In its ruling, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Appeals Court for the Fourth Circuit said the state legislature targeted African-Americans “with nearly surgical precision”.
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N.C.’s voting restrictions struck down as racist (New York Times) – For all the lofty rhetoric the nation heard in the last two weeks about democracy at the Republican and Democratic Party conventions, these recent federal court decisions show the grimier reality of politics and the bitter struggle for basic fairness beyond the national spotlight.
A partially divided panel of 4th Circuit judges reversed a massive trial court opinion which had rejected a number of constitutional and Voting Rights Act challenges to North Carolina’s strict voting law, a law I had said was the largest collection of voting rollbacks contained in a single law that I could find since the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act. While supporters of voter id laws say they’re a measure to prevent fraud, researchers have found that reports of voter fraud are roughly as common as reports of alien abduction, according to the Washington Post.
The provisions “target African-Americans with nearly surgical precision” and “impose cures for problems that did not exist”, the judges wrote. We are sure that this case will continue up the judicial ladder, and will be watched not only in this state, but across the country as more than 30 states have some hybrid of a law requiring a voter ID. The U.S. Justice Department, state NAACP and League of Women Voters were among those who sued over the restrictions.
North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, both Republicans, issued a statement that they would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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.
North Carolina’s voter-ID mandate, which took effect in March, required people casting ballots in person to show one of six qualifying IDs, although voters facing “reasonable impediments” could fill out a form and cast a provisional ballot.
The court found that the North Carolina legislature enacted the provisions after it gathered data on the use, by race, of certain voting practices.
Critics of photo ID requirements say they fall disproportionately on minority voters and the poor, who are less likely to have an ID such as a driver’s license and tend to vote Democratic.
The law had been upheld by a district court judge in April, and North Carolina argued in court papers that the plaintiffs failed to prove the law was an “unconstitutional burden on any voters, much less African-American voters”. Even if done for partisan ends, that constituted racial discrimination.
“Wisconsin has the authority to regulate its elections to preserve their integrity, and a voter ID requirement can be part of a well-conceived election system”, Peterson wrote.
The North Carolina General Assembly “enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans”, federal judge Diana Motz wrote in her ruling.
Dale Hicks said he couldn’t vote in 2014 after the new law eliminated same-day registration.
He struck down restrictions on absentee and early voting, saying they discriminated against blacks.
And in Kansas, a state judged ruled on Friday that the state must count potentially thousands of votes in state and lower-tier races from people who registered without providing citizenship documents.
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The order from Shawnee County District Judge Larry Hendricks came only four days before Tuesday’s primary election. “Because of this ruling, North Carolinians will now be able to register and vote free of the obstacles created by the Legislature in 2013”, said Southern Coalition for Social Justice senior attorney Allison Riggs.
