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North Carolina Republicans are at it once again. Barely one month after a federal appeals court struck down the state's anti-voter law for suppressing African-American voter turnout "with almost surgical accuracy," election authorities in dozens of counties are using up new methods to make it as hard as possible for blacks, and others who tend to support Democrats, to vote. A judgment issued by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on July 29 invalidated the majority of a 2013 law. The court's scathing opinion said that "due to the fact that of race, the legislature enacted among the largest limitations of the franchise in modern-day North Carolina history." The law, passed by a Republican-dominated legislature, imposed rigorous voter-ID requirements, cut down early-voting hours and eliminated same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting and preregistration for those under 18. The court brought back the week of early voting that the law had slashed, but it left it to regional election boards to set the variety of ballot locations and voting hours. This allowed those boards, all of which are led by Republicans, to cut voting hours Led Fluorescent writing board listed below what they were for the 2012 election. Dallas Woodhouse, the head of the state's Republican Party, saw an opportunity and kept up it, composing in an August e-mail to election authorities that "Republicans can and must make celebration line changes to early ballot." Election boards in 23 of the state's 100 counties have now reduced early voting hours, in some cases to a small portion of what they remained in the 2012 presidential election, according to an analysis by The Raleigh News Observer. Boards in 9 counties voted to eliminate Sunday voting. Both early ballot and Sunday voting are utilized disproportionately by black citizens. While boards in 70 counties voted to expand the variety of early-voting hours, the counties that moved to cut hours back represent half of the state's signed up citizens. In heavily Democratic Mecklenburg County-- the state's largest, with about one million homeowners-- Republican board members voted to remove 238 early-voting hours in spite of near-unanimous appeals from the general public to add more. In 2012, African-Americans in Mecklenburg used early ballot at a far higher rate than whites. The board's chairwoman, Mary Potter Summa, said she was "not a fan of early ballot," which she claimed presented more chances for "offenses," despite the fact that there is no proof that early voting, which is utilized by over half of all North Carolinians, brings an increased threat of scams. The specter of fraud has actually been utilized to justify voter-suppression efforts across the country, although there is essentially no proof of scams. In its ruling, the Fourth Circuit stated that lawmakers "failed to identify even a single person who has ever been charged with committing in-person citizen scams in North Carolina." What is much more dangerous to the integrity of American elections is the relentless efforts of legislators to disenfranchise large numbers of minority citizens, instead of to work to win their votes with a celebration platform that treats them with respect.