Back to the elections board
by Tom Sullivan
Local Boards of Elections in North Carolina were scrambling yesterday to rework election instruction documents after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued an order blocking enforcement of two provisions of the state’s new election law in this November’s election.
But for NC Governor Pat McCrory and Republican colleagues, that’s not the end of it:
The Republicans plan to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, leaving questions about whether North Carolinians will be allowed to vote the same day that they register during the early voting period this year as well as whether provisional ballots cast outside a voter’s proper precinct will be counted.
The NAACP, the ACLU, and other groups have sued to have the law ruled unconstitutional. That case will not be heard until July. The photo identity card requirement in the law does not got into effect until 2016.
The Voter Information Verification Act (VIVA) had been a 15-page voter ID bill winding its way through the GOP-controlled legislature last year. Then in June, the Shelby v. Holder decision by the U.S. Court set aside of two preclearance provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Winston-Salem’s Camel City Dispatch explains:
Once that happened, the North Carolina State Senate dumped in a laundry list of voter suppression provisions that ballooned HB 589 into a 57 page collection of the most restrictive voter suppression regulations since the Jim Crow era. All of this while at the same loosening campaign finance restrictions on politicians. Apparently the Republican Supermajority felt that the voters of North Carolina needed to be regulated, but for politicians to be kept under the government thumb was just too much.
Millions of voter guides have already gone out with information contradicted by yesterday’s court ruling. It’s going to be a wild ride.