http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/05/m ake-your-own-north-carolina-prediction.h tml

This is a pretty cool gizmo. Gives you the ability to affect AA turnout and percentages with the white and black vote to see who will win. It's not perfect but it's close. Here's what I got:

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I believe voter suppression is more than a simple political crime. I believe it is a crime against humanity. I've fought voter suppression, theft and fraud all my life. Working as a reporter and then as a Democratic consultant, activist and writer based in Texas, I've seen it first hand. I've watched my screams fall on deaf ears. I've lived with a culture that believes that as long as "the right people" vote, every thing is in its little hierarchical place.

It happens everywhere, but it a particularly Southern tragedy, and I can fully understand and fully support the outrage among African-American voters when they believe their voting rights are being trampled once again.

There's a part of me that believes the outrage at suspected voter suppression in North Carolina is healthy. There's a bigger part of me that sees too much vigilantism in the reaction to WVWV.

The first chapter of my book, The Politics of Deceit, opens with a tragic story from Ocoee, Florida during the 1920 election. When a young African-American named July Perry cast his ballot that morning, white racism turned to rage. Perry was shot, hanged and burned. Five hundred people were driven from their homes, which were then burned to the ground. Children spent the night hiding in trees of an orange grove. One of them, Armstrong Perry, returned for the first time 81 years later. He was 93. He said he could still smell the fire.

You can read a PDF of the chapter on voter suppression, "The Threatened Habitats of Democracy,"here.

I know many of the critics of  WVWV take offense at being characterized as an unthinking mob. From their perspective, someone is trying to suppress the votes of African-Americans because those votes may help give the Democratic nomination to an African-American candidate. Whatever the facts of the matter, we will know them, sooner or later. It's the tone of the criticism that concerns me, the rush to condemn and convict. It smells like the Ocoee fire to me.

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