The American Civil Liberties Union applauded Friday’s ruling.
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“We are happy today that the 4th Circuit’s Court of Appeals’ decision exposed the racist intent of the extremist element of our government in North Carolina”, said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP.
The ruling Friday by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals declared that the 2013 law violated the Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act by targeting black voters “with nearly surgical precision”.
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.
Kobach said the decision would allow people living in the US illegally to vote, although voting rights advocates say there have been few cases of voter fraud in the past. “Even if done for partisan ends, that constituted racial discrimination”, said the judges.
North Carolina is not the only state to see such a law overturned; similar laws have been struck down in Texas and Wisconsin.
This is a huge victory for voting rights-the most significant in the country since the Shelby County v. Holder decision-that will make it easier for hundreds of thousands of voters to cast a ballot this November.
“Because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history”, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the panel, all Democratic appointees. “Winning an election does not empower anyone in any party to engage in purposeful racial discrimination”.
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. “This failure of perspective led the court to ignore critical facts bearing on legislative intent, including the inextricable link between race and politics in North Carolina”.
North Carolina also may play a key role this year in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate. “We will obviously be appealing this politically motivated decision to the Supreme Court”.
“Photo IDs are required to purchase Sudafed, cash a check, board an airplane or enter a federal court room. Yet, three Democratic judges are undermining the integrity of our elections while also maligning our state”, said Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican seeking re-election.
However, it’s unlikely that the evenly divided and short-handed Supreme Court would take the case or block Friday’s ruling from governing elections this November, said election-law experts Ned Foley of Ohio State University and Richard Hasen of the University of California at Irvine.
“Anytime you take away restrictions, you make it possible for more people to vote”. “Now that the burden has been lifted, I think we can expect more turnout”.
The decision followed two other wins for opponents of voter identification laws.
Yet courts have time after time cited studies that show voter fraud, though it exists, is exceedingly rare. Voters facing “reasonable impediments” could fill out a form and cast a provisional ballot.
“The legislature amended the bill to exclude numerous alternative photo IDs used by African-Americans (and) retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess”, the ruling reads.
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“The law required in-person voters to show certain photo IDs, beginning in 2016, which African Americans disproportionately lacked, and eliminated or reduced registration and voting access tools that African Americans disproportionately used”, the decision explains. He says he felt disenfranchised, and called that a bad feeling. “I’ve been an American citizen all my life”.
