A judge upheld North Carolina’s controversial election laws on April 25, reports The New York Times.
The ruling comes months before a presidential election in a state that narrowly went to Barack Obama in 2008 and to Mitt Romney in 2012.
According to The New York Times:
The opinion, by Judge Thomas D. Schroeder of Federal District Court in Winston-Salem, upheld the repeal of a provision that allowed people to register and vote on the same day. It also upheld a seven-day reduction in the early-voting period; the end of preregistration, which allowed some people to sign up before their 18th birthdays; and the repeal of a provision that allowed for the counting of ballots cast outside voters’ home precinct.
It also left intact North Carolina’s voter identification requirement, which legislators softened last year to permit residents to cast ballots, even if they lack the required documentation, if they submit affidavits.
…The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which sits in Richmond, Va., will be the first to consider an appeal, which the law’s opponents said they would pursue. If the Fourth Circuit or the Supreme Court does not intervene, the changes will be in force when voters go to the polls this autumn. North Carolina voters will also elect a governor in what is expected to be one of this year’s most competitive state races.
The photo identification law was originally passed in 2013, after the Supreme Court invalidated the “preclearance” section of the Voting Rights Act in its decision Shelby County v. Holder.
Before that, southern states had to submit any proposed changes to their voter laws to the Justice Department, in an effort to combat race-based voter discrimination. After Shelby County v. Holder, however, North Carolina moved to tighten voter laws in an effort to combat fraud.
William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove think North Carolina’s voter restriction laws are an updated version of Jim Crow because of the way they disproportionately impact minorities. So they refer to this new system of laws as “James Crow, Esq.,” and call for a new Reconstruction to dismantle it.
“We cannot end the second career of James Crow, Esq. until we name it for what it is and resolve to become the country we’ve not yet been,” they wrote in Sojourners.
“Unfettered access to the ballot has always been a fundamental commitment of Reconstruction. This is the struggle we will continue to give ourselves to in the courts, at the ballot box, and in the streets.”
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