Come election season, some of us who live in solidly “blue” states like California or New York take our activist selves on the road to so-called “swing states,” where our door-knocking will make the most impact. One possible destination next Fall for energetic canvassers is North Carolina, one of the nation's most “purple“ states. This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a deep dive into North Carolina politics with Rob Schofield, the Director of NC Policy Watch. We recap the last few elections in the state, learn about battles over the fundamental right to cast a ballot, and take a look at some of the candidates and races slated for upcoming election cycles.

Narrator 0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability, I'm Alex wise.

Rob Schofield 0:26   It is emblematic of just a long litany of legislation that's going on for a decade in which Republicans have generally tried to make it harder to vote, particularly those classes of people that they perceive are likely to vote democratic. That means older citizens. That's why we've had battles over voter ID people of color, immigrants, young people, all the people that they view as not necessarily being part of their natural constituency. If they can figure out a way to put up barriers, they do it.

Narrator  0:55  Come election season, some of us who live in solidly “blue” states like California or New York take our activist selves on the road to so-called “swing states,” where our door-knocking will make the most impact. One possible destination next Fall for energetic canvassers is North Carolina, one of the nation's most “purple“ states. This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a deep dive into North Carolina politics with Rob Schofield, the Director of NC Policy Watch. We recap the last few elections in the state, learn about battles over the fundamental right to cast a ballot, and take a look at some of the candidates and races slated for upcoming election cycles.

Alex Wise  1:54  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Rob Schofield. Rob is the director of North Carolina policy watch NC policy watch calm Rob, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Rob Schofield 2:04  Hey, Alex, thanks so much for having me on.

Alex Wise  2:07  The political environment in your state is fascinating. And it's one of the most purple states in the union right now and going to be focus for the 2022 election and the 2024 election, I think, why don't we first take a step back, though and look at what happened in 2018 with the Mark Harris fiasco and kind of recap that for our listeners and explain why that's was an important template for where we are now in terms of voter rights in the state.

Rob Schofield 2:37  Well, 2018 was symptomatic of this ongoing situation in which North Carolina is sort of a razor Razor's Edge state. It's a deeply purple state, actually, historically, as a result of historical trends still has more registered Democrats than Republicans. But it's basically evenly divided certainly ideologically, like a lot of parts of the of the country. There's a there's a broad divide between urban and rural areas. The 2018 election was of course, one that featured a fairly formidable Blue Wave both nationally and here in North Carolina. We had, we've gone through just repeated court decisions and redrawing of our congressional and legislative maps and 2018. We were battling through another one of those but what happened was that we had an election in what was then the ninth district of North Carolina at the time, North Carolina had 13 seats in the house. And there was a an empty seat beak as a result of a of an incumbent Republican who had some corruption issues losing in the Republican primary guy by the name of Bob Pittenger ...