North Carolina: Federal panel strikes down North Carolina legislative districts | Associated Press

Federal judges on Thursday struck down nearly 30 North Carolina House and Senate districts as illegal racial gerrymanders, but will allow General Assembly elections to be held using them this fall. The decision by a three-judge panel comes six months after another set of judges struck down North Carolina’s congressional districts for similar reasons. Thursday’s ruling covering 19 House and nine Senate districts is yet another blow to the GOP lawmakers in North Carolina, which has seen several laws it enacted either partially or wholly overturned by the federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court announced in June that it would hear the appeals of Republican state leaders in that case, where two majority-black congressional districts were thrown out. The previous map drawn in 2011 and still being challenged helped give the state GOP more seats within the congressional delegation in the swing state. The legislative maps, also approved in 2011, also helped Republicans pad their majorities in the two chambers after they took control of the legislature for the first time in 140 years the year before.

North Carolina: Uncertainty still clouds North Carolina elections | The Charlotte Observer

Uncertainty continues to cloud this fall’s elections, with the state planning to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate North Carolina’s voter ID law, and counties deciding whether to extend or shorten early voting. One group warned Wednesday that the state could be headed for a “train wreck” if counties don’t extend the hours to vote early. Mecklenburg County’s elections board Chair Mary Potter Summa said it’s unclear whether the board will reduce the number of planned early voting hours. The board is scheduled to vote on a plan Monday. Gov. Pat McCrory said Tuesday that he’ll ask the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling that threw out the ID law and with it provisions that barred same-day registration and shortened the early voting period from 17 to 10 days. (The number of actual hours remained the same as during previous elections.)

North Carolina: State will try to block voter ID ruling Wednesday | The Charlotte Observer

Uncertainty continues to cloud this fall’s elections, with the state expected to ask the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday to reinstate North Carolina’s voter ID law, while counties decide whether to extend or shorten early voting. Mecklenburg County’s elections board Chair Mary Potter Summa said it’s unclear whether the board will reduce the number of planned early voting hours. The board is scheduled to vote on a plan Monday. Meanwhile, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump Tuesday addressed the voter ID law at a rally in Wilmington. Without an ID, he said, people might vote multiple times. “Voter ID. What’s with that?” he said. “Why aren’t we having voter ID? In other words, ‘I want to vote, here’s my identification. I want to vote.’ As opposed to somebody coming up and voting 15 times for Hillary.… You won’t vote 15 times, but people will.”

North Carolina: Voting Fight Shifts to Local Level In North Carolina | NBC

Last month’s federal court ruling against North Carolina’s sweeping and restrictive voting law was hailed as a major victory for voting rights. But now the battle over voting in the Tarheel State is shifting to the local level — amid concerns that the court’s decision could let county election officials impose new schemes to limit access to the polls. Indeed, Francis De Luca, the head of a leading conservative think tank in the state, is publicly urging counties to do just that, saying making voting harder is just “partisan politics” — and that’s fair game. Jen Jones of Democracy North Carolina warned that could have serious consequences. “The prospect of having voters disenfranchised is still a clear and present danger here in this very new front in the war on voting rights,” she said. The focus on local-level rules comes as North Carolina prepares to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block the July 29 appeals court ruling against the law, allowing the measure to stay in place for the election. The ruling by a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed several provisions of North Carolina’s 2013 voting law, including the law’s cutting of early voting days from 17 to 10, the elimination of same-day voter registration, and a voter ID requirement. The court found that Republican lawmakers had targeted black voters “with surgical precision.”

North Carolina: State will ask Supreme Court to allow voter ID law to stand | Reuters

North Carolina will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to allow a state law requiring voters to show identification to stand, after an appellate court struck it down a week ago, Republican Governor Pat McCrory said on Friday. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday refused the state’s request to put its decision on hold while North Carolina asks the Supreme Court to overturn it ahead of the U.S. general election on Nov. 8. McCrory said the state will ask justices by early next week to stay the appeals court’s ruling, which found that sweeping changes to the state’s voting rules in 2013 intentionally discriminated against African-Americans. An application for a stay would likely be directed to Chief Justice John Roberts, who has responsibility for emergency actions that arise from the 4th Circuit. Roberts could act alone or refer the matter to all eight justices. Five votes are needed to grant an application for a stay.

North Carolina: Court denies motion to stay decision on voter ID law | Reuters

A U.S. appeals court issued an order on Thursday denying North Carolina’s motion to stay the court’s decision last week striking down the state’s voter ID law. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said staying its ruling now “would only undermine the integrity and efficiency of the upcoming election.” On Friday, the court ruled that the North Carolina law, which required voters to show photo identification when casting ballots, intentionally discriminated against African-American residents.

North Carolina: Voter ID ruling means another election disruption | Associated Press

Television spots aimed at educating voters about North Carolina’s voter ID law are being canceled. One million informational posters and push cards are outdated and most likely headed for the trash. Binders carefully created as election bibles for each of the state’s 2,700 precincts need a heavy edit, with no time to waste. Election officials are scrambling to comply with last week’s federal appeals court ruling striking down North Carolina’s voter photo identification mandate and other restrictions Republicans approved three years ago. Photo identification was required for the first time in this year’s primaries, but barring another court decision, it is no longer mandated. The appellate ruling also extends early voting to 17 days, up from 10; and adds seven days of same-day voter registration. … The ruling effectively returns North Carolina to the rules it had before August 2013. But navigating the state’s election rules was already made more difficult by other federal court rulings against North Carolina this year, and some voters told The Associated Press that this latest ruling could add to the confusion.

North Carolina: Attorney General won’t keep defending state’s voter ID law | Associated Press

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper will no longer defend the state’s voter ID law, now that a federal appeals court has ruled it was passed with “discriminatory intent.” A 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel blocked its enforcement last Friday, ruling that the Republican-led General Assembly made changes that targeted black voters more likely to support Democrats. “Attorneys with our office put forward their best arguments but the court found that the law was intentional discrimination and we will not appeal,” Cooper spokeswoman Noelle Talley said in an email. Barring some new court intervention, the appellate ruling means the law’s restrictions will not be in place for this year’s presidential election. The ID mandate is now gone and early voting restored to 17 days, up from 10. Same-day registration during early voting and the partial counting of out-of-precinct ballots resume permanently.

North Carolina: Board Of Elections Scrambles To Undo Voter ID Law | WUNC

Officials with the North Carolina State Board of Elections are scrambling to undo three years of work on the state’s voter identification law ahead of the November election. The move comes after the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday struck down a North Carolina law that would have required a government-issued photo ID to vote in the November election. The panel said the law discriminated against black voters. Governor Pat McCrory and top Republican legislators have promised to appeal the decision.

North Carolina: Appeals court strikes down North Carolina’s voter ID law | The Washington Post

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down North Carolina’s requirement that voters show identification before casting ballots and reinstated an additional week of early voting. The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit was an overwhelming victory for civil rights groups and the Justice Department that argued the voting law was designed to dampen the growing political clout of African American voters, who participated in record numbers in elections in 2008 and 2012. “We can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the majority.

North Carolina: Appeals court strikes down North Carolina’s voter-ID law | The Washington Post

Voting rights activists scored legal victories in key presidential election states Friday, the most important being a federal appeals court ruling that North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature enacted new voting restrictions in 2013 to intentionally blunt the growing clout of African American voters. The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit was an overwhelming victory for the Justice Department and civil rights groups. Election law experts consider North Carolina’s voter law one of the nation’s most far-reaching. In Wisconsin, where one federal judge already had eased restrictions on voter-ID requirements, a second judge found that additional elements of the law passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) were unconstitutional.

North Carolina: US 4th Circuit overturns voter ID law | News & Observer

Federal appellate judges on Friday struck down a 2013 law limiting voting options and requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, declaring in an unsparing opinion that the restrictions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” The three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law was adopted with “discriminatory intent” despite lawmakers’ claims that the ID provision and other changes were designed to prevent voter fraud. The ruling – which could have implications for voting laws in other states and possibly for the outcome of close races in the swing state of North Carolina – sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder, who in April issued a 485-page decision dismissing all claims in the legal challenge.

North Carolina: Voting law changes could put 2016 ballots at risk | Reuters

On Election Day in 2014, Joetta Teal went to work at a polling station in Lumberton, North Carolina. Like all poll workers, she was required to stay until voting booths closed, so she decided to cast her own vote there. That was a mistake, she later discovered. What she didn’t know was that under a 2013 state law she had to vote in the precinct where she lived. The polling station where she voted was not in her precinct, so her vote was not counted. A Reuters review of Republican-backed changes to North Carolina’s voting rules indicates as many as 29,000 votes might not be counted in this year’s Nov. 8 presidential election if a federal appeals court upholds the 2013 law. Besides banning voters from voting outside their assigned precinct on Election Day, the law also prevents them from registering the same day they vote during the early voting period. The U.S. Justice Department says the law was designed to disproportionately affect minority groups, who are more likely to vote out of precinct and use same-day registration. Backers of the law deny this and say it will prevent voter fraud.

North Carolina: Legislative leaders not defendants in Wake County election suit | News & Observer

State legislative leaders may regret fighting against being part of the federal lawsuit that led to their new election maps for Wake County Board of Commissioners and school board being declared unconstitutional. In an article posted online Tuesday in the Carolina Journal, Rep. Paul Stam laments how Senate Leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore had been dropped as defendants so their attorneys weren’t in court to defend the maps. But an attorney for the plaintiffs points to how lawmakers didn’t want to be part of the litigation in the first place. Stam tells the Carolina Journal that no one went to bat for the lawmakers who redrew the districts when the case went before the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals this year. Stam, an Apex Republican and attorney, notes how the office of state Attorney General Roy Cooper would have been defending the districts if Berger and Moore were still defendants. “In contrast to Europe, which is inquisitorial, the American and English legal systems are called adversarial,” Stam said. “You count on the fact that each side will be represented, so the truth will come out.”

North Carolina: September date set for voter ID state trial | Associated Press

A challenge to North Carolina’s new voter identification requirement will go to trial in state court this fall setting the stage for a possible decision before early in-person voting begins for the big November election. Superior Court Judge Michael Morgan on Monday set Sept. 26 for the trial, which could last a week or two. Morgan asked lawyers in a Wake County courtroom to confirm the Oct. 27 start date for early voting, when perspective voters must show one of several forms of photo ID. A two-week trial would give Morgan less than three weeks to rule. The ID mandate was approved in 2013 and used for the first time in the March primary and again in the June congressional primary.

North Carolina: Voter ID case goes to state court in September | News & Observer

The question of whether North Carolina’s voter ID requirement violates the state Constitution will go to trial in late September, adding more uncertainty to the election process in a presidential year that has left many voters confused about schedules and their districts. Wake County Judge Mike Morgan on Monday signed an order rejecting a request by lawmakers to set the case in front of a three-judge panel or dismiss it altogether. The trial is set to start Sept. 26. Anita Earls, director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a law firm representing challengers of the state’s 2013 voter ID law, said she expected the trial to last about a week. Before Morgan set the schedule, Phil Strach, a Raleigh lawyer representing the legislators and the husband of the state elections director, argued that it would be better to wait until after November.

North Carolina: Legislature changes ballot order for Court of Appeals candidates | News & Observer

If signed by Gov. Pat McCrory, a change in state election law approved in the final hours of the 2016 legislative session would ensure the name of Phil Berger Jr. appears first on the ballot in his race against incumbent Court of Appeals Judge Linda Stephens in November. If not for the legislation, Berger’s name would have appeared below Stephens’ on the November ballot through a random ballot-order method used by the state Board of Elections. Berger, a Republican, is the son of state Senate leader Phil Berger, an Eden Republican. The elder Berger voted for the bill that would result in his son’s name being listed first. Numerous studies have shown that being listed first on a ballot can give that candidate at least a slight advantage, especially on down-ballot races like the Court of Appeals race where candidates aren’t as well-known as presidential or gubernatorial candidates, for example.

North Carolina: Bill would force attorney general to defend redistricting, other local acts | Greensboro News & Record

A bill fast-tracked through the N.C. House on Thursday would require the state Attorney General’s Office to defend local acts passed by the General Assembly that are challenged in court. The move comes in the wake of the state’s redistricting of the Greensboro City Council and Wake County Board of Education, which are both being challenged in court. In both cases Attorney General Roy Cooper, the Democratic challenger to Gov. Pat McCrory this November, chose not to defend redistricting laws passed by the legislature’s Republican majority. In the Greensboro council lawsuit, the Guilford County Board of Elections was left to defend the law and initially took no position on its constitutionality.

North Carolina: U.S. Supreme Court to review North Carolina redistricting | The Charlotte Observer

The U.S. Supreme Court will review an appeal by North Carolina to maintain the remapping of its districts this fall – a plan previously described as a “blatant, unapologetic, partisan, gerrymander” that could disfranchise the state’s minority population. The court added the appeal to its calendar Monday. Its decision to address the redistricting plan comes just five months after a three-judge panel rejected a legal challenge filed by attorneys for David Harris of Durham and Christine Bowser of Mecklenburg County. Attorneys argue that remapping of state’s 1st and 12th congressional districts limits the state’s minority representation. Those districts are held by Democrat Reps. G.K. Butterfield and Alma Adams, the state’s only two African-American congressional representatives.

North Carolina: Supreme Court to rule on use of race in redistricting | Associated Press

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether Republican lawmakers relied too heavily on race when they redrew North Carolina’s congressional districts to give the GOP a powerful advantage in the swing state. The justices will hear the case in the fall — almost certainly too late to affect November’s elections. But in the years ahead, it could impact partisan efforts to create electoral districts aimed at swaying the balance of power in Congress and in state legislatures. The Supreme Court could consider it together with a similar appeal from Virginia, where challengers say Republicans packed black voters into a dozen statehouse districts, strengthening GOP control of neighboring territories.

North Carolina: Appellate judges skeptical about North Carolina’s voter ID law | Associated Press

Members of a federal appeals court expressed skepticism Tuesday that North Carolina’s 2013 major rewrite to voting laws, requiring photo identification to cast in-person ballots, doesn’t discriminate against minorities. The three-judge panel met Tuesday to hear arguments over whether to overturn an April trial court ruling upholding the law. Judge Henry F. Floyd questioned the timing of the changes — done after Republicans took control of state government for the first time in a century and after the U.S. Supreme Court undid key provisions of the Voting Rights Act — and whether they weren’t done to suppress minority votes for political gain. “It looks pretty bad to me,” Floyd said. But the law’s authors said they were aiming to prevent voter fraud and increase public confidence in elections. “It was not a nefarious thing,” said Thomas A. Farr, an attorney representing the state.

North Carolina: State Faces Tough Questions From Appeals Court on Voting Law | Wall Street Journal

A federal appeals court asked tough questions Tuesday about North Carolina’s Republican-backed law that imposed tighter rules for voting, including a photo identification requirement at the polls. The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering legal challenges from the Justice Department, civil rights groups and citizens who allege the North Carolina law illegally discriminated against minority voters. Allison Riggs, a lawyer for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, argued that North Carolina engaged in an unprecedented rollback of voting rights, which intentionally targeted minorities who tend to vote for Democrats. State lawmakers “knew the disparate impact of every one of these provisions,” she said.

North Carolina: Photo ID, voting law heading to an appeals court | Associated Press

Far-reaching voting changes in North Carolina approved by Republicans three years ago and upheld by a federal judge now head to an appeals court that previously sided with those challenging the law on racial grounds. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals scheduled oral arguments Tuesday, just two months after a lower court ruled photo identification requirements to vote in person, early-voting restrictions and other changes violated neither the federal Voting Rights Act nor the Constitution. The appeals court’s decision to accelerate review of the case reinforces the stakes involved with the outcome in an election year, particularly in North Carolina. The presidential battleground state also has big races for governor and U.S. Senate on the fall ballot. “The legislative actions at issue must be analyzed in the context of the high levels of racially polarized voting in North Carolina, where many elections are sensitive to even slight shifts in voting,” lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department wrote in a brief heading into the arguments before three judges in Richmond, Virginia.

North Carolina: How North Carolina’s new district map caused a chaotic congressional primary | The Guardian

North Carolina congresswoman Alma Adams was sitting in a campaign meeting at her headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina, in early February, planning for what should have been an easy primary win. No Democratic challengers had declared their candidacy in time for the 15 March election. Victory was all but guaranteed. Before the meeting ended, one of her staffers interrupted with some unexpected news. A panel of three federal judges had ruled that the 12th district’s congressional map – which resembled a serpent slithering across central North Carolina’s cities – was unconstitutional due to racial gerrymandering. The district would need to be redrawn, the judges said. It was a win for racial justice, legal observers said. But the map redrawing that followed – the latest episode in a decades-old legal saga over the district lines – wasn’t a win for voter enfranchisement this election, in this deep blue district where the primary is likely to decide the race. When state lawmakers two weeks later redrew most of the state’s districts, the 70-year-old black Greensboro lawmaker discovered her home was nearly two hours away from the new Charlotte-centric district.

North Carolina: Legislators say redistricting emails, other info protected from public scrutiny | Greensboro News & Record

State legislators say they won’t turn over more information about the new voting districts they drew last year for the Greensboro City Council. The legislators are fighting subpoenas from a group of local residents suing to stop the redistricting because of racial gerrymandering. The new districts are scheduled to take effect for the 2017 election. On Monday, lawyers for the N.C. Attorney General’s Office said the information is protected from public view because of “legislative privilege.” In their filing in U.S. District Court in Greensboro, they said the legislators have given the residents’ attorneys all the information that’s not covered by legislative privilege. The Greensboro residents, who are being represented by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, asked a judge last month to force the legislators to turn over the information.

North Carolina: Federal judges uphold congressional maps | News & Observer

A panel of federal judges Thursday rejected the most recent challenge of North Carolina’s newly drawn congressional districts. In the unanimous decision, the three district judges left open the possibility for a different lawsuit to weigh the question of blatant partisan gerrymandering. The effect is that maps drawn by the legislature’s Republican leadership in February remain valid as voters cast early ballots in the primary election to decide which congressional candidates are on the ballot in November. The ruling came almost four months after the General Assembly redrew congressional lines in a response to a court order declaring two of North Carolina’s districts unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. In March, attorneys for David Harris of Durham and Christine Bowser of Mecklenburg County asked the three-judge panel to reject the new maps as “a blatant, unapologetic partisan gerrymander” that provided no legal remedy to the 2011 maps that were struck down on Feb. 5. The challengers also argued that the new maps intentionally limited minority representation.

North Carolina: Some Durham County voters will receive new primary ballot | News & Observer

In light of finding Durham County elections workers had counted dozens more votes than had actually been cast, the State Board of Elections has decided to scratch 892 provisional ballots and mail out new ballots to those voters more than two months later. In a meeting to finalize the results of the March 15 primary, the board voted unanimously to approve only 147 provisional ballots that could be checked for eligibility and moved to send out new ballots to voters whose ballots could not be verified. The decision came out of a state investigation into discrepancies in the Durham County election primaries that found the state only had physical copies for 980 provisional ballots, despite having approved or partially approved 1,039 provisional ballots to count toward final election totals.

North Carolina: With retention idea blocked, Supreme Court primary goes on | Associated Press

There will be one race on every ballot in North Carolina’s previously unscheduled June 7 primary because the state Supreme Court couldn’t agree whether a law that led a colleague to seek re-election through a new method complied with the state constitution. Justices deadlocked 3-3 this month on a lower court ruling that struck down the law giving Associate Justice Robert Edmunds of Greensboro the option to run alone for a new term in November and try to keep his job based on an up-or-down vote of support. That kept February’s decision of three trial judges intact, thus returning the election to a traditional head-to-head race. Edmunds and three challengers — Sabra Jean Faires of Cary, Michael Morgan of Raleigh and Daniel Robertson of Advance — are candidates on the primary ballot that also will include delayed congressional primaries in most parts of the state. The top two vote-getters advance to the general election.

North Carolina: State judge weighs whether to schedule voter ID trial | Associated Press

Another pending legal challenge to North Carolina’s voter identification requirement is still swimming around in state court, where a judge Friday heard arguments on whether a trial should be scheduled soon or more delays are the proper course. Three consolidated federal lawsuits seeking to overturn the photo ID mandate and other voting changes made by the General Assembly already have been tried, with all the provisions in the 2013 case upheld last month as legal and constitutional. That case is on the fast-track to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with scheduled arguments for next month. The state lawsuit, initially filed in August 2013 by voters and voting-rights groups, focuses solely on the ID requirement as another qualification to vote beyond what the North Carolina Constitution demands and is unlawful. Wake County Superior Court Judge Michael Morgan put the proceedings on hold last fall until after photo ID was required for the first time during the March 15 primary.

North Carolina: 4th Circuit court sets NC voter ID hearing | News & Observer

The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals set June 21 to hear arguments in the North Carolina voting rights case. The appeal was filed by the NAACP and other organizations representing voters who challenged the extensive elections law overhaul in 2013. The new law established a voter ID requirement, curbed the number of days voters could cast ballots early, eliminated out-of-precinct voting and stopped letting people register to vote and cast a ballot on the same day.