The elimination of same-day registration was part of a wide-ranging package of voting restrictions signed into law by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory two years ago. On July 12, 2015, civil rights groups will begin presenting their case to overturn those provisions in court.
The law McCrory signed also reduced the state’s early voting period by a week, eliminated the counting of ballots cast by voters out of their home precinct, and ended pre-registration for those aged 16 and 17. The restrictions included a strict government-issued photo identification requirement for voters that would have gone into effect for next year’s presidential election. Arguments over the ID provision will be considered separately from the other voting restrictions after the legislature unexpectedly softened the requirement last month.
Former State House Speaker Thom Tillis, now a Republican U.S. senator, said in 2013 that voter fraud wasn’t “the primary reason” for the bill. Tillis was asked why his caucus was intent on voting reforms when proven cases of fraud are exceedingly rare. “Well, we call this ‘restoring confidence in elections,’” Tillis said. “There is some voter fraud, but that’s not the primary reason for doing this. There’s a lot of people who are just concerned with the potential risk of fraud, and in our state it could be significant. This is just a measure that we think makes three-fourths, nearly three-fourths of the population more comfortable and more confident when they go to the polls.”
But civil rights advocates challenging the law say the measures disproportionately affect racial minorities and students. They filed a lawsuit to block the law during the 2014 elections. They lost in U.S. District Court, won in federal appeals court, and lost at the Supreme Court.
The Rev. William Barber, head of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, has compared next week's trial to the Selma, Alabama, march that led to the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. North Carolina legislators passed the voting restrictions in 2013, after the Supreme Court gutted key provisions of the law two months earlier. “This is our Selma,” Barber said in a press release. “North Carolina was the first state to pass a restrictive voting law after the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in 2013, and it is the worst voter suppression law the country has seen since 1965. The people of North Carolina are standing up -- in the courts and the streets -- because we refuse to accept the revival of Jim Crow tactics used to block access to the ballot for African-American and Latino voters.”
Barber said on a press call in June that the law was a “calculated effort” at ending voting practices that African-Americans use more frequently than white voters. According to state data, 70 percent of the state's African-American voters in 2012 used early voting, compared with 56 percent of the voting population overall. While African-Americans make up about 22 percent of the state’s voting population, they accounted for 41 percent of voters who used same-day registration, and roughly 30 percent of those who cast ballots outside of their designated precinct.
In eliminating a week of early voting, the legislation also got rid of voting on the Sunday during which Black church congregations led “Souls to the Polls” drives.
The NAACP, with support from the Advancement Project, contends the law violates the constitutional right to vote and the Voting Rights Act's Section 2 ban on discrimination against racial minorities in elections. “These measures likely would not have survived federal pre-clearance,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her dissent from the Supreme Court’s decision allowing the law to go in effect last year.
“We have a strong case against North Carolina’s voting law, showing not only that the measure is discriminatory, but that lawmakers knew it would harm voters of color and passed it anyway,” Penda D. Hair, Advancement Project co-director, said in the press release. “Behind each statistic and legal argument, however, are the stories of real people whose voting rights have been assaulted. Our case is about these voters and ensuring that elections are free, fair and accessible for all.”
The NAACP is leading a “Mass Moral Monday March for Voting Rights” in Winston-Salem on the day the trial is scheduled to begin, to echo the thousands of protesters who turned out earlier for “Moral Monday” marches at the state capitol in Raleigh.
The case will be heard in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina and is expected to last for about two weeks. The plaintiffs also include the League of Women Voters and North Carolinians represented by Democratic power lawyer Marc Elias who also represents Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union. The U.S. Department of Justice is also involved in the case.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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