What Really Discourages Voters | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post was originally published in the Elections section of Civitas's online edition.

    NC Capitol Connection is posting election results. They are revealing about what voters really need.

    As expected, turnout was low: "Unofficial results from the State Board of Elections showed that more than 505,000 people cast ballots, which is only about 7.7 percent of the nearly 6.6 million registered voters in the state."

    One especially interesting point NCCC brings up: the actual ballot numbers. These preliminary numbers remind us that, in some districts, nominees were selected by fewer than 10,000 citizens, or even less than 5,000 . In District 12, Leon Threatt is the tentative winner of the Republican nod with 3,481 tallies.

    That few people would vote was entirely predictable. Remember, the congressional election was the second in three months. It came about after a federal court ordered the legislature to redraw the Congressional map drawn in 2011. That map was approved by the U.S. Justice Department and the North Carolina Supreme Court and used in the 2012 and 2014 elections, but that didn't matter to the judges.

    Many people likely didn't know about or understand the second primary. After all, many already had voted in March. The second primary got little publicity. Also, with only two races on most ballots, there was less to draw people in.

    Critics of elections reforms and the redistricting maps often complain that the electoral process discourages people from voting. But look what happened here: the vast majority of voters didn't show up. The left-led attacks on the elections process in fact discouraged people from voting. That irony should be kept in mind the next time you hear complaints about sensible elections policies discouraging voters.