Jim Crow Still Lives in Alamance County

District Attorney Pat Nadolski

The NYTimes profiles "the Alamance Twelve" this morning, 12 African-Americans in Alamance County who are being threatened with jail time for illegally voting in 2016 by a district attorney who doesn't care that they had no intent to break the law.

The Alamance Twelve didn't know that their prior felony convictions made them ineligible to vote. Election workers didn't tell them when they went to vote. They're on probation and, they thought, in the clear to act as full citizens. They were given ballots, and then they voted, and now they're charged with crimes.

The Alamance district attorney is pretty much alone pursuing voting mistakes like these in North Carolina, and it doesn't escape notice that his targets are all black voters. There's more than one way to suppress the vote.