Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Voter Suppression Challenged in North Carolina

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!

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