North Carolina’s new voter law is drawing national attention, but what are the local implications? North Carolina’s governor on Monday quietly signed a measure into law that overhauls the state’s election laws to require government-issued photo IDs at the polls and to shorten early voting, moves that drew stinging criticism and threats of legal action from the NAACP and other groups. According to the bill, voters will see the elimination of the straight-party voting option and same-day registration. Absentee ballots will gain some flexibility, but some say this could increase the chances of fraud. Lee Quick, chairman of the Richmond County Democratic Party, is not fond of the new law and said it will lengthen voting day poll lines and inconvenience voters who don’t have an ID.
“This is a bad law that discourages minorities, elderly, handicapped, students and low income voters from voting,” said Quick. “It will increase the amount of time voters will stand in line to vote and for some it will require time and the cost of travel to get an acceptable ID. Most counties only have one drivers license office and some are only open part-time.”
According to data released by Democracy North Carolina, statewide, 318,000 voters do not have a valid picture ID.
Overwhelmingly, their data collected in April showed that across the state there are nearly 6.5 million registered voters, of them 4.5 million are white and 1.4 million are black, 2.9 million are men and 3.4 million are women. Of these demographics, it’s the women who lack photo IDs the most; with 202,714 or 64 percent of registered voting women who do not have a valid photo ID.
While the data shows that there are more registered Democrats than Republicans, there are also 55 percent of Democrats with no valid photo ID, while Republicans only have 21 percent of their voters without ID. There are more white voters without photo ID than there are black ones, but there are also more white voters total.
Full Article: Voter bill could mean longer lines – yourdailyjournal.com.