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Voter ID law: North Carolina Republicans rebel against controversial court ruling

The fight could prove crucial as North Carolina emerges as must-win for Donald Trump

David Usborne
Charlotte, North Carolina
Thursday 18 August 2016 19:03 BST
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The rules in North Carolina must now change
The rules in North Carolina must now change

Barely three weeks after a federal appeals court issued a blistering ruling overturning a North Carolina voter registration law that it called a deliberate attempt to suppress the black vote, Republicans across the state are fighting back.

Ground zero of the effort is here in Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte, the largest city in the state where African Americans account for 35 per cent of the population.

The bitter struggle over voter ID laws in North Carolina is being closely watched nationally as courts here and in other states have begun to invalidate repressive laws passed after Republicans made historic gains in state legislatures in 2010, taking absolute control in 25.

No law was more radical than the one passed in North Carolina in 2013. It limited early voting days to 10 instead of 17, imposed new ID requirements and ended voter registration on election day, all things that tend to increase turn-out among blacks, who historically have voted Democrat.

In its ruling on 29 July, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said the law had been crafted to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision”. It added: “Because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history”. Republicans contend that lax electoral arrangements are an invitation to voter fraud.

The case could directly impact the elections in November, with North Carolina regarded as one of a handful of states Donald Trump must win if he is to prevail against Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama carried Mecklenburg County by 22 points in 2012. Moreover 70 percent of African-Americans used early voting in the county versus 48 percent of white voters

Earlier this week, Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, formally asked the US Supreme Court to intervene and issue a stay of the ruling. Meanwhile, top officials with the state party have urged officials on county elections boards to find ways to mitigate the effects of the ruling. Every county board in the state is controlled by Republicans.

With a Friday deadline to submit final plans, the Mecklenburg board this week took the lead voting over the objections of Democrats and a clear majority of those in the public gallery to cut the number of early voting sites and also slash 228 early voting hours, a significant reduction.

“I’m not a big fan of early voting,” the board chair Mary Potter Summa declared at the meeting, apparently disregarding the federal appeals court’s admonitions. “The more [early voting] sites we have, the more opportunities exist for violations.”

Every elections board was urged to try to blunt the Court ruling by cutting early voting hours where possible in an email sent out early this week by North Carolina’s Republican Party executive director Dallas Woodhouse and unearthed by Democratic activists.

“Democrats are mobilising for a fight over early voting locations and times,” he wrote with unsubtle language. “They are filling up election board meetings and demanding changes that are friendly to democrats and possibly voter fraud. Republicans should fight with all they have to promote safe and secure voting and for rules that are fair to our side.”

The purpose of the Circuit Court was clear, Allison Riggs, a lawyer with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a civil rights group that was a main challenger to the law, noted on Thursday. “We said that the law was racially discriminatory, created unjustified burden on the fundamental right to vote,” she said, appearing on Charlotte Talks, a public radio show. “The circuit court agreed with us that the law was motivated by an intent to suppress African American voting strength.”

The state remains defiant, arguing “it should not be forced to scramble mere months before the general election to rejigger settled election plans at the Fourth Circuit's command”.

“The Fourth Circuit's ruling is just plain wrong and we cannot allow it to stand,” Mr McCrory said this week. “We are confident that the Supreme Court will uphold our state's law and reverse the Fourth Circuit.” He insisted that his state’s law had become, “a model and other states are using similar laws without challenges”.

That is not accurate, however. A court of appeals in July blocked a similar voter ID law in Texas, which had been widely seen as deliberately disenfranchising minority voters, notably blacks and Hispanics. A voter ID law passed by the Republican-controlled legislature of Wisconsin was also struck down on the grounds it discriminated against new voters.

Republicans insist on tighter voting rules, including requiring voters to show up at polling stations with one form of identification, to avoid voter fraud. “They saw it as a core philosophical belief. a core belief,” commented Dr Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics at Catawba College, in Salisbury, North Carolina, near Charlotte. “And once you gain majority control you get to do what you want.”

There is scant evidence to back up the voter fraud claim, however. In contrast, it is clear that the ID requirement in particular discourages the most dispossessed among voters, who, for instance, don’t have driving licences, to participate in elections. And that most often means blacks.

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