Voter ID ruling a victory for democracy

U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson said he would have eliminated Wisconsin’s voter ID laws in their entirety, were it not for a U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting such laws under certain circumstances, including to prevent election fraud. The 4th Circuit of Appeals recently overturned North Carolina’s voter ID law, citing it as discriminatory. 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. Put together, the decisions suggest a growing judicial suspicion of the wave of voting-restriction legislation passed in recent years by Republican-led legislatures.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit was an overwhelming victory for the Justice Department and civil rights groups that argued the measures were created to dampen the growing political clout of African-American voters, who participated in record numbers in elections in 2008 and 2012. Regardless of the outcome, our agency will continue to educate voters and prepare elections officials ahead of November.

However, it’s unlikely that the evenly divided and short-handed Supreme Court would take the case or block Friday’s ruling from governing elections this November, said election-law experts Ned Foley of Ohio State University and Richard Hasen of the University of California at Irvine.

The New York Times reports that U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, praised the decision at a press conference claiming the law had contradicted some of the nation’s most basic principles of democracy.

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

In a country where one needs identification for just about everything, it is curious that so many judges find proving eligibility to vote for the leader of the free world is discriminatory. The law also decreased the time period for residents to vote early. “Yet, three Democratic judges are undermining the integrity of our elections while also maligning our state”, McCrory said in a statement.

“This ruling is a stinging rebuke of the state’s attempt to undermine African American voter participation, which had surged over the last decade”, said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project.

There’s been a concerted effort by Republicans nationwide since President Barack Obama took place to peel back voting rights and laws improving access to the polls that had been in place since 1965, he said.

Reversing a district court ruling in April, the 83-page opinion struck down the state’s use of a photo ID requirement and other provisions in its 2013 voter law – which included changes to early voting, pre-registration and same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting.

Fox said the law, known as the Voter Information and Verification Act, was reminiscent of Jim Crow laws passed following the end of the Civil War.

For their part, Republican politicians, including North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, have said voter ID is meant to raise confidence in the franchise by directly targeting those who might lie about their identity to cast a vote. “Now that the burden has been lifted, I think we can expect more turnout”.

– No. 1: Republicans who crafted the law absolutely wanted to make it more hard for people who traditionally vote Democratic to cast a ballot, not only people of color, but poor people, the elderly and even the young.

Judge Peterson ordered the state to quickly issue credentials valid for voting to anyone trying to obtain a free photo ID for voting but lack the underlying documents such as birth certificates to obtain one.

The ruling found Republican state lawmakers requested data on voting habits of different races and then used that data to craft five provisions in the law, including requiring photo ID be shown. The court banished rules that extended residency requirements, restricted hours for polling places and prohibited the distribution of absentee ballots via email or fax – rules the court said have largely affected the black community, according to the AP.