Films show voting troubles in Fayetteville

This story has been updated to reflect the rescheduled date of a screening of the "Rigged" film in Fayetteville.

Two recent documentary films about elections and election laws were made in Fayetteville and show voters having trouble voting in 2016.

“Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook” was released this year and will be screened in Fayetteville in July.

It says the GOP’s response to the 2008 presidential election of Democrat Barack Obama was to push hard to flip state legislatures from Democrat to Republican in 2010. Then, the film says, the GOP legislatures revised voting map districts to make it harder for Democratic candidates to win and created laws to make voting more difficult for Democratic-leaning groups such as younger voters and racial or ethnic minorities.

The long-term GOP strategy has largely been successful, the film says.

A Republican who was a strategist for former President George W. Bush is critical of his own party. He says the GOP stoked fears in the public of voter fraud in order to gin up support for laws that created barriers to voting — “and, not coincidentally, people who would vote against them.”

The film has scenes of conservative activists in September 2016 using state election laws from the Jim Crow era to push the county elections board to delete more than 3,500 Cumberland County voter registrations. Two of the challenged voters had to appear at a meeting of the Board of Elections office and stop the board from removing them from the voter registration list.

The film also looks at voting and voting law changes in several other states.

“Capturing the Flag,” which was released last year, is a bit different.

It follows three friends as they visit Cumberland County to monitor the fall 2016 elections and help voters who run into problems trying to vote.

This film, too, discusses the purge of voter registrations.

On Election Day 2016, the three friends spent the day at the polls. They found people who had difficulties. One man, for example, said he had registered to vote at the Division of Motor Vehicles, but he was told his registration had not been processed.

They saw long lines at the Cliffdale Recreation Center polling site and heard reports of people being turned away. The film says more than 1,200 people tried to vote but only 598 ballots were cast at that site.

“Capturing the Flag” can be streamed on the Ovid.tv streaming video service. (Ovid costs $6.99 per month.)

Surveyed

Public Policy Polling, a Democratically aligned survey company, conducted telephone surveys in Fayetteville this past week.

It sought people’s opinions of President Donald Trump, Gov. Roy Cooper and Fayetteville state Rep. Billy Richardson.

It also queried people whether the Medicaid government health insurance program should be expanded to several hundred thousand lower-income people. Further, it wanted to know whether a voter would be less inclined to vote for a legislator who passes a state budget that doesn't include Medicaid expansion.

As of Friday morning, the results had not been published.

Political events

• Democratic Mens Club: 5:30 p.m. June 25, K&W Carolina, Bordeaux shopping center, 1758 Owen Drive.

Staff writer Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3512.