Less than a day after Rethuglican
Gov. Pat McCrory signed North Carolina's new voter suppression bill into law,
several lawsuits have been filed seeking to overturn the law. Democratic
Sen. Kay Hagan and
Congressman G.K. Butterfield have asked the Justice Department to take legal action to stop the law from being implemented. Here's why:
Besides requiring a narrow range of acceptable IDs, the law dumps
same-day registration during early voting, cuts a week off the number of
early voting days, ends early voting on Sunday (a day traditionally
strong for African American voting), eliminates pre-registration of 16
and 17-year olds, eliminates straight party voting, reduces disclosure
requirements of corporate campaign donations and gives poll watchers
more clout to challenge the eligibility of people who come to the polls.
The law is, of course, popular with the knuckle-draggers but not so much with the rest of the state, according to a Public Policy poll:
White voters only narrowly support the new voting bill (46/44), while
African Americans (16/72) are heavily opposed. Republicans (71%) support
the bill but Democrats (72%) are just as unified in their opposition
and independents are against it by a 49/43 margin as well. And perhaps
most foreboding for Republicans, moderate voters stand against the
legislation 70/20.
In a speech to the American Bar Association,
Hillary Clinton denounced the voter suppression law in North Carolina, as well as similar efforts by Rethugs in Texas and Florida (watch out for Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, too!). She also zinged
Chief Justice Roberts' premature "free at last" declaration in
Shelby County v. Holder thusly:
Not every obstacle is related to race, but anyone who says that racial
discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be
paying attention.
Of course, as Ms. Clinton knows, not only are Justice Roberts, his Rethug cohorts on the bench, and the Rethug nimrods passing these voter suppression bills out in the hinterlands, perfectly aware that there's racial discrimination in American elections -- they're actively engaged in seeing it enshrined and protected!
