WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.-North Carolina will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to stay an appellate court ruling that struck down the state’s voter ID law a week ago, Republican Governor Pat McCrory said on Friday.
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Two recent federal court rulings on voter ID laws are victories for minorities and democracy.
The legislation was made possible initially by a U.S. Supreme Court rollback of parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and required that voters display ID at the polls effective this year. It was also shortly after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling changed the requirement that many Southern states receive federal approval before changing voting laws. North Carolina implemented this common-sense measure to maintain the integrity of honest and fair elections, and joins more than 30 other states that require an ID to vote. The judges pointedly observed that Republican leaders drew up the new laws in North Carolina only after receiving data showing that African-American voters would be the most significantly and adversely affected.
That decision prevented the Justice Department from reviewing state laws that restrict voter access before they are enacted until Congress passes a new law – unlikely under Washington’s current gridlock.
In its decision to overturn North Carolina’s voter identification law last week, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals cited numerous legal precedents and hundreds of pages of testimony.
The Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, said the ruling was “a vindication of our constitutional and moral critique and challenge to the constitutional extremism of our government”.
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.
Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Voting Rights Project hailed the ruling as a “stinging rebuke of the state’s attempt to undermine African-American voter participation, which had surged over the last decade”.
Attorney General Roy Cooper said Tuesday the state had tried its best to defend against the lawsuit but lost. Nonetheless, it marks yet another election disruption in the presidential battleground state, which also has big races this fall for governor and U.S. Senate.
She said her office has yet to determine how staff will handle the growing confusion over the ever-changing voting laws, but will be looking to the state for direction on voter outreach, which, so far, hasn’t been forthcoming. This year the Legislature crafted a bill with some wiggle room: Voters without photo ID would be able to sign an affidavit attesting to their identity, present some sort of non-photo ID or cast provisional ballots that would be counted if they later showed up with ID.
Now federal judges have at least temporarily struck down such laws in both states.
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It is risky and demeaning to our democracy to cry partisan politics, as McCrory, Berger and Moore, have done when the courts don’t do what they want. These provisions, in place during the March primary elections, helped improve voter turnout.
