overall voted for mitt romney for president barely by about 800 votes in the whole county. the three boone precincts where appalachian state is, those precincts voted heavily for president obama, 60%-35%. the districts that include lots of students and faculty there, they re a very blue part of that county and very blue part of this state. last monday the newly republic an-controlled watauga county board of elections held an unexpectedly heated special meeting where they said they were going to eliminate two of the three voting precincts in boone. a large change for thousands of people there who may someday wan to vote. voting on campus is convenient. vote in between classes. vote whenever you want to. it s easy, simple. as resident of the county and as someone who i work on campus, i usually early vote. part of it is a question of convenience, clearly. i think i ve pretty much always early voted.
segregation in the south. there s still a black belt. i can look at voting precincts. county by county. i know exactly where the democratic vote is. it s african-american precincts. there s still this feeling, there s still a form of segregation that has been i guess sub segregation. yes, there s a lot of subsegregation, particularly in the south, and in addition to self-segregation, we know the south is mainly red states. what we re mainly seeing in the south, but quite frankly all over the country, i think the largest impediment we ll see in the future to seeing more african-americans in congress is the ability of black people to actually vote. we re seeing the tide turn back to everything that we fought against. people fought against 50 years ago. it is happening over and over again. we see it in texas. we see it in north carolina. i got to bring up what colin powell did yesterday. and colin powell goes down. probably a paid speech. i don t know this. i m assuming. speaking in f
ultimately and ultimately hurt the republican party. he says i want to see policies that encourage every american to vote and not make it more difficult to vote. it immediately turns off a voting block the republican party needs. these kind of actions do not build on the base. it just turns people away. jamal, how big of a deal is it to have general colin powell weighing in here? i think a big deal. he is the highest profile person, not just republican, to criticize north carolina s voting law. maybe this will get ordinary citizens paying attention. people tend to listen when colin powell speaks and i think he is right. this law is clearly designed to reduce voting among democratic constituencies. yesterday, there were reports that north carolina republican election boards were closing voting precincts near
voting laws. the court ruled that the country has made major racial progress since the law went into effect 48 years ago in 1965. and that has to be reconsidered. here now to explain and analyze the decision hillary shelton the senior vice president for advocacy for the naacp. now let s break this down. some people think the entire voting rights act was thrown out. it was not. that s that s correct. laura: it was just this one section of it which is section 4 which required certain states and certain districts in other states to get clearance from the federal government before it made any changes to any part of real voting. if you change voting precincts and requirements you have to get it pre-cleared. the court said it s not 48 years ago. we made great progress. it s discriminating against those states today given all the progress that s been made. why is this a big set back. it s a big set back because the voting rights act has proved to be very helpful tool in preventing
voting laws. the court ruled that the country has made major racial progress since the law went into effect 48 years ago in 1965. and that has to be reconsidered. here now to explain and analyze the decision hillary shelton the senior vice president for advocacy for the naacp. now let s break this down. some people think the entire voting rights act was thrown out. it was not. that s that s correct. laura: it was just this one section of it which is section 4 which required certain states and certain districts in other states to get clearance from the federal government before it made any changes to any part of real voting. if you change voting precincts and requirements you have to get it pre-cleared. the court said it s not 48 years ago. we made great progress. it s discriminating against those states today given all the progress that s been made. why is this a big set back. it s a big set back because the voting rights act has proved to be very helpful tool in preventing