It looks as if the dominoes continue to fall in regards to voter ID laws. Worse, why would anyone in this country question whether people’s race, ethnicity, or gender should be a determinant in their right to vote? The ruse by the North Carolina Republican controlled legislature in the alleged interests of voter accuracy, proposed “cures to problems that did not exist”.
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In 2013, the high court struck down a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. A court isn’t done considering whether Texas had the same motives, but for now, the state and U.S. Justice Department agreed on looser voter ID rules to get through this election year.
There was widespread voter suppression in North Carolina’s presidential primary this past March. Once further appeals are exhausted, more people likely will be able to vote. In a throwback to the “literacy tests” of the Jim Crow era, foreign-born USA citizens were asked to spell their names to poll workers. Elderly voters with vivid memories of segregation were turned away from the polls. “In light of the Fifth Circuit’s recent decision, we are working hard on saving all the important aspects of our voter ID”.
North Carolina last week was found to have not only discriminated against minorities but passed tougher election rules with the intent on doing so.
The Court said that just because Republicans were in the majority did not give them the right to stop voters from exercising their rights.
Moreover, Peterson dealt head on with Republicans’ phony justification for passing ID requirements that restrict voting rights.
Ten years ago last week, Bush signed legislation reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act, which he said “helped bring a community on the margins into the life of American democracy”. “The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities”.
And that, as one of the nation’s most conservative appeals courts concluded, violates federal laws prohibiting electoral discrimination.
Next came a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit appeals court, which went further in declaring that North Carolina’s 2013 law didn’t just harm minority voters but was enacted with that specific goal.
Voter ID opponents suggest more resources are needed to educate would-be voters across Texas, and they will closely scrutinize the state’s plans.
A federal judge must still approve the changes.
It refused to strike down the law completely.
North Carolina legislators imposed the photo ID requirement, curtailed early voting and eliminated same-day registration and voters’ ability to cast out-of-precinct provisional ballots in their home counties. “The only clear factor linking these various “reforms” is their impact on African-American voters”.
Anyone who shows up at the polls without photo ID will, first, need to have another form of ID.
The Texas law affected at least 600,000 eligible voters, according to the expert testimony in the case. “ID or are unable to reasonably obtain such identification”.
When an outraged 4th Circuit Court struck down several North Carolina voting restrictions on Friday-including a stringent voter ID provision, tough limits on early voting and an end to same-day registration-the panel of federal judges wrote that these “new provisions target African Americans with nearly surgical precision”.
Other states also have had election rules sidelined for the coming November election.
“Voter fraud in North Dakota has been virtually non-existent”, he wrote. Voters wouldn’t have to go to court to prove they were wronged.
The Texas law took a blow from the USA 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and was sent back to the trial court to put something better in place in time for the November elections.
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The supposed goal of these laws is to prevent voter fraud. “Fairness and easy access to the ballot box is what we want for our state”, Veasey says.
