An election worker checks a voter’s drivers license in North Carolina in March, under a law struck down by a federal appeals court this week.
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A federal appeals court blocked a North Carolina law requiring photo identification to cast in-person ballots, ruling Friday that it was enacted “with discriminatory intent”.
The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit was an overwhelming victory for civil rights groups and the Justice Department that argued the voting law was created to dampen the growing political clout of African American voters, who participated in record numbers in elections in 2008 and 2012.
The court claimed that the spike in Black voters participating in the states elections “swelled by 51.1 percent” between 2000 and 2012. The three judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals stated in their ruling why they disagreed with the April ruling and how it targeted minority voters.
North Carolina’s voting laws were rewritten in 2013 by the conservative General Assembly to include the ID requirement and other changes.
– No. 1: Republicans who crafted the law absolutely wanted to make it more hard for people who traditionally vote Democratic to cast a ballot, not only people of color, but poor people, the elderly and even the young.
With that info, lawmakers proceeded to change an existing N.C. voting bill so that it excluded many forms of ID blacks did possess, while making acceptable the kinds of ID whites possessed most. “Three Democratic judges are undermining the integrity of our elections while also maligning our state”, Gov. Pat McCrory said in a statement.
“We recognize that elections have consequences, but winning an election does not empower anyone in any party to engage in purposeful racial discrimination”, the panel wrote.
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. Bottom line, both decisions, if appealed, could end up keeping Wisconsin’s and North Carolina’s restrictive voter ID laws in place.
Top Republican leaders stated that this decision will be taken to the Supreme Court for an appeal.
The Rev. Moses Colbert, a 61-year-old pastor at a church in Gastonia, said the elimination of same-day registration ensured that he couldn’t vote on Election Day 2014 shortly after moving within North Carolina. The ruling also cited the fact that North Carolina legislators were not able to come up with a single case where someone had been convicted of voter fraud using a voter ID card. “I think this is a hugely important decision”.
“The key part of the holding is that North Carolina acted with racially discriminatory intent”, he wrote. “While fraud has occurred, the rate is infinitesimal, and in-person voter impersonation on Election Day, which prompted 37 state legislatures to enact or consider tough voter ID laws, is virtually non-existent”, they wrote. “Identifying and restricting the ways African Americans vote was an easy and effective way to do so”.
In North Carolina, Republicans issued an appalling response.
“This ruling is a stinging rebuke of the state’s attempt to undermine African-American voter participation, which had surged over the last decade”, said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.
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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Right now Democrats are celebrating, knowing that a fence has been removed that might have kept voters away that could tip in their favor November elections up and down, and makes this purple state much more likely to go blue and in Hillary Clinton’s column. North Carolina had “contradicted some of the most basic principles of our democracy”, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said.
