader. I noticed a lot of things that went on.

This is mary Catherine mezer run the floor for living room. Tid ler scooting all around us. Like jane, mary Katherine in elections. Person White were except polling sites done that for years. And like gene mary Katherine also has suspicious about the pack. Mary Katherine told me about one scene SHE witnessed was at a polling place a few years ago, all the candidate science were clustered out front. The tents were around to shade the campaign workers from the sun, and she'd see black voters walking by on their way to vote.

Inside these people were IT was like they were looking into this tent. And what would happen is. The say gender came up just to vote. They were given a piece of paper, and IT was, they would voted up. And they were, I remember they were lam Green or orange, but they .

stood out. Go ahead and assume that this is the bleeding county improvement association simple ballot that were talking about.

That was the the sample ballot.

It's the packs voter guide. It's the same thing, gene pets or pack workers giving out. It's made up to look like a real ballot, but it's a different color.

All the little oval are filled in next to the candidates that the pack is supporting. Pack workers at the polling place try to give a sample ballot to most black voters walking up to vote. Mary Katherine knows the sample ballot is legal.

He knows it's a loud. But the way people were handling IT, they took the sample ballot into the voting booth. And then when they've come out.

i'd noticed some people would throw there's away and not turn IT back in. And I saw several people go through the trash cans to get the sheet out like poor workers .

for the pack, jumping up and rifling through the trash to retrieve the .

ballots dn out. They were actually number red. So they had these things .

numbered at just this moment. MRI Katherine's tabler. Caroline crawled into my lap and somehow found the off by into my recorder. So, quick reset.

Okay, so people pulling the sample ballots out of the garbage .

right did not turn them back into the tent. Then they were mad. They're like where you see the paper, the shit paperwork numbered.

So I knew which one was missing and who had IT and where to find IT. I will. Not say one hundred percent, but I will say and pretty confident that there was something rapped in. The paper like what?

Oh my my.

i'm not one hundred percent, but there was something that enters them to go in their invalid procedures. Jit SHE suspects .

the pack may be paying people for .

their votes. So things like that go on outside .

the polling place.

And the more you sit out there and just look, the more you see.

So I do go out there to see for myself, watch the pack in action, and I see what's making these White people so suspicious. And I think I know why that's after the break.

Still have you? I still have you? I still try to get my interview.

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Sitting in a truck outside a polling place with code deal George Michael, code deal goes by. Code deal long time pack member k deals been on the county commission for eight years and he's running this year to keep the we're in the truck, get out the cold. And i'm trying to ask him about the pack, but his voters come up to vote. Cadel keeps leaving out of the .

car to talk to them and hand .

them one of the packs sample ballots. Then he gets right back in the truck and continues .

the conversation as though we never left for a while.

It's like this.

He's out.

But in.

When they come in.

I am out here at this pulling place because I want to check out how the pack Operates. And do I see the kind of stuff the gene pete and mary Catherine were sure they were seeing? I didn't think I was going to witness money changing hands out here or something like out in the open in front of a reporter.

No, and I do not. But watching out the window every time code deal goes out and I get right away that for people who are suspicious of feedback, the wake I deal and other pack people handle the sample ballot could confirm their suspicions that somethings not right. Cadel only approaches black voters.

He goes straight up to them, gets close, and he's clutching something secret, seeming tightness. First, he hands the sample ballot over a little serpent ously, a quick hand to hand pass, like a noting school. And then I see the voters take the cure and also treated seriously, building into a square, slipping in into a pocket, taking IT inside, and then doing a hand to hand pass right back to the pack workers.

Once they come out of the polling place, finally, I jump out of the car too. I wanted, know what? They're same.

So I follow code. Deal over to a voter, an older black guy in a nice suit. Code deals tall, kind of flappy. You often tower over people when they talk.

He compliments the .

voter on a smart looking hat. Then unfolds the ballot shaped purple sheet paper. What do you got there? The voter says, democratic ticket.

yeah. Kind deal says, and i'm not going to tell you what to do. My deal starts pointing out names on the ballot. The people, the pack is endorsed.

Here we go. bad.

Now here we go. That's Joseph fighting, cardell says he points down the road to district attorney than the senate race. That's a black Young lady era. That's a White guy.

cunning ham and.

So on all the way down the purple ballot, this candidate lives over on chicken foot road. That candidates been there forever. She's a White lady. She's fine.

That's a black Lorry and that's more than that he ran last time. I deal flips .

over the sheet of purple paper points the county commissioner's race, the risk ky deal himself .

is running in and. You want to take that, you can take you how you want deal.

Now if you want to take that in.

you can take that in and use IT. However you want to deal with that. You you be on the White .

to debate.

but look just like that. You want that we can take IT on in OK. why? Now I got to do this. Open up. You will let me get that back when you like education.

Robbers on .

the midland. Boy, rob the middle, then keening. Now you can give me a vote.

I hope you can give me a vote, if you can. I've watched ky deal give the same spill a few times now. And that is always how these exchanges end with those three elements. Please vote for me. Don't I know someone you're related to and be sure to give the sample ballot back when you're done and did not see anyone throw away they are sample ballot or see pack workers scran around in the trash for IT like mary Catherine described. I definitely saw voters give the ballot rate back after voting like a deal as it's true that the pack workers in the voters are very precious about IT like it's a classified document and IT looks weird, but there's a clear explanation if we .

don't pick them up the covers.

Back in th Epace's h eadquarters, the concrete equi building for man, the pack president tells me that a fundamental part of running this pack is tightly guarding the sample ballot horse says he seen people steal the packs ballot and use IT against them.

Something else take about, do you go and burn a copy, use seeing color paper, and start each amount to minority .

like this is from the black pack that you support. But actually it's not really .

hora says in twenty ten, when he took over, people were putting out fake copies of the blame improvement packed ballot to misled pack voters, black voters .

in we in the organization that were looting with wives. And will come and get information and we're get a couple of baLance and next to change to Better. When I first started, that's why I change to the concept and process .

for says over the years he's seen a few fakes, so now he keeps extra vigiLance over these .

baLance only given to the poll workers and the battles are you want to a color around to we start in a certain color um they are writing on is done matis ally in time. I thought I might become a mass. I switch colors always on the day of election is never the same kind of we use for a live ting. Never talking .

of horrors about the sample ballot. Unlike, oh, there is an entire circle of suspicion going on. Horror thinks there are people in bleedin who are actively out to get him and his pack like that.

His opponents, White people mainly, are gonna mess with the sample ballot because they have before. So the pack workers and voters treat the sample ballot secretively. That then looks especially suspicious to weight people who are already on the look out for suspicious activity by the pack.

The suspicion on the one side increases the suspicion on the other. As for voter assistance, or the pack covers ing or intimidating black voters like what gene pete told me about, I don't see any evidence of that either. I've been in bladen for three elections now, and over the days I spent at the polling sites, I only saw one voter ever request assistance from the pack, and once I saw a pack work or offer IT and get a plate, no thinks in return.

I didn't see anything like a gene described to me, the crowding up bond voters, trying to get into the voting booth with them. Obviously, it's hard for me, an outsider White reporter, to say whether or not black voters felt social pressure to vote the way the pack wants them to vote. But i've talked to the fair number of black voters in bladder, and not everyone likes the pack, but no one ever told me they felt forced into voting with the pack and said, but I saw over the course of three elections of blading county is that a lot of black voters and bladon want to vote the same way to vote with one voice. And there's a reason for that.

Of course, this is has been chAllenge and heating black county is a chance and county.

hi. Dal and I were talking again in his truck during a slow period at the polls. I was asking him how we came to join the improvement association.

Something I love about talking about ideal is he will give the longest answer possible to any question, like someone taking the absolute longest route possible to get to a destination. Not to torture the analogy, but it's like at the end of these long journeys of answers, you get to see the whole place. Keep in mind, my question was, how did you join the association?

And when I came here, certain things there. How do you see certain things that were done here? I have sent IT done years ago, think like getting groceries on crazing groceries school.

Okay, that was some there. I thought that had that, but they was here in this area doing that. You found saying.

what's the big deal about getting credit this time?

Would you would some people used to, do you get understand? Used to be where people with shark rap and work, that how they brought .

the foods you saw that you were like, people are basically to share cropping.

They work and they go get the flu on, quit. The man say, you go get all you won't eat the day and he would put on the bill. And that was a weird keeping you in dit to a more time, I could understand, because the Prices were so damn elivated. While you go mean.

I understand that not how you would like to live your life, but IT seems like you were worried .

that other people were living their life. Go shop. What do you go? Go about piece of meat and play the offer.

Because you get on, create and think that sound good, and you go get the sign, please make them down and pull to up in the same. But didn't can find out the reader would do. They hadn't got so in to the to because all the money will.

And so what did that I have to do with the association .

if those are the kind of things that we be proud to change OK?

At the time, this was before the pack was formed. Almost the entire county government was weight, county commissioner's schoolboy, overwhelmingly weight, and had been pretty much ever since the end of reconstruction. And it's not that black canada wouldn't run, is that they could almost never win.

I learned this political science term while reporting the story, which is racially polar. Ized voting and IT perfectly describes the politics of blading county and the existence of the pack. IT means what IT sounds like.

Voting is divided along racial lines. White voters vote for White candidates. Black voters prefer to vote for black, but it's not always an option. Also, weight voters won't even vote for White candidates that are supported by black people. This was precisely the scenario in blading county when I deal got there.

A study done in the mid eighties found that racially polarized voting was persistent in severe in blading county, and because of blades and racial demographics back then, about sixty percent White, thirty nine percent black. Majority ruled every time a black candidate could get ninety percent of the black vote and still have no chance of winning. This is how I was until one thousand and eighty seven when a change in the voting rights act made IT possible for a few black leaders and bread in to sue the county, alleging their vote was utterly diluted.

Black voters could not pick a kindred of their choice all over the state, county by county. Black leaders in the CarOlina. We're filing lawsuits just like this, laid and county fought any changes, especially hard.

And then maybe noticing the tide of history was moving against them, abruptly settled and the elections and blade and changed radically, the county was cut into three districts with different rational makeup PS, one being majority black. And this allowed black voters the chance to get some representation in the county. Under the new system, black voters are usually able to elect a third of the seats for governing bodies like the counting commission or the schoolboy. If and only if, black voters and bladon did one thing persistently and severely.

if you give your people the boat in what they call a .

block voted together as a black with one voice. If they stuck together, they could get three county commissioners ers at the top of the county. That is why the blame improvement platform, who is created in the wake of that lawsuit, to organize black voters and get those seats, if they could.

And now the black vote is a player in just about every election in bleedin because of the back and IT sample ballot. Every election later, improvement gets as many people as possible to vote along the same lines for a black candidate or for the candidate who best represents black interest. This requires, as sometimes unforgiving discipline from the pack around this cardinal rule, don't split the black vote, no competition among black candidates. Cogia tells me, if you're not on the pack sample ballot in your black, you shouldn't be running.

period. You know, if you go out to influence the market and you can have problems, you see, i'm saying IT IT is the way that is. You can't win IT.

You can have too many black people running for the same sea because you'll dilute the power of the black.

You lose every time.

If black voters don't vote together, if they split over two different black candidates, say a wake candidate could run up the middle and capture the seat.

That's a reason why sometimes I think, the pack gets a name, because we are together and we cry and keep IT consistent block will be not debate from a lot.

The way the pack runs is pretty tight and not open to criticism because the piece of turf they've managed to carve out is small and the stakes are high. I don't mean the sounds like the pack is something unusual or exotic, holding an interest group together with discipline is literally politics. Knowing the specific history of the pack in this county did help me understand the precarious position the pack holds and bad in politics and why they're so urgent about getting black voters here to vote together. Although history, of course, is open to interpretation.

I know the history, and I know that IT took years to overcome all that stuff.

When I was in gene pete dining room talking with her about why he thinks the pack is cheating to brought a history too.

I believe IT on my heart. This whole problem had its seeds, and what what happened in north Carolin, the far past, with jim crow laws and an airbus trying to make up for, because they realized how that stuff is wrong. And then you got the cx happen and now airbag trend to treat people right.

And and i'm talking about most of the people in this colony, I believe I can say this can be right, or rather to respect everybody. IT didn't matter. You call. okay. Now there will laws on the books that allowed certain businesses to do certain things.

like discriminate against black people.

And so I think in an effort to not. Heard anybody or push back against people that were trying to to make their place in the world and and gain respect in everything. A lot of things were blinking. That that were illegal in this voting stuff is what i'm saying.

Genes feeling is the people who work at the polls in bleeding county are overcorrecting for all of the sense of the past voter suppression by Whites against blacks. They're not holding the black political group here accountable for the ways they are breaking the rules.

Nobody had the intentional afford to the trade change anything because they didn't want to be because because they wouldn't be told they were trying the vote. In all account.

There's a three, a voter suppression of black people in north CarOlina.

a and so you think that sometimes people are just .

letting things slide because .

they were afraid that they .

were replicating that history.

The history of voter suppression. I know there was because after reconstruction and the northern army went on back to where they came from um there was people who there were black people who had offices had been elected and they would run out town and they would not run out town and kind man or either gene is referring to a particularly .

violent period of time for black americans in the south. After reconstruction, gene lives only about an hour from wilmington, north CarOlina, where the wilmington massacre awaits the premises. Cow took place in eighty ninety eight, overthrowing elected black leaders.

Wait, primacy was the cool leader's actual slogan weight. People with guns rampage through the city. Many people were killed. Black politicians, businessmen were vanier shed from the city. Soon after, state legislators changed, the voting laws usher in the era of jim crow, which essentially stopped black people from voting for the next sixty five years or so. I don't know precisely how much gene knows about what happens specifically in eighty ninety eight down here, but SHE is the gist of IT, and SHE is her view about how that history is history.

But i'm only speaking from my lifetime. That's all I can talk about. Only thing I have observed is my lifetime.

When I was at the poles working, everybody was come into vote. My black friends will come into vote. My White friends will come into vote.

My hastening friends will come and vote. Nobody would tell them they could not vote. Nobody was getting their way to vote.

And so never ocurred me to think i'll we got voter suppression. So i'm not too sure if I was who was doing IT at during my lifetime, who was doing IT. I know there's a history back there.

I know IT is, hey, people, we have moved on. We need to move on, start trusting each other and quit fatten. What is the deal? Airport just goes old.

When jane talks about voter suppression, what IT is, it's very literal, almost like if there's not a big burly guy at the polls holding people into bushes or trying to vote, the no one's being prevented from voting. But of course, there are other ways to prevent people from voting that can be done with laws and procedures, something like having only one polling place in Elizabeth town, far from where a majority of black people in the county live.

That's something that could keep a significant number of black people from voting, without anyone having to get in anyone's face at the polls right now, as they speak these words, there are a su of state legislators working on new voting bills that me get harder to vote. These laws are being talked about so much right now, something, the changes being proposed, cutting back on early voting days, not letting voters vote at a percent, requiring certain kinds of idea, vote a bunch more stuff like that, that all add up to making voting tRicky. So many elections experts have said these laws are little more than voter suppression targeting black voters specifically.

Jane and I didn't talk about that stuff though, namely because sitting at her dining room table with all her files laid out in front of me, I was still struggling to understand what exactly was her evidence that the blame improvement association pack cheats arguments about parking spaces at curbside voting in situations that black voters are being somehow controlled by the pack? It's not evidence, it's just suspicion. But no matter because I think a lot of people in bleeding county think black people are getting a past now because of past wrong, or they see the pack motivating large numbers of black people to act in unison and just look specially to them.

Whatever the reason, there are just so ready to believe the pack is cheating. And that creates environment where anyone of the many accusations that are thrown at the pack can take hold and grow, and even approvingly false accusation can be turned into a powerful weapon and be used to tactical advantage by their enemies. That's next time on the .

improving association.

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