Most strikingly, the judges point to a “smoking gun” in North Carolina’s justification for the law, proving discriminatory intent.
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In the wake of a decision Friday by a federal appeals court in Virginia, North Carolina residents won’t have to worry about flashing a photo ID when they cast a ballot on November 8 for offices ranging all the way up to the presidency.
In a stinging rebuke, the North Carolina ruling went beyond finding that its provisions merely disenfranchised voters, opining that the effort was the legislature’s deliberate intent in a state that had been largely subject to federal oversight under Voting Rights Act provisions that have since been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ruling in North Carolina quickly emerged as the most dramatic, in part because of its potential impact on the presidential election, and because the appellate judges admonished a lower court judge for, in essence, having failed to spot obvious racism.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach talks about the Kansas voter ID law that he pushed to combat what he believes to be rampant voter fraud in the United States in his Topeka, Kansas, U.S., office May 12, 2016. He pledged to appeal the decision, though it is unclear whether the Supreme Court would act before the November 8 election.
“To put it bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease”. “Instead of denying people’s access to the ballot box, lawmakers should be pushing to reinstate critical protections previously available under the 1965 Voting Rights Act and work to ensure that everyone regardless of who they are, where they live, or their social economic status is able to exercise their right to vote”, said Russell Roybal, Deputy Executive Director, National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund.
The court’s decision also canceled provisions of the law that scaled back early voting, prevented residents from registering and voting on the same day, and eliminated the ability of voters to vote outside their assigned precinct.
North Carolina is not the only state to see such a law overturned; similar laws have been struck down in Texas and Wisconsin. North Carolina even has early voting, which about a dozen states, including dark-blue NY, don’t allow.
GOP legislative leaders said they would appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. “After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days”, the court found.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said the state would immediately appeal the decision.
And it marked the third time in 10 days that a federal court concluded a voter identification law enacted by a Republican-led state government threatened voting rights. “It’s a powerful precedent that…federal courts will protect voting rights of voters of color”.
“We can only wonder if the intent [of Friday’sruling] is to reopen the door for voter fraud, potentially allowing fellow Democrat politicians.to steal the election, ” North Carolina Senate President Phil Berger and House Speaker Tom Moore wrote in a joint statement. Even if done for partisan ends, that constituted racial discrimination.
The Fourth Circuit ruled that North Carolina’s law targeted “African Americans with nearly surgical precision” by using data on the most common forms of ID by different races “to exclude numerous alternative photo IDs used by African Americans”.
The court’s decision was cheered by voting rights activists, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which had joined the challenge.
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In North Carolina, Republicans issued an appalling response. In Kansas, a Shawnee County judge blocked Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s attempt to keep 17,000 voters from the polls because they didn’t have USA citizenship proof when they registered to vote.
