Study: North Carolina's Black Voters Live in a State of 'Electoral Apartheid'

For African Americans in North Carolina, attempting to cast a ballot is increasingly a convoluted obstacle course. Ever since the state passed the Voter Information Verification Act in 2012, which made photo ID mandatory and ended Election Day-voter registration, the path to the polling booth has become trickier. Now researchers for insightus, a North Carolina-based data analysis nonprofit, have released a new report that adds to our understanding of just how tough it’s become for African Americans to vote in the state. Turns out, it takes longer for them to get to the polling booth than it used to, too.

The insightus report finds, for example, that there are actually three more early voting polling locations in the state than there were in 2012. But despite those additions, early voting locations are now located farther away from black communities than they were before. The average white voter's distance from their nearest early voting site increased by just a few yards in 2014, while the average distance for black voters increased by a quarter mile.