She noted it will soon be time to train poll workers for November’s election.
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A campaign spokesman for Cooper said on Friday that the attorney general had “urged the Governor to veto this legislation before he signed it because he knew it would be bad for North Carolina”.
Civil rights groups hailed the decision as a major victory.
Shawnee County, Kan., District Judge Larry Hendricks makes a comment during a hearing on requiring the state to count potentially thousands of votes in state and local elections from people who’ve registered without providing proof of their USA citizenship, Friday, July 29, 2016, in Topeka, Kan.
“Although the new provisions target African Americans with nearly surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist”, the opinion states.
“The court seems to have missed the forest in carefully surveying the many trees”.
“The key part of the holding is that North Carolina acted with racially discriminatory intent”, he wrote.
This photo taken March 15, 2016, shows a NC Voter ID rules posted at the door of the voting station at the Alamance Fire Station in Greensboro, N.C.
“After years of preclearance and expansion of voting access, by 2013 African American registration and turnout rates had finally reached near-parity with white registration and turnout rates”, the decision reports.
North Carolina is not the only state to see such a law overturned; similar laws have been struck down in Texas and Wisconsin.
The American Civil Liberties Union applauded Friday’s ruling.
Allison Riggs of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, who argued on behalf of the League of Women Voters, called it “a strong rebuke to the General Assembly’s attempt to restrict political participation”. Counsel for the state are reviewing options on appeal.
Government pamphlets explaining the recently struck-down voter ID law at a polling station in North Carolina earlier this year.
VIVA was upheld in April by federal circuit court Judge Thomas D. Schroeder, who found no basis for racial discrimination.
The provision requiring identification, the court said, is too broad and seemingly unrelated to the goal of combating fraud. African Americans have been reliable Democrat voters and party members believe the voter identification law may be a ploy to suppress their vote.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections is doing its part to inform voters. He said plaintiffs had “failed to show that such disparities will have materially adverse effects on the ability of minority voters to cast a ballot and effectively exercise the electoral franchise”. “After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days”, the court found.
Lawyers representing the state pointed out that overall African-American participation increased in 2014.
The 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals nixed North Carolina’s voter ID law, but Republicans are vowing to fight it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Laws in several states, including Wisconsin, Texas and Virginia, also are being challenged in court.
Sen. Jeff Jackson, D-Mecklenburg, said without an immediate appeal, the voter ID law would not be in effect this election. But the judge’s decision meant around 17,000 voters would have their ballots counted in the upcoming elections for the state legislature.
The state has appealed the ruling.
In its ruling, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Appeals Court for the Fourth Circuit said the state legislature targeted African-Americans “with nearly surgical precision”.
Critics argue that such provisions are created to drive down turnout by minorities and poor people who rely more on flexible voting methods and are less likely to possess state-issued photo IDs.
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“Today the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit invalidated these restrictions, which it said “targeted African Americans with nearly surgical precision” in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment”, he said.
