North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) delivered an extensive defense of the state’s controversial new voter identification law on Monday. After slamming the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against North Carolina as politically motivated and “without merit,” McCrory argued in a speech at The Heritage Foundation that the law actually helps to get “the politics out of early voting” and generally represses voter fraud and malpractice. “But you know, we require a voter ID to get a tattoo, to get Sudafed, to get food stamps, to get on an airplane — to get almost any government service in North Carolina right now you have to have an ID,” McCrory said. McCrory went on to note that the new law includes a provision that provides a “free ID” voter voters throughout the state.
“And our legislation is actually offering free IDs and the first election in which you have to have this ID in place is the 2016 election so people still have time to get an ID,” McCrory continued. “And by the way we still have early voting and voting by mail, which you can do early voting, which you don’t even need an ID on so someone can do it from a nursing home through the mail at this point in time. So I think our voting ID law by the national media and yes even by some of our local media in North Carolina has been greatly exaggerated and it’s commonsense reform which protects the integrity of our ballot box.”
“We have even more transparency in our voting rules where now we actually are prohibiting lobbyists from bundling money which you were allowed to do in the past to be the bundlers of money,” McCrory said. “And we have stricter rule for lobbyists,” pointing to a portion of the law that forbids lobbyists from collecting checks from one or more donors and delivering them to state-level candidates.
In essence, McCrory’s comments were a preview of the case North Carolina plans to make in defending the new law against the Justice Department lawsuit.
Full Article: North Carolina Governor Previews Defense Of Voter ID Law.