North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, et al. v. Patrick L. McCrory, et al. Binders carefully created as elections bibles for each of the state’s 2,700 precincts now must undergo a heavy edit. However, we will appeal this erroneous ruling and continue to stand up for common-sense laws that protect the integrity of one person-one vote. North Carolina and Wisconsin, in particular, are considered swing states this year where minority and young voters may well decide the outcome.
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A federal appeals court decisively struck down North Carolina’s voter identification law Friday, saying its provisions deliberately “target African-Americans with nearly surgical precision” in an effort to depress black turnout at the polls. But it may be that in North Carolina, as in other states that have approved photo ID laws and other restrictions, the “problem” wasn’t the voters’ race as such but the fact that minorities tend to vote Democratic.
Report written by Judge Diana Motz on behalf of the other two judges: James Wynn and Henry Floyd, reads, “The record makes clear that the historical origin of the challenged provisions in this statute is not the innocuous back-and-forth of routine partisan struggle that the State suggests and that the district court accepted”.
“Roy Cooper is against common sense voter ID and is now refusing to do his job to defend our laws, so he should refuse his taxpayer-funded salary”, said Governor McCrory.
The nakedness of these vote suppression tactics is so obvious that earlier in July the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down similar legislation in Texas.
North Carolina’s voting “reform” was typical of the overreaching style we’ve seen in the General Assembly in the past three or four years.
The News & Observer also reports that Cooper spoke to reporters, detailing that his office was working on making voting easier in North Carolina, by expanding early-voter hours and reinstating same-day registration.
These decisions, along with recent voting rights victories in MI and Texas, overwhelmingly document not only these laws’ discriminatory effects, but also their racist intent.
In the past 10 days, courts have issued six major decisions against GOP-backed voting restrictions in five different states.
In that 5-4 case, the Supreme Court said that the coverage formula used to determine which states would be required to have the federal government review their voting changes was outdated and that Congress needed to act. The law provided for six acceptable forms of ID, and also reduced the number of early voting days and did away with same-day registration. The Supreme Court in the Shelby County case in 2013 said, no, you don’t need it anymore because racial discrimination is kind of a thing of the past, and so you have to take each case case by case.
Outside attorneys are representing state legislative leaders in the lawsuit.
Republican members of the North Carolina Legislature vowed an appeal, arguing that voiding the law opens the door to voter fraud, which was the premise of enacting the laws in the first place.
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A trio of court rulings Friday rang out a strong message across the nation: Enough with the cruel tricks that attempt to restrict Americans’ constitutional right to vote.
