While still poring over a federal judge’s 485-page ruling upholding North Carolina’s recent election law overhaul on Tuesday, attorneys for the voters and civil rights organizations challenging the changes quickly filed notice of plans to appeal. Judge Thomas Schroeder’s opinion – one of the first to come down since the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act – is being scrutinized by many as a test of what obligations states have to make sure their citizens have access to the ballot box. Schroeder’s ruling, which was released to the public Monday evening, upheld sweeping voting changes – requiring North Carolina voters to have one of six forms of photo identification, curbing the number of days for early voting, prohibiting voters from registering and casting a ballot the same day, and banning out-of-precinct voting. North Carolina Republicans, who shepherded the changes through the 2013 legislative session, describe the cutbacks, new prohibitions and ID provision as common sense measures designed to prevent voter fraud. There are few documented cases of voter fraud. Challengers of the law described the measures as designed and adopted to disenfranchise African-American, Latino and college-age voters – constituencies more likely to vote Democratic than Republican.
They argue, and plan to continue to argue in their appeal to the judges of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, that legislators showed that to be the case when quickly adopting a much fuller version of election law changes than had been proposed shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a section of the Voting Rights Act. The provisions the justices struck down required North Carolina and other Southern states to get clearance from the U.S. Justice Department before making major changes to election law. “There is significant, shameful past discrimination,” Schroeder stated in his decision. “In North Carolina’s recent history, however, certainly for the last quarter century, there is little official discrimination to consider.”
Schroeder, a George W. Bush appointee, went on to say: “In short, North Carolina has provided legitimate State interests for its voter-ID requirement and electoral system that provides registration all year long up to twenty-five days before an election, absentee voting for up to sixty days before an election, ten days of early voting at extended hours convenient for workers that includes one Sunday and two Saturdays, and Election Day voting.”
Schroeder added that the challengers “oppose this system because they preferred one that they say was even more convenient – which they used disproportionately during certain elections – and point to some fraction of voters who did not vote or register.”
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article74080022.html