The Improvement Association - Ep. 2 AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Serial

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (The Improvement Association - Ep. 2) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Go to PodExtra AI's podcast page (Serial) to view the AI-processed content of all episodes of this podcast.

View full AI transcripts and summaries of all podcast episodes on the blog: Serial

Episode: The Improvement Association - Ep. 2

Author: Serial Productions & The New York Times
Duration: 00:45:50

Episode Shownotes

Zoe talks to people in the county who believe the Bladen Improvement PAC has been cheating for years. She tries to get beyond the rumors and into specifics, and comes face to face with the intense suspicion and scrutiny leveled against the organization. In the middle of another election, Zoe

goes out with members of the PAC to watch how they operate and try to make sense of all these allegations against them. To get full access to this show, and to other Serial Productions and New York Times podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, subscribe at nytimes.com/podcasts.To find out about new shows from Serial Productions, and get a look behind the scenes, sign up for our newsletter at nytimes.com/serialnewsletter.Have a story pitch, a tip, or feedback on our shows? Email us at [email protected]

Full Transcript

00:00:03 Speaker_00
These first two episodes of The Improvement Association are free, but to hear the whole series, you'll need to subscribe to The New York Times, where you'll get access to all the Serial Productions and New York Times shows. And it's super easy.

00:00:16 Speaker_00
You can sign up through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if you're already a Times subscriber, just link your account and you're done. From Serial Productions and The New York Times, this is The Improvement Association. Chapter two, where's your choice?

00:00:37 Speaker_07
Being the chair of the Blading County Board of Elections is a pretty intense job in a place where accusations of election fraud are as common as American flags.

00:00:47 Speaker_07
All the accusations come to the board and then they have to sort out what to go after and what's just election noise. In 2018, the year of the big congressional race crackup, the chair of the elections board was a man named Bobby Ludlam.

00:01:01 Speaker_07
Republican, white guy, he'd served on the board of elections for years. And during early voting that year, Bobby noticed something unusual was happening with absentee ballot request forms.

00:01:13 Speaker_07
Blayden always saw an unusually high number of absentee ballot requests come in. And Bobby knew that a local elections guy, McCray Dallas, had some people working for him, dropping off absentee request forms in big stacks every couple days.

00:01:28 Speaker_07
That's not illegal, and in Blayden County, not that weird.

00:01:32 Speaker_07
But one day, workers at the Board of Elections were going through this pile of request forms and came across this one absentee ballot request for the 94-year-old mother-in-law of someone who worked at the Board of Elections, a person they knew did not vote.

00:01:50 Speaker_07
One of the workers reported this to Bobby Ludlam, the chairman, and he said, bring me the stack. I'll look at them.

00:01:56 Speaker_03
— I started going through them, and all of a sudden, here's my grandson. And he has absolutely no intention of voting for her. So I called Harley, my grandson. I said, Harley, did you sign a request for an absentee ballot?

00:02:20 Speaker_03
And he basically said, what's that?

00:02:25 Speaker_07
Bobby Ludlam explained to his grandson, Harley, what an absentee ballot request form was. And Harley said, oh yeah, I remember what happened.

00:02:34 Speaker_03
He said that two women came to, he was at his friend's house and they were in the pool. And he said, one of the ladies cut out the van, came up and asked him to sign it, and they refused to sign them. — She worked for McCrae.

00:02:55 Speaker_03
And her last name was Dallas.

00:02:57 Speaker_07
— Jessica Dallas.

00:02:58 Speaker_03
— Hmm?

00:02:59 Speaker_07
— Jessica.

00:03:00 Speaker_03
— Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:03:01 Speaker_07
— Jessica Dallas is married to a distant relative of McCrae Dallas. She was working for him during the election. The signature on the request form was not Bobby's grandson's signature, but somehow the form had his Social Security number on it.

00:03:17 Speaker_07
So, Bobby called the State Board of Elections, which had already been hearing some things about Bladen County that year, and they sent investigators to Bladen to look into what was happening.

00:03:28 Speaker_07
The result was the big state board of elections hearing where workers from McCray Dallas testified they'd been paid to pick up people's ballots, sometimes fill in other people's ballots, which led to indictments.

00:03:42 Speaker_07
But the reason I tell you this story is because Bobby Ludlam, Bobby, whose own grandson was a victim of alleged election fraud, Bobby, who was overseeing elections in Blading County, Bobby thinks McCray got a raw deal. Because?

00:03:59 Speaker_03
Blayden Improvement Group has done at least as bad and maybe worse.

00:04:05 Speaker_07
Bobby thinks the Blayden County Improvement Association, and specifically Horace Munn as the head of its political arm, the Blayden Improvement PAC, has been up to election shenanigans for years.

00:04:18 Speaker_07
So many people in Blayden have said something like this to me. I'd ask about the 2018 congressional race and absentee ballots and McCray-Dowless. They'd say, yeah, but what about the other side, the Democrats? They were just as bad, worse.

00:04:33 Speaker_07
And they've gotten off. Nothing's happened to them. — One day, I was in Elizabethtown, the county seat. I was down there reporting on a special election, standing outside the polling place at the gym with a couple TV reporters.

00:04:48 Speaker_07
And this woman flew up the black at us and just launched into it.

00:04:52 Speaker_01
— I'm sorry, but I'm gonna tell y'all, I've had enough. I've had enough of all the crazy mess here in this county. And I'm going to tell you something else. I have reported it. Every year, there's a judge that I serve.

00:05:06 Speaker_07
— A poll judge?

00:05:07 Speaker_01
— Yes. And the records are up there in Raleigh, the records are over there at the board. And let me tell you something, it wasn't the Republican Party. That's what I think, and I don't care if you're taping me.

00:05:17 Speaker_07
— Oh, I'm taping you, I told her. I had my microphone out. — This is Jane Pate, a longtime Republican. Jane's been pretty upset since McCrae Dowless got in trouble.

00:05:29 Speaker_07
She's sure McCrae got targeted only because he was working for Republicans, when, for years, Democrats have been doing the same thing.

00:05:36 Speaker_01
— Let me tell you something. There were two people in the election before the last one that they could have actually brought charges against and didn't.

00:05:50 Speaker_07
What was that?

00:05:51 Speaker_01
I'm not, I can't name them. Go to the board, get their names.

00:05:55 Speaker_07
So I think that was the Blade Improvement Association. Right.

00:05:59 Speaker_01
Is that what you're talking about? I'm pretty sure that's who they were with.

00:06:04 Speaker_08
Uh-huh.

00:06:04 Speaker_01
If you really want to do a story on this, we need to sit down and talk.

00:06:10 Speaker_07
And let me pull up my files. I am doing a story on this, so let's talk. From Serial Productions, I'm Zoe Chase. This is The Improvement Association. A true story about election fraud.

00:06:47 Speaker_07
When Horace first called me down to North Carolina, he told me, Republicans keep accusing the Bladen Improvement Pack of cheating in order to deflect scrutiny from the questionable stuff McCray Dowless has been doing for years here. That's his story.

00:07:03 Speaker_07
Jane Pate and others in Bladen have a different story, that the election cheating in Bladen County began with the Bladen Improvement Pack, that the pack has established a culture of breaking rules in the county that goes on to this day.

00:07:17 Speaker_07
I wanted to know, is that true? What specifically were people seeing the pack do? So I accept Jane's invitation to come over and check her files.

00:07:26 Speaker_01
But anyway, did you get a chance to read through all that?

00:07:29 Speaker_07
Well, not all of it, but I started looking. I was wondering... As soon as I arrive, Jane gets right into what she's seen. Her complaints are organized in a folder of papers she's laid out on her dining room table for me to look through.

00:07:43 Speaker_07
When I barge in on people like this, looking for something specific, lots of times the rest of their lives are right there too, right next to us.

00:07:52 Speaker_07
In Jane's living room, the furniture was all pushed back against the wall to accommodate her niece's dialysis machine. Jane's niece, on dialysis, stayed in Jane's living room while her father was dying.

00:08:05 Speaker_07
Jane's lost several family members over the last few years, just recently her brother. She's grieving. Jane admits that grief fuels some of her rage right now about local politics.

00:08:18 Speaker_07
The papers she has out are formal letters that she's written to the County Board of Elections about problems she's observed. Fewer than I expected, to be honest, but she says a lot of her complaints over the years have taken the form of phone calls.

00:08:32 Speaker_07
Some of what she's written are just bullet points.

00:08:35 Speaker_01
Name and address verification procedure not following. Voter was not required to ask for help as is stated in the law.

00:08:42 Speaker_07
Virtually all her complaints are about the PAC, the Bladen Improvement Association, which definitely makes its presence known at the polls every local election. I've seen a few elections here myself at this point. I've seen how the PAC works.

00:08:56 Speaker_07
They always have people outside the main polling place during early voting and on election day, under a tent, chatting with voters, handing out a voter guide, offering voter assistance to anyone who needs it.

00:09:09 Speaker_07
Jane and I spent more than three hours talking through her papers. Some of them go back 10 years. Each incident, each complaint, in detail.

00:09:18 Speaker_07
And what I get from hearing her walk through them is less of a smoking gun and more a general vibe of coercion or intimidation that Jane sees.

00:09:29 Speaker_07
Jane thinks the PAC, what they're really doing, their presence at the polls, it isn't helping or supporting Black voters. It's harassing them, pressuring them into voting a certain way. Like this story.

00:09:43 Speaker_01
I wrote about what was going on.

00:09:45 Speaker_07
Tell me.

00:09:46 Speaker_01
Well, I'll just read it to you.

00:09:49 Speaker_07
Great. Jean reads from her notes, an incident where she says she saw the harassment in action. She's still mad about it.

00:09:57 Speaker_01
I was disturbed, and I was putting it lightly, to see that while I was there working Tuesday through Saturday, all curbside voting was taking place beside the Bladen Improvement Pack tent at the top of the front lawn of the library.

00:10:12 Speaker_07
This dispute between Jane and the PAC workers — it got deep in the weeds — was over where the PAC set up its tent outside a polling place. In North Carolina, voters can vote curbside.

00:10:24 Speaker_07
If they have trouble walking, for instance, they can just fill out their ballot right in the car. An election worker will bring it out to them and then bring it back inside once they're done.

00:10:33 Speaker_07
Jane says the PAC had set up its tent right next to the space reserved for the curbside voters to park. Much closer than they're allowed to by law, she says. The cars are pulling up right there.

00:10:47 Speaker_07
She's moving a coffee mug around the table in front of us to show me how close the PAC tent was to the people who were pulling up to the curb to vote.

00:10:55 Speaker_01
And the people from the tent are having easy access and they're taking it.

00:10:59 Speaker_07
— The problem was, she says, they were handing out the voter guides too close to where people actually vote. Jane raises this with one of the PAC volunteers, apparently, and he disagrees.

00:11:10 Speaker_07
And they start giving people conflicting directions about where to park their cars for the curbside voting, like warring valets at a hotel.

00:11:19 Speaker_07
All the while, she says, PAC workers were continuing to hand out the PAC's voter guide, which is fine, sort of.

00:11:26 Speaker_01
You may take their voter guide. I've actually taken Democrat voter guides. Did I use them? No, because they're not pro-life. But the point of the whole thing is, I might take something from someone and not use it. That's my choice. Or I might use it. Okay.

00:11:47 Speaker_01
If the 10 is here, And you're right there within one step. I'm literally one step.

00:11:56 Speaker_08
OK.

00:11:56 Speaker_01
OK. They can see everything you're doing. They can hear every word that's said. And somebody comes from your community around there and says, this is what we want you to do. And they stand right there while you do it?

00:12:11 Speaker_01
Or they stick their arm inside the car and help you do it? Where's your choice? You tell me where the choice is.

00:12:20 Speaker_07
To picture this, when Jane is saying somebody comes from your community, she means the black community, like black voters pulling up in a car and black PAC workers coming up to them with a voter guide hovering by the car window while someone's voting, just being too close.

00:12:36 Speaker_07
It's pressure, she thinks, that could manipulate the voter to vote the PAC's way. What's unclear to me with Jane's story, though, is if that manipulation is what's actually happening. Well, here's what I would say.

00:12:50 Speaker_07
That sounds very intimidating if you don't want it.

00:12:53 Speaker_01
Exactly. And I was going to say this that my husband Mike would say to you. He had worked for Judge for a good while. He said that people of certain community would come in,

00:13:08 Speaker_07
Okay, now we're switching to something she says her husband saw when he was working as a poll judge, how people from the PAC would interact with voters inside the polling place when they provided voter assistance.

00:13:20 Speaker_07
Now, voter assistance is a thing at the polls. Voters with certain disabilities, for example, they're allowed to have someone help them inside the voting booth. But as Jane's husband saw it, PAC members were practically forcing voters to let them help.

00:13:36 Speaker_01
And there'd be somebody following them. I need to help you vote. I need to help you vote. All the way in the, let me help you vote. All the way into the precinct.

00:13:45 Speaker_01
And the person may or may not agree, but if they disagree, they'd turn around and say, I don't need you to help me vote. I need to help you vote. I don't need you to help me vote. Black people.

00:13:59 Speaker_08
That's what you're saying.

00:13:59 Speaker_01
Well, it was PAC people. Yeah, PAC people. The PAC had them out there to help. And they would follow the people into the precinct.

00:14:16 Speaker_07
I guess, like I was saying, that sounds very intimidating.

00:14:20 Speaker_01
It is intimidating.

00:14:22 Speaker_07
If you don't want it.

00:14:23 Speaker_01
If you don't want it, it's intimidating.

00:14:27 Speaker_07
The reason I keep saying, if you don't want it, to Jeanne is because she's making this obvious leap in these incidents, where she goes from seeing rules possibly being bent or broken, to assuming how voters were feeling about what she says was happening, that they were feeling bullied.

00:14:46 Speaker_07
Jane thinks what's happening at the polls, the dynamic, is that PAC workers intimidate black voters into accepting assistance, whether they need it or not, in order to control how they vote.

00:14:58 Speaker_07
Even if the voter asks for help, it's not legit to Jane because you can't know if there's social pressure at work. The way she sees it, voter assistance is more like vote stealing a lot of the time.

00:15:10 Speaker_07
The person assisting the voter is taking the vote from the voter.

00:15:15 Speaker_01
Whatever happened to one man, one vote? That takes that and flushes it down the commode. So you may think, well, that looks fairly harmless. They wanted that person in there with them, did they?

00:15:30 Speaker_07
So of course, later, I looked for complaints about this. Testimony from a voter somewhere saying the PAC assisted them or harassed them, and they didn't want it. and didn't find anything.

00:15:43 Speaker_07
Neither have investigators from the state, who have also looked for precisely that. But I think for Jane, the lack of official complaints proves her point. It shows how much control this group is exerting on Black voters at the polls.

00:15:57 Speaker_01
And you know this is human. This is human stuff. You live in a community, and you're a tight community. Again, she means the Black community. And this whole community is working toward a goal.

00:16:12 Speaker_01
Say it's a political goal, I don't care what you call it, working toward a goal, and you're not going to go along with it. And you're going to have however many people want you to go along with it mad at you, right? Okay. So there you go.

00:16:25 Speaker_07
I think this is at the heart of a lot of people's complaints about the Blade and Improvement PAC, their suspicion of the group. The idea that the PAC keeps Black people from making their own choices as voters. So there's the social pressure.

00:16:47 Speaker_07
But there's also this other possible coercion I heard about. Another theory on how the Blade Improvement Pack persuades Black voters to vote along with the pack. Something more direct.

00:16:59 Speaker_06
During my time as a greeter, I noticed a lot of things that went on. — This is Mary Catherine Mazur.

00:17:06 Speaker_07
We're on the floor of her living room, with her toddlers scooting all around us. Like Jean, Mary Catherine is an elections person. White, works at polling sites, done that for years. And like Jean, Mary Catherine also has suspicions about the PAC.

00:17:22 Speaker_07
Mary Catherine told me about one scene she witnessed. It was at a polling place a few years ago. All the candidate signs were clustered out front. The tents were around to shade the campaign workers from the sun.

00:17:34 Speaker_07
And she'd see black voters walking by on their way to vote inside.

00:17:38 Speaker_06
These people were, it was like they were lured into this tent. And what would happen is, let's say John Doe came up just to vote. They were given a piece of paper, and they would fold it up.

00:18:02 Speaker_06
And they were, I can't remember if they were lime green or orange, but they stood out.

00:18:07 Speaker_07
I'm going to go ahead and assume that this is the Blading County Improvement Association sample ballot that you're talking about. That was the chant that I saw. The sample ballot. It's the PAC's voter guide.

00:18:20 Speaker_07
It's the same thing Jean Pate saw PAC workers giving out. It's made up to look like a real ballot, but it's a different color. All the little ovals are filled in next to the candidates that the PAC is supporting.

00:18:33 Speaker_07
PAC workers at the polling place try to give a sample ballot to most Black voters walking up to vote. Mary Catherine knows the sample ballot is legal. She knows it's allowed. But the way people were handling it?

00:18:47 Speaker_07
They'd take the sample ballot into the voting booth.

00:18:50 Speaker_06
And then when they'd come out, I'd notice that some people would throw theirs away and not turn it back in. And I saw several people go through the trash cans to get those sheets out.

00:19:05 Speaker_07
Like poll workers for the PAC, jumping up and rifling through the trash to retrieve the ballots.

00:19:11 Speaker_06
Then I found out they were actually numbered. So they had these things numbered.

00:19:18 Speaker_07
At just this moment, Mary Katherine's toddler, Caroline, crawled into my lap and somehow found the off button to my recorder. So, quick reset.

00:19:28 Speaker_08
Okay, so people pulling these sample ballots out of the garbage.

00:19:31 Speaker_06
Right. So if you did not turn them back into the tent, then they were mad. They were like, where's your sheet of paper? These sheets of paper were numbered so they knew which one was missing and who had it. and where to find it.

00:19:50 Speaker_06
I will not say 100%, but I will say pretty confident that there was something wrapped in the paper. Like what? Oh, money? I'm not 100%, but there was something that enticed them to go in there and follow the procedures.

00:20:15 Speaker_07
She suspects the PAC may be paying people for their votes.

00:20:19 Speaker_06
So things like that go on outside the polling place. And the more you sit out there and just look, the more you see.

00:20:33 Speaker_07
So I do go out there to see for myself, watch the pack in action. And, huh, I see what's making these white people so suspicious. And I think I know why. That's after the break.

00:21:01 Speaker_00
This is Sarah Koenig, host of The Serial Podcast. If you're hooked on this show, and I'm guessing you are, then I'm hoping my job here is pretty easy, to get you to subscribe to The New York Times so you can listen to the rest of it.

00:21:13 Speaker_00
My father was an ad man who taught me the best ads are declarative, no puffery. So here goes. Serial shows are expertly reported and inventive. Nobody makes them like we make them.

00:21:26 Speaker_00
But great serials aside, when you subscribe, you get all the Times shows. The Daily, Ezra Klein, Wirecutter has a new podcast. My advice, though, don't just get an audio subscription. Go big. Subscribe to the paper, all access, the whole magilla.

00:21:42 Speaker_00
Serial is part of the Times, so technically I work at the Times, and honestly I'm kind of cheap, but I subscribe for the news, obviously, and the games, and the cooking, and the magazine, and Serial. I think of the Times as a staple.

00:21:56 Speaker_00
Even my kids, who are not budding journalists and who don't even really listen to Serial, they both asked me for Times subscriptions. All the cool kids are doing it. So please, sign up.

00:22:06 Speaker_00
You can do it through Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or if you're already a Time subscriber, sign in. It's worth it.

00:22:24 Speaker_07
I'm sitting in a truck outside a polling place with Cogdale. George Michael Cogdale goes by Cogdale. Longtime PAC member. Cogdale's been on the county commission for eight years, and he's running this year to keep his seat.

00:22:37 Speaker_07
We're in the truck to get out of the cold, and I'm trying to ask him about the PAC. But as voters come up to vote, Cogdale keeps leaping out of the car to talk to them. and hand them one of the pack's sample ballots.

00:22:51 Speaker_07
Then he gets right back in the truck and continues the conversation as though he never left.

00:22:54 Speaker_05
For a while, it's like this. He's out. Then he's in.

00:23:13 Speaker_07
I'm out here at this polling place because I want to check out how the PAC operates. And do I see the kind of stuff that Jane Pate and Mary Catherine were sure they were seeing?

00:23:24 Speaker_07
I didn't think I was going to witness money changing hands out here or something, like out in the open in front of a reporter. No, and I do not.

00:23:34 Speaker_07
I'm watching out the window every time Cogdale goes out, and I get right away that for people who are suspicious of the PAC, the way Cogdale and other PAC people handle the sample ballot could confirm their suspicions that something's not right.

00:23:51 Speaker_07
Cogdale only approaches black voters. He goes straight up to them, gets close, and he's clutching something secret-seeming, tight in his fist. He hands the sample ballot over, a little surreptitiously, a quick hand-to-hand pass, like a note in school.

00:24:06 Speaker_07
And then I see the voters take the cue, and also treat it surreptitiously, folding it into a square, slipping it into a pocket, taking it inside, and then doing a hand-to-hand pass right back to the PAC workers once they come out of the polling place.

00:24:21 Speaker_07
Finally, I jump out of the car, too. I want to know what they're saying, so I follow Cogdale over to a voter, an older black guy in a nice suit. Cogdale's tall, kind of floppy. He often towers over people when they talk.

00:24:38 Speaker_07
He compliments the voter on his smart-looking hat, then unfolds the ballot-shaped purple sheet of paper. What do you got there? the voter says. Democratic ticket? Yeah, Cogdale says. And I'm not going to tell you what to do.

00:24:53 Speaker_07
Cogdale starts pointing out names on the ballot, the people the PAC has endorsed.

00:24:58 Speaker_05
Now here we go again. That's Joseph Biden.

00:25:00 Speaker_07
Now here we go. That's Joseph Biden, Cogdale says. He points down the road to district attorney, then the Senate race. That's a black young lady, Erica. That's a white guy, Cunningham. — And so on, all the way down the purple ballot.

00:25:17 Speaker_07
This candidate lives over on Chicken Foot Road. That candidate's been there forever. She's a white lady. She's fine.

00:25:23 Speaker_05
— Then you got Albert Kirby. That's a black lawyer. And that's Martin Denning, that he ran last time.

00:25:30 Speaker_07
— Cogdale flips over the sheet of purple paper, points to the county commissioner's race, the race Cogdale himself is running in.

00:25:37 Speaker_05
— Then on the back, back here, that's me. Mm-hmm. Now, if you want to take that in, then you can take it in and use it however you want to deal with it.

00:25:45 Speaker_07
Now, if you want to take that in, you can take that in and use it however you want to deal with it.

00:25:49 Speaker_05
Your ballot's going to look just like this. The only thing about it, when you turn it, when you go in there, yours will be white, on the white sheet of paper. Mm-hmm. But it'll look just like that.

00:25:57 Speaker_05
But now, if you want to take it that way, you can take it on any which. OK. And when you get there, all you got to do is just open it up and just look at what you got.

00:26:03 Speaker_05
And when you get through with that, just let me get that back when you get ready to go. I will. What's your last name, Rich? Itchiken and Roberts.

00:26:12 Speaker_04
I'm the middle boy. Rob noticed I'm the middle, and then Kenny.

00:26:15 Speaker_05
I hope you can give me a vote.

00:26:18 Speaker_07
If you can. I hope you can give me a vote. If you can. I've watched Cogdale give the same spiel a few times now. And that is always how these exchanges end, with those three elements. Please vote for me. Don't I know someone you're related to?

00:26:34 Speaker_07
And be sure to give the sample ballot back when you're done. I did not see anyone throw away their sample ballot or see PAC workers scrounge around in the trash for it, like Mary Catherine described.

00:26:47 Speaker_07
I definitely saw voters give the ballot right back after voting, like Cogdale asked. It's true that the PAC workers and the voters are very precious about it, like it's a classified document. And it looks weird. But there's a clear explanation.

00:27:04 Speaker_02
If we don't pick them up, they'll compromise.

00:27:06 Speaker_07
Back in the PAC's headquarters, a concrete, echoey building, Horace Munn, the PAC president, tells me that a fundamental part of running this PAC is tightly guarding the sample ballot.

00:27:18 Speaker_07
Horace says he's seen people steal the PAC's ballot and use it against them.

00:27:23 Speaker_02
Someone else take the ballot, they'll go and burn a copy, use the same color paper, and start issuing them out to minorities.

00:27:31 Speaker_07
Like, this is from the Black PAC that you support, but actually it's not really. — Horace says, in 2010, when he took over, people were putting out fake copies of the Bladen Improvement PAC ballot to mislead PAC voters—Black voters.

00:27:45 Speaker_02
— We had guys in the organization that were colluding with the whites, and would come in and get information, and would get a copy of the ballot, and actually change the ballot when I first started. That's why I changed the concept and the process.

00:28:00 Speaker_07
Forrest says, over the years, he's seen a few fakes. So now he keeps extra vigilance over these ballots.

00:28:07 Speaker_02
I don't give out the ballots. I only give them to the poll workers. And the ballots are, you want to know what color they are after we start. They're in a certain color. The writing on it is done meticulously.

00:28:22 Speaker_02
Anytime I thought it might be compromised, I switched colors. Always on the day of election, it's never the same color we use for early voting. Never.

00:28:31 Speaker_07
Talking to Horace about the sample ballot, I'm like, oh, there is an entire circle of suspicion going on. Horace thinks there are people in Bladen who are actively out to get him and his pack.

00:28:43 Speaker_07
Like that his opponents, white people mainly, are gonna mess with the sample ballot because they have before. So the PAC workers and voters treat the sample ballots secretively.

00:28:55 Speaker_07
That then looks especially suspicious to white people who are already on the lookout for suspicious activity by the PAC. The suspicion on the one side increases the suspicion on the other.

00:29:07 Speaker_07
As for voter assistance, or the PAC coercing or intimidating black voters, like what Jane Pate told me about, I didn't see any evidence of that either.

00:29:16 Speaker_07
I've been in Bladen for three elections now, and over the days I spent at the polling sites, I only saw one voter ever request assistance from the PAC. And once, I saw a PAC worker offer it and get a polite no thanks in return.

00:29:29 Speaker_07
I didn't see anything like what Jane described to me, the crowding up on voters, trying to get into the voting booth with them.

00:29:38 Speaker_07
Obviously, it's hard for me, an outsider, white reporter, to say whether or not Black voters felt social pressure to vote the way the PAC wants them to vote.

00:29:49 Speaker_07
But I've talked with a fair number of Black voters in Bladen, and not everyone likes the PAC, but no one ever told me they felt forced into voting with the PAC.

00:29:58 Speaker_07
Instead, what I saw over the course of three elections in Bladen County is that a lot of Black voters in Bladen want to vote the same way, to vote with one voice. And there's a reason for that, of course.

00:30:11 Speaker_05
It has been challenging here in Bladen County. It's a challenging county.

00:30:17 Speaker_07
Cogdale and I were talking again in his truck during a slow period at the polls. I was asking him how he came to join the Improvement Association.

00:30:27 Speaker_07
Something I love about talking to Cogdale is he will give the longest answer possible to any question, like someone taking the absolute longest route possible to get to a destination.

00:30:38 Speaker_07
Not to torture the analogy, but it's like at the end of these long journeys of answers, you get to see the whole place. Keep in mind, my question was, how did you join the association?

00:30:50 Speaker_05
And when I came here, certain things that How would I say it? Certain things that were done here, I had seen it done years ago. Things like getting groceries on credit in the grocery store. That was something that I thought that had died.

00:31:15 Speaker_05
But they was here in this area doing that. You follow what I'm saying? Well, what's the big deal about getting credit at a grocery store? It was just something people used to do. You got to understand. It used to be when people would share crop and work.

00:31:30 Speaker_05
That's how they brought their food.

00:31:32 Speaker_07
So you saw that and you were like, people are basically in a sharecropping situation.

00:31:37 Speaker_05
It's the same thing. They work and they go get the food on credit. The man would say, you go get all you want to eat today. And he would put it on the bill. And that was a way of keeping you indebted to him all the time.

00:31:47 Speaker_05
I couldn't understand because the prices were so damn elevated. Why would you go?

00:31:54 Speaker_07
I understand that it's not how you would like to live your life, but it seems like you were worried that other people were living their life that way.

00:32:01 Speaker_05
That's what I'm saying. They need to understand, be independent. Go shop at a store.

00:32:05 Speaker_05
Why are you going to go buy a piece of meat and pay $5 for it because you can get it on credit and think that's something good, and you can go get the same piece of meat from the damn Win Food Lab for $2.50?

00:32:18 Speaker_05
But they didn't kind of find out the reason they were doing it. They had them guys so in debt to this man, so they could never get enough money to do it. Because all their money went to him. And so what did that have to do with the association?

00:32:29 Speaker_05
Those were the kind of things that we were trying to change. OK.

00:32:37 Speaker_07
At the time, this was before the PAC was formed, almost the entire county government was white. County commissioners, school board, overwhelmingly white, and had been pretty much ever since the end of Reconstruction.

00:32:51 Speaker_07
And it's not that Black candidates wouldn't run, it's that they could almost never win. I learned this political science term while reporting this story, which is racially polarized voting.

00:33:03 Speaker_07
And it perfectly describes the politics of Blading County and the existence of the PAC. It means what it sounds like. Voting is divided along racial lines. White voters vote for white candidates.

00:33:15 Speaker_07
Black voters prefer to vote for black, but it's not always an option. Also, white voters won't even vote for white candidates that are supported by black people. This was precisely the scenario in Bladen County when Cogdale got there.

00:33:31 Speaker_07
A study done in the mid-80s found that racially polarized voting was persistent and severe in Bladen County. And because of Bladen's racial demographics, back then about 60% white, 39% black, majority ruled every time.

00:33:47 Speaker_07
A Black candidate could get 90% of the Black vote and still have no chance of winning.

00:33:54 Speaker_07
This was how it was until 1987, when a change in the Voting Rights Act made it possible for a few Black leaders in Bladen to sue the county, alleging their vote was utterly diluted. Black voters could not pick a candidate of their choice.

00:34:11 Speaker_07
All over the state, county by county, Black leaders in North Carolina were filing lawsuits just like this. Bladen County fought any changes especially hard. And then, maybe noticing the tide of history was moving against them, abruptly settled.

00:34:26 Speaker_07
And the elections in Bladen changed radically. The county was cut into three districts with different racial makeups, one being majority Black, and this allowed Black voters the chance to get some representation in the county.

00:34:41 Speaker_07
Under the new system, Black voters are usually able to elect a third of the seats for governing bodies like the county commission or the school board. If, and only if, Black voters in Bladen did one thing persistently and severely.

00:34:57 Speaker_05
If you get your people to vote in what they call a block.

00:35:01 Speaker_07
Voted together as a block, with one voice. If they stuck together, they could get three county commissioners at the top of the county. That is why the Blayden Improvement Pack formed.

00:35:13 Speaker_07
It was created in the wake of that lawsuit to organize black voters and get those seats, if they could. And now, the black vote is a player in just about every election in Blayden, because of the pack. and its sample ballot.

00:35:28 Speaker_07
Every election, blatant improvement gets as many people as possible to vote along the same lines, for a Black candidate or for the candidate who best represents Black interests. This requires a sometimes unforgiving discipline from the PAC.

00:35:44 Speaker_07
Around this cardinal rule, don't split the Black vote. No competition among Black candidates. Cogdale tells me if you're not on the PAC sample ballot and you're Black, you shouldn't be running. Period.

00:35:58 Speaker_05
You know if you go out there and flood the market, you're going to have problems. You see what I'm saying? It is the way it is. You can't win.

00:36:07 Speaker_07
— You can't have too many Black people running for the same seat, because then it'll dilute the power of the Black.

00:36:12 Speaker_05
— You'll lose every time.

00:36:14 Speaker_07
— If Black voters don't vote together, if they split over two different Black candidates, say, a white candidate could run up the middle and capture the seat.

00:36:23 Speaker_05
— That's the reason why sometimes I think the PAC gets a name, because we ally together, and we try to keep it a consistent block.

00:36:37 Speaker_07
— The way the pack runs is pretty tight, and not open to criticism. Because the piece of turf they've managed to carve out is small, and the stakes are high. I don't mean to sound like the PAC does something unusual or exotic.

00:36:53 Speaker_07
Holding an interest group together with discipline is literally politics.

00:36:58 Speaker_07
Knowing the specific history of the PAC in this county did help me understand the precarious position the PAC holds in Bladen Politics and why they're so urgent about getting Black voters here to vote together.

00:37:13 Speaker_07
Although history, of course, is open to interpretation.

00:37:18 Speaker_01
I know the history, and I know that it took years to overcome all that stuff.

00:37:26 Speaker_07
When I was in Jean Pete's dining room, talking with her about why she thinks the PAC is cheating, she brought up history too.

00:37:34 Speaker_01
I believe with all my heart, this whole problem had its seeds in what happened in North Carolina in the far past with Jim Crow laws, and then everybody's trying to make up for it because they realize all that stuff is wrong.

00:37:50 Speaker_01
And then you got the sixties happen, and now everybody's trying to treat people right. Most of the people in this county, I believe I can say this and be right, were raised to respect everybody. It didn't matter your color, OK?

00:38:11 Speaker_01
Now, there were laws on the books that allowed certain businesses to do certain things.

00:38:16 Speaker_07
Like discriminate against Black people.

00:38:18 Speaker_01
And so I think in an effort to not hurt anybody or push back against people that were trying to make their place in the world and gain respect and everything. A lot of things were blinked at that were illegal in this voting stuff, is what I'm saying.

00:38:44 Speaker_07
Jane's feeling is the people who work at the polls in Blading County are overcorrecting for all of the sins of the past. Voter suppression by whites against blacks.

00:38:55 Speaker_07
They're not holding the black political group here accountable for the ways they are breaking the rules.

00:39:01 Speaker_01
Nobody had the intestinal fortitude to try to change anything. because they didn't want to be called bigots. They wouldn't be told they were trying to impede the vote and all that kind of mess.

00:39:13 Speaker_07
There's a history of voter suppression of black people in North Carolina. And so you think that sometimes people were just letting things slide because they were afraid that they were replicating that history.

00:39:27 Speaker_01
The history of voter suppression I know there was, because after Reconstruction and the Northern Army went on back to wherever they came from, there were black people who had offices, had been elected, and they were run out of town.

00:39:54 Speaker_01
They were not run out of town in a kind manner either.

00:39:58 Speaker_07
Jane is referring to a particularly violent period of time for Black Americans in the South after Reconstruction.

00:40:05 Speaker_07
Jane lives only about an hour from Wilmington, North Carolina, where the Wilmington Massacre, a white supremacist coup, took place in 1898, overthrowing elected Black leaders. White supremacy was the coup leader's actual slogan.

00:40:20 Speaker_07
White people with guns rampaged through the city. Many people were killed. Black politicians, businessmen, journalists were banished from the city.

00:40:29 Speaker_07
Soon after, state legislators changed the voting laws, ushering in the era of Jim Crow, which essentially stopped Black people from voting for the next 65 years or so.

00:40:40 Speaker_07
I don't know precisely how much Jane knows about what happened specifically in 1898 down here, but she has the gist of it, and she has her view about how that history is history.

00:40:53 Speaker_01
But I'm only speaking from my lifetime. That's all I can talk about. Only thing I have observed is my lifetime. When I was at the polls working, everybody was coming to vote. My black friends were coming to vote. My white friends were coming to vote.

00:41:09 Speaker_01
My Hispanic friends were coming to vote. Nobody was telling them they couldn't vote. Nobody was getting in their way to vote. And so it never occurred to me to think, oh, we got voter suppression.

00:41:24 Speaker_01
So I'm not too sure if it was, who was doing it during my lifetime? Who was doing it? I know there's a history back there. I know it is. Hey, people, we have moved on. We need to move on. Start trusting each other and quit fighting. What is the deal?

00:41:47 Speaker_01
Everybody just go vote.

00:41:51 Speaker_07
When Jane talks about voter suppression, what it is, it's very literal. Almost like if there's not a big burly guy at the polls hurling people into bushes who are trying to vote, then no one's being prevented from voting.

00:42:04 Speaker_07
But of course there are other ways to prevent people from voting. It can be done with laws and procedures, something like having only one polling place in Elizabethtown, far from where a majority of black people in the county live.

00:42:17 Speaker_07
That's something that could keep a significant number of black people from voting without anyone having to get in anyone's face at the polls.

00:42:25 Speaker_07
Right now, as I speak these words, there are a slew of state legislatures working on new voting bills that make it harder to vote. These laws are being talked about so much right now.

00:42:37 Speaker_07
Some of the changes being proposed, cutting back on early voting days, not letting voters vote at a precinct, requiring certain kinds of ID to vote, a bunch more stuff like that, that all add up to making voting trickier.

00:42:51 Speaker_07
So many elections experts have said these laws are little more than voter suppression, targeting Black voters specifically.

00:42:59 Speaker_07
Jane and I didn't talk about that stuff, though, mainly because, sitting at her dining room table with all her files laid out in front of me, I was still struggling to understand what exactly was her evidence that the Blade Improvement Association PAC cheats.

00:43:16 Speaker_07
Arguments about parking spaces at curbside voting. Insinuations that Black voters are being somehow controlled by the PAC. It's not evidence. It's just suspicion. But no matter.

00:43:30 Speaker_07
Because I think a lot of people in Blading County think Black people are getting a pass now because of past wrongs. Or they see the PAC motivating large numbers of Black people to act in unison, and it just looks fishy to them.

00:43:44 Speaker_07
whatever the reason, they're just so ready to believe the PAC is cheating. And that creates an environment where any one of the many accusations that are thrown at the PAC can take hold and grow.

00:43:57 Speaker_07
And even a provably false accusation can be turned into a powerful weapon and be used to tactical advantage by their enemies. That's next time on The Improving Association. The Improvement Association is produced and edited by Nancy Updike and me.

00:44:37 Speaker_07
Neil Drumming is our Managing Editor. Julie Snyder is Executive Editor. Additional editing by Sarah Koenig and Ira Glass. R.L. Nave is our Editorial Consultant. Fact-Checking and Research by Ben Phelan. Music Supervision and Mixing by Phoebe Wang.

00:44:52 Speaker_07
Amy Padula is our Associate Producer. Ndeye Chubu is the Supervising Producer. Original Music composed by Kwame Brant Pierce.

00:45:01 Speaker_07
Additional support from the staff at This American Life, including Emmanuelle Barry, Julie Whitaker, Cassie Howley, Seth Lind, and Frances Swanson.

00:45:10 Speaker_07
At The New York Times, Sam Dolnick, Lauren Jackson, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Elena Cero, and Nora Keller. Special thanks to Delilah Blanks, G.K. Butterfield, Mary Glenn Denning, Patrick Gannon, Noah Grant.

00:45:24 Speaker_07
Alex Hess III, Ryan Caresco, Morgan Couser, Josh Lawson, Reginald Speight, Christopher Williams, Jim Wall, and Leslie Winner. The Improvement Association is produced by Serial Productions and The New York Times.