NAACP Alleges Effort To Suppress Black Vote In North Carolina
LEMON: A big ruling in North Carolina will affect exactly who can vote on Tuesday, who can vote on Tuesday. Here to discuss this, Reverend Dr. William Barber, president of North Carolina NAACP. I'm so glad you're joining us this evening to discuss this, a very important matter, Reverend. So you have been fighting voter suppression down there including thousands of people stripped from the voting rolls. You had a big victory tonight. What did the judge ruled?</s>REVEREND DR. WILLIAM BARBER, PRESIDENT, NORTH CAROLINA NAACP: The judge ruled a temporary restraining order saying that these purges all thousands of these people had to be returned to the rolls and allowed to vote and all of this activity had to cease across the state of North Carolina. This is heavy. It's a first case of its type for this challenge, this kind of purging where a group allied with the GOP simply sends out a bunch of mailings, if they come back undeliverable, then they go in and they challenge them in bulk form. And they challenge these voters and people find out in the newspaper that their voter registration has been challenged.</s>LEMON: Reverend, there's been a lot of talk about the black vote being down. How much of that is a lower degree of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton, or how much is the stuff that we have been reporting on here about a lack of polling places in black areas, not opening polls on Sundays and things like that?</s>BARBER: Well, first of all, let me just say to everybody vote in North Carolina tomorrow is the last day of early voting. We have same-day registration and early voting that we won in the courts, and if you need any information, call 1888-our-vote. Don, in our state, the GOP keeps scheming and the court keeps speaking. We have a lot of enthusiasm here. We've had 60 marches to the polls. Students have marched to the polls, but at the same turn, we have 158 fewer polling places in the 40 counties previously covered by the Voting Rights Act than we had in 2012. And some places, where we would have say, 16 early voting sites the first week, we only had one, and this is because the GOP sent a letter out to their local Boards of Election told them to implement rules that reflected GOP values, and not so much the spirit of the law and the constitution. So we're battling, Don, against voter suppression, but people are fighting. People are coming back, and now the numbers are ticking up because early voting sites have been added. There are more sites now, HBCU campuses, and this victory will help in a major way. So it may not be -- there may be more to that not lack of enthusiasm, or it just made people cannot get to the polls. I want to talk about this before I let you go. It's not just in North Carolina, there's federal judge in Ohio, issued a temporary restraining order against Trump friend and advisor, Roger Stone and his group called, "Stop the Steel." That group was mobilizing to send poll watchers into minority Democratic areas. Judge James Gwen's order says it prohibits hindering or delaying a voter or perspective voter from reaching or leaving the polling place, challenging or questioning voters or perspective voters about their eligibility to vote or training organizing or directing others to do the same, interrogating, admonishing, interfering with or verbally harassing voters or perspective voters. Questioning voters under the guise of the purported exit polling or citizen journalist' operations, organized and encouraged by Defendants Stone and Stop the Steal. So with these kinds of voter suppression efforts keeps African- Americans from turning out, do you think it's going to -- will it motivate them now?</s>BARBER: Well, I believe so. I've been preaching a message, we better vote and then when people are working this hard to take something, it must mean you have power. It must mean you can make a difference. We're organizing thousands of poll watchers. We have 12,000 faith centers that are organized to turn the vote out. We are mobilizing. We put out more than 450,000 robo calls, more than 500,000 pieces of literature in terms of voter registration, and we are telling people do not be intimated. "The Washington Post" did a story I think yesterday, said this traces back to what the clan did in the early 1900s, and to intimidate people, and suggesting, look, stand your ground. We've been through worse. We've seen worse. We have -- we won the right to vote through lynching and people being beaten, bloodied, and killed and surely we can stand up to somebody, who said they are going to come knocking you. Let them come and watch us vote, but understand we're not going to be moved. We're not going to be intimidated and we are going to vote.</s>LEMON: Tonight in Arizona, Democrats won a third case, Reverend, against the voter suppression efforts. You've been fighting the good fight for voting rights for a very long time. Did you think that back from the very beginning that you would still be facing these kinds of tactics now in 2016?</s>BARBER: You know, Don, that's the sad irony of it. One of the latest that was challenged in this purge is 100 years old and she found out in the newspapers. This is a woman who came through Jim Crow. Our lead plaintiff in our case against House Bill 589, the monster voting bill, Jim Crow is 93 years old. But you know, Don, I think about my mother. My mother integrated public schools. She's 83 years old. She still goes to work every day. She looked at me one day and said, son, I never thought I'd have a child August 13th, 1963, two days after the march on Washington, who would be facing some of the same kind of challenges we faced them. But then she got that squint in her eye that black mamas get, she said, but you all better fight. You better not turn around. So my mama told me, Don. And so we've been -- people told us we were going to lose. They told us we couldn't beat them. They spent $6 million of our taxpayer money trying to take the right to vote and (inaudible) the right to vote. But people went to jail, we stood and we went to courts and we won and we have to use this victory by voting. So I tell folks, mama said, you better vote.</s>LEMON: You always listen to mama. Listen, I went to the barbershop today and a barber said, I like your hair short, and I said my mama likes it when I have more hair on my head, I don't care if it looks bad or good. She wants it. Mama said, and mama's always right.</s>BARBER: That's right.</s>LEMON: Thank you, I appreciate it. When we come right back, what's going to happen when this long, ugly race is finally over, will the losers step aside gracefully, or will that be just the beginning?