With the November election less than 100 days away, the court’s decision blocks the state from requiring IDs at the polls, from limiting early voting and from barring same-day voter registration. 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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That apparently was not a problem facing the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 3-judge panel in the case of North Carolina’s 2013 voter ID law. All of those services are popular among black voters. On Friday, a federal appeals court struck down the core of a North Carolina law that required voters to show photo ID, eliminated opportunities to vote early and to register to vote on Election Day, among other things.
When the Fifth Circuit made its ruling, it suggested an option to permit voter registration cards as an acceptable ID for voting.
But critics immediately (and correctly) predicted said that the deeply divided Congress would never act, and they said the true effect of the decision would be to essentially gut the provision that required the federal government to “preclear” – or approve -any voting changes in certain states.
There are probably no states where Establishment Republican majorities have been more aggressive – one might say blatantly aggressive – in seeking to institutionalize their power via legislation than North Carolina and Wisconsin.
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. He said the law has wide support in Texas to defend the integrity of elections. That decision cleared the way for the current spate of Republican efforts to limit voting.
“I think this is what we’re going to have”, Cooper said following a meeting of the Council of State.
According to The News & Observer, McCrory called a press conference where he detailed this disagreement that he and Attorney General Roy Cooper have had. In Virginia, expert testimony in an ongoing federal challenge to the state’s voter-ID statute, enacted in 2013, indicates that the law’s burden of inconvenience falls disproportionately on black and Hispanic voters, who are less likely to have the mandated forms of ID. Extending early voting is a great idea because it aids getting the elderly and others to the polls; however, allowing out of precinct voting should receive a closer look because registered voters receive a notification in the mail informing them of the location to cast their ballot.
In the words of U.S. District Judge James Peterson, “To put it bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the disease”.
Though these wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing laws have been instituted in some places, they are being struck down at record speed this week in other states, signaling a shifting tide for the party.
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A Wilkes Board of Elections plan for early, one-stop voting for the November 8 general election has gone to the State Board of Elections for approval. And the lead attorney on these cases does work for the Hillary Clinton campaign.
