Cooper declined to defend the Voter ID law.
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Experts The Chronicle spoke to at the time said that evidence of serious voter fraud has never been found, but that the potential does technically exist. All of these changes must be approved by the state election board. In some counties, election officials also suggested setting up only one election site for the extra week of voting. None of the cases prosecuted was for voter impersonation. No. Voter fraud does happen-but it nearly never occurs at the polls.
And then there is Chief Justice John Roberts.
Missouri State Rep. Stacey Newman of Richmond Heights is the senior Democrat serving on the House Elections Committee and a longtime champion of voters rights in the legislature. Voters will not be required to show identification when they head to the polls. The 4th Circuit ruling highlighted how North Carolina’s law restricted procedures that heavily affect African-Americans – and benefited one political party to the disadvantage of the other. “All it takes is one person whose vote is canceled by someone not voting legally and that’s a problem”, he said.
“Hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians will now be able to vote without barriers”, Allison Riggs, an attorney representing some of the groups and voters who originally sued over the 2013 law, said in a statement.
Local boards throughout North Carolina are determining how to conduct this year’s election after a federal appeals court overturned much of the state’s voter restriction law last month.
Governor McCrory condemned the court’s ruling and appealed the decision.
The Fourth Circuit Court ruling stated the challenged provisions “target African Americans with nearly surgical precision”. In the interim, it is urgent that African-Americans turn out in force this election to permanently stop those who would impede their right to vote. Minnite, the Rutgers professor, says that’s as hard as “pickpocketing a cop”. Those who show up at the wrong polling place on November 8 will be able to cast a provisional ballot that, at least for the top races, is likely to count. Beyond that, they’d have to hope that nobody in the polling place knew the person they were impersonating. They say it saves tax dollars and avoids fraud.
While the appeals court decision pointed specifically to the cuts to Sunday voting as signs of a discriminatory intent, Woodhouse and other GOP officials have argued against it. Neither of these cases would have been prevented with voter ID. Not a single one of its restrictions would’ve stopped Verna Roehm.
At the same time, studies show that voting restrictions are more likely to hurt black voters. Instead, as election law expert and occasional Slate contributor Rick Hasen has explained, voter fraud occurs through absentee ballots. Roehm voted in person and mailed in her dead husband’s absentee ballot.
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Sami Edge is a recent graduate of the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. The American Civil Liberties Union also applauded Wednesday’s development.
