Luria makes final case for democracy, vies for Black voters
by Rania Khalek
With a national election just months away, the Black Lives Matter and other organizations are mobilizing for a major push for voting rights. The most high-profile case for the day before Election Day involves a mother of four, who is challenging her felon husband’s right to vote in North Carolina. Another Black voter on behalf of her son is arguing that the state, which disenfranchised thousands of voters in the past, should not be allowed to continue discriminating against African Americans in the upcoming election.
On Thursday, four weeks before Election Day, activists will descend on the state Capitol in Raleigh for a week of protests, including a march, a sit-in on the House floor, and a rally at the state capitol. For decades, African-American voters have been harassed and discriminated against by Republicans, who have prevented African Americans from voting, but also, in the last few years, forced them to wait in line for hours or sit in line for days to vote. The voter suppression, which has only been mitigated in recent years, has cost African Americans an estimated 1,000 votes in recent elections, but that number is likely to increase and could very well surpass the number of African-American voters who were disenfranchised.
On Thursday, the ACLU of North Carolina is hosting a press conference to announce the group’s efforts to push North Carolina voters to the polls and to highlight the efforts by organizations like the Black Panthers for a Just Society and the National Action Network (NAN) to turn out the vote in the upcoming election. The ACLU and the others are using the election as a platform to highlight the fact that hundreds of thousands of African Americans are not being able to exercise their democratic rights without being harassed and prevented from voting. The organization representing the woman challenging her husband’s right to vote is, in their own words, “fighting for democracy.”
“We need to change the law in order to make voting easier for everyone. There are people in this state that don’t agree. They�