NC voters rejoice after voter ID law is blocked

The ruling was a response to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Krobach’s proposed rule to prevent illegal residents from voting.

On Friday [July 29] a federal appeals court blocked legislation in North Carolina that requires voters to show identification after discovering that it disproportionately affected voters of color in comparison to their white counterparts, making it more hard for Black voters to cast their ballot. “It’s a powerful precedent that. federal courts will protect voting rights of voters of color”, said Allison Riggs, who served as the League of Women Voters’ lead lawyer.

In the Kansas ruling, a county judge said the state must count thousands of votes in local and state elections from people who did not provide proof of US citizenship when they registered. At the same time, the decision was being lauded by the NAACP, ACLU and the countless advocates for equality of voter rights, the opposition was not happy.

While North Carolina has been the focus of criticism for legislation that requires voters to present photo identification at polling places – a measure a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against Friday because it targeted African-Americans “with nearly surgical precision” – Republican lawmakers in Kansas and Wisconsin also saw their legislation overturned, according to the Associated Press.

Some against the court’s decision say that the ID law was meant to combat voter fraud, especially since North Carolina emerged as a swing state in 2013.

According to a statement released by State Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Westbrook Strach, unless a court directs the state otherwise, voters will not be asked to show photo ID during the general election in November.

As for the state of North Carolina, lawmakers and supporters have expressed their disapproval of the court’s decision.

Dale Hicks said he couldn’t vote in 2014 after the new law eliminated same-day registration. The appeals court ruling reinstates those provisions that civil rights groups, led by the state NAACP, said were used disproportionately by African-American voters.

The appeals court cited data that these methods were used disproportionately by black voters, who also were more likely to lack a qualifying ID, and it blocked the contested provisions of the law. But do they guarantee a fraud-free election?

Along with North Carolina, 17 other states have enacted some form of voting procedures for the upcoming 2016 election.

“I think it’s a good day for democracy”, he said.

“Thus, in what comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times, the State’s very justification for a challenged statute hinges explicitly on race – specifically its concern that African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise”, the decision reads. It was about a week ago that information was leaked about efforts by the Democratic National Convention to fix the election in favor of Clinton; in doing so, those Democratic leaders not only violated their own convention rules, they worked to disenfranchise more than 12 million voters who wanted Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee. It got rid of straight-ticket voting, which allows voters to choose all candidates from a single party by checking one box. Minority turnout in Georgia actually went up the first election after the voter ID law was implemented.

US District Judge James Peterson wrote that parts of Wisconsin’s voter law approved by the state’s Republican governor Scott Walker were unconstitutional.

Peterson also struck down restrictions limiting municipalities to one location for in-person absentee voting and limiting in-person early voting to weekdays, allowing municipalities to hold weekend early voting sessions. She also said the law was not an issue during the March 15 primary and that voters seemed to have no problem complying.

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”. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.

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