The president of the North Carolina NAACP is touring more than 26 communities promoting voter drives since mid-October including one in Burgaw a few weeks ago. Amanda Greene of Wilmington Faith and Values spoke with the Reverend William Barbour the Second about early voter turnout and the concerns he’s hearing from voters statewide.
With the latest presidential polls in North Carolina dead even at 49 percent for both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Barber knows each voter can make a difference.
Just at tour stops in Kinston and Rocky Mount last week, he saw about 1,000 people lined up around community centers waiting to register and vote.
Barber says in the last three years voter ID laws have caused a regression in civil rights -- which he says has inspired a rise in voter turnout.
“This election is about the heart of our democracy, about the heart of America, about those fundamental principles that we believe in. Are we going to be a nation of the few or a nation of the whole? Are we going to be a nation of we the people or a nation of just those at the top?”
Though his get-out-the-vote tour only has a handful of stops before Election Day on Tuesday, Barber says he’s confident the state will see historic turnouts in the African American vote this year.