North Carolina: Challengers of new voting regulations want 2014 trial; state officials push for delay | News Observer

Parties who are a gulf apart over what laws should be in place to ensure fair and open elections are just as widely divided about how quickly a lawsuit challenging new voter laws should be heard in federal court. On Thursday, attorneys for the NAACP, League of Women Voters, the ACLU of North Carolina and other voter rights advocates will gather in a federal courtroom in Winston-Salem to talk about one early point of contention – whether the trial will happen before or after the 2014 elections. Attorneys representing Gov. Pat McCrory, the N.C. Board of Elections and other state officials have laid out a proposed schedule in a report to the federal court, suggesting that a two- to three-week trial could be held no sooner than the summer of 2015.

North Carolina: Round one in the battle over voting rights in North Carolina | The Herald-Sun

Parties in the three federal lawsuits challenging voting law changes signed into law here in August will appear before U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder on December 12 to map out a schedule for proceedings moving forward. And while they’ve reached agreement on some preliminary litigation matters, the parties are not budging on one critical date: when the case should be tried. Those challenging the voting changes, including the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and the League of Women Voters, say in papers filed with the court yesterday that all preliminary proceedings can be completed in time for a trial in the summer of 2014. That timing would ensure that changes set to take effect in January are reviewed by the court before the 2014 midterm elections. But the state defendants claim that such a schedule is unrealistic and are asking for a trial in the summer of 2015.

North Carolina: Governor Claims Legislature “Didn’t Shorten Early Voting” | Care2 Causes

North Carolina’s legislative attack on voting rights this year was quickly recognized for what it was — the most restrictive set of laws since the Voting Rights Act of the sixties was put into effect. A myriad of new rules for voters were put into place with the bill, which was then signed into law by Republican Governor Pat McCrory. Now, the governor, facing an uphill battle for reelection, is trying to do a little history rewriting when it comes to limiting voter’s rights. One key piece of North Carolina’s law would drastically cut back on early voting, which is seen by many to be a key factor in increasing voter turnout and ensuring democratic participation when it comes to electing candidates to office. The legislature voted to eliminate a full week off the early voting calendar, decreasing it from 17 to just 10 days. Facing harsh criticism over that move, Governor McCrory is claiming that they actually didn’t shorten the early voting calendar at all. No, he says, they just “compacted” it.

North Carolina: Pat McCrory: We Didn’t ‘Shorten Early Voting,’ We ‘Compacted The Calendar’ | Huffington Post

On Aug. 13, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed into law a voter ID bill that was widely denounced by civil rights advocates. Not only did it mandate government-issued photo IDs at the polls, but it reduced the state’s early voting period from 17 to 10 days. According to McCrory, however, he didn’t actually shorten the voting. “First of all, we didn’t shorten early voting, we compacted the calendar,” said McCrory in an interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd on Wednesday. “But we’re going to have the same hours in which polls are open in early voting, and we’re going to have more polls available. So it’s going to be almost identical. It’s just the schedule has changed. The critics are kind of using that line when in fact, the legislation does not shorten the hours for early voting.”

National: Long voting lines: Not just an inconvenience | MSNBC

Long voting lines were at the top of voters’ complaints in 2012 – and young voters got hit hard by wait times. A study released Monday from Advancement Project and OurTime.org turned the spotlight on Florida and Virginia, two states that experienced the longest wait times in 2012, and found that young voters turned out “in spite of numerous ballot barriers, not because the system worked efficiently.” How’s that for an apathetic youth? The study states: “Florida voters experience some of the longest voting lines in the country, with an average wait time of 39 minutes to cast a ballot. That was three times the national average in 2012, of 13.3 minutes.” Matthew Segal, co-founder of OurTime, calls those extra minutes a tax. Not in a monetary sense, but if time is money (as we’ve heard it is) then young voters are feeling the pinch more than others. “The Time Tax doesn’t cost literal dollars and cents, but it’s certainly costing time,” Segal explained to msnbc.com. Those minutes and hours spent on a voting line means less time for jobs, classes, and homework and more hoops to jump through to obtain proper identification and necessary voting qualifications means more people may give up on voting because it’s too time-consuming.

Editorials: North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper must declare election law unconstitutional | Bob Geary/Indy Week

Richard Hasen is the nation’s leading scholar on elections law as political weapons and constitutional fights. A University of California-Irvine political scientist and law professor, Hasen was in Raleigh last week speaking at N.C. State University. His topic: “Race, Party and Politics: North Carolina’s New Front in the Voting Wars.” Naturally, I thought of our Attorney General Roy Cooper, who wants to be governor. Cooper has a constitutional problem. I’ll get to it shortly. But first, as Hasen did, consider the case of a political party that—under the guise of “reform”—passes election laws designed to cripple the rival party by disenfranchising African-American voters. North Carolina, 2013? Not yet: Hasen started with North Carolina in 1898, when the all-white Democratic Party ousted the fusionist Republicans (blacks and some whites) who’d governed after the Civil War. “Reforms” then prevented most blacks from voting, and the Republican Party ceased to be a force. In 2013, the parties have flipped, but the situation is familiar. The Republican Party, virtually all-white, is in charge. This year’s Republican “reforms”—the infamous House Bill 589, which critics term a voter-suppression law and which, Hasen said, is the most restrictive set of voting requirements passed by any state since the civil rights era—will hurt the Democrats, now the party supported by almost every African-American voter. So, Hasen asked: Was 1898 about race? Or party? And is 2013 about party? Or race?

North Carolina: Lawsuits over North Carolina voting law head to court | News-Record

As the fall campaigns wind down, a battle is just beginning to brew over the state’s voting rules. A pair of suits filed locally in the wake of the General Assembly’s passage of the Voter Information Verification Act are now making their way through federal court. One lawsuit filed by a group of individual and political advocacy groups in August has a hearing scheduled for Dec. 12 in U.S. District Court. The other suit was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in September. Defense attorneys have until Dec. 2 to file an official response to the latter suit. No hearings have been scheduled. The law, which Gov. Pat McCrory signed in August, will require voters to produce a photo ID to vote in 2016. Beginning next year, it will also shorten early voting from 17 days to 10 days and eliminate same-day registration during early voting. It also does away with counting provisional ballots cast by those who vote in the wrong precinct. A provision of the law that prohibits 16- and 17-year-olds from pre-registering to vote began this year.

North Carolina: Attorney General Takes Shots at the Laws He’s Obliged to Enforce | New York Times

The criticism could not have been much harsher: North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature had set out to undo 50 years of progress with a Tea Party-inspired “playground of extremist fantasies” that include tax giveaways to its richest residents and election law changes that make it harder for residents to register and vote. Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, has been very critical of several actions by the legislature. But the author of that scathing assessment in The Huffington Post last week was the North Carolina attorney general, Roy Cooper, a Democrat and the man whose job it is to enforce those laws, including the voting changes that have already become the subject of a federal lawsuit. His remarks brought a sharp rebuke from Gov. Pat McCrory and accusations from Republicans that Mr. Cooper is letting his ambition — he is widely expected to run against Mr. McCrory, a Republican, in 2016 — get in the way of his duties as attorney general. And the dispute between the two is a reminder of how deep and bitter the divide remains in a state still making sense of the fiercely conservative, boldly activist legislative session that ended in July. In a state long seen as a relatively moderate outlier in the South, the session was the first with a Republican governor and legislature since Reconstruction.

North Carolina: Governor fights for restrictive voting law | MSNBC

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory wants a federal court to throw out a lawsuit against his restrictive voting measure–but he isn’t offering a reason why. McCrory, a Republican, also is telling a top Democratic state official to keep quiet about his opposition to the controversial law. The fate of the legal challenge to North Carolina’s voting law could offer a key indicator of whether existing protections are strong enough to stop the rash of GOP efforts to make voting more difficult, now that the Supreme Court has invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act. On Monday, McCrory and the state board of elections issued a formal response to an NAACP suit filed in August against North Carolina’s law. McCrory’s filing asked a federal court to dismiss the suit, but made no attempt to rebut the lawsuit’s claims or explain why the law is needed. Instead, it simply repeated multiple times that the governor and the board of elections “deny the allegations” contained in the suit. The bare-bones approach is likely an effort by the governor’s legal team to avoid tipping its hand before going to court. But voting-rights advocates seized on the filing to press their case against the law.

North Carolina: Governor Previews Defense Of Voter ID Law | TPM

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.

North Carolina: Officials ask court to dismiss elections law challenges | Charlotte News Observer

Gov. Pat McCrory and other state officials filed their first official response Monday to two of the three federal court lawsuits that challenge the extensive election-law changes adopted this past summer. In response to allegations by the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, several voters and other civil rights organizations, attorneys for the governor and state officials dispute plaintiffs’ contentions that the new measures are a blatant attempt to suppress the African-American vote. The filings offer few details of the legal strategy the attorneys representing the governor and the Republican-led legislature plan to employ in fighting the suits. They ask for the cases to be dismissed. Also on Monday, McCrory defended North Carolina’s law at an event in Washington held by the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation.

North Carolina: Lawyers reject arguments in election lawsuits | The Asheville Citizen-Times

Attorneys for the state of North Carolina and Gov. Pat McCrory on Monday requested that a pair of federal lawsuits challenging substantial changes to portions of a law overhauling elections in the state be dismissed. Offering their initial formal responses to litigation filed in August on the same McCrory signed the bill into law, the lawyers denied all of the racial discrimination allegations made by civil rights and election advocacy groups and voters about the legislation. The lawsuits seek to throw out new rules requiring photo identification to vote starting in 2016, reducing the number of early-voting days by a week and eliminating same-day registration during the early-voting period, among other steps. The lawsuits argue the changes are dramatic and would make it disproportionately harder for black citizens to vote, turning back the clock on voting rights.

North Carolina: McCrory: Cooper could be witness against NC in voter ID suit | WWAY

Gov. Pat McCrory says Attorney General Roy Cooper could wind up a witness against the state of North Carolina in a lawsuit the US Department of Justice filed against the state’s new voter ID law. “Political statements by an attorney general of any lawyer can have a detriment(al) impact on their ability to defend our state,” McCrory said. During a visit to Cape Fear Community College, McCrory, a Republican, was asked if he agrees with the opinion of one of his legal advisers that Cooper, a Democrat, compromised his ability to represent the state in the lawsuit.

North Carolina: Cooper, McCrory disagree about defending lawsuit over voter ID | abc11.com

A war of words between Gov. Pat McCrory and Attorney General Roy Cooper is heating up over the lawsuit over voter laws. The two disagree on how to respond to Monday’s lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice to block the state’s tough new voter laws. Cooper calls the governor’s decision to hire an outside attorney to defend the state a waste of money. He told reporters Tuesday that he may not personally agree with the new voter laws, but his office is more than capable of defending them. “There are laws that I have disagreed with personally that our staff have defended successfully,” said Cooper. McCrory will not allow the attorney general’s office alone to defend the state against the federal lawsuit to block North Carolina’s new Republican-backed voting laws.

National: DOJ reloads in battle over voting rights | The Hill

The Obama administration launched a legal challenge Monday to North Carolina’s restrictive new voting law, accusing the state’s legislature of intentionally discriminating against black voters. A Justice Department lawsuit filed in North Carolina federal court is the latest salvo in a heated battle over protections for minority voters and the limits of federal government authority over state election regulations. The action follows a major setback for the administration this summer, when a divided Supreme Court sided against the Justice Department’s challenge of a Texas state law, effectively gutting a major portion of the Voting Rights Act. “The administration promised a decisive response and this is it,” UCLA law professor Adam Winkler said, describing the North Carolina case as “a bold move.” At issue are provisions of a new Tar Heel State statute that would reduce the number of early voting days and require North Carolinians to show photo identification before they are allowed to cast ballots.

North Carolina: Gov. McCrory says Justice Department’s voting lawsuit is ‘overreach and without merit’ | News Observer

Gov. Pat McCrory on Monday called the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit against North Carolina’s voting law “overreach and without merit.” “I firmly believe we’ve done the right thing. I believe this is good law. And I strongly disagree with the action that the attorney general has taken,” McCrory told reporters. The governor, dressed more casually than normal after his visit to the N.C. Zoo earlier in the day, struck a defiant tone in his remarks. He cast the legal battle as a matter of state’s rights, saying he would “defend our right to have common sense laws right here in North Carolina.”

North Carolina: Voting changes affect students | The A&T Register

By 2016, college students and citizens in North Carolina will have to adhere to new policies in regards to voting. By way of a Youtube video, Governor Pat McCrory announced in August that he signed House Bill 589. “Common practices like boarding an airplane and purchasing Sudafed require photo ID, and we should expect nothing less for the protection of our right to vote,” the governor said. The bill will require voters to show photo identification at polling sites. However, only military ID cards, a valid driver’s license, passports, and tribal cards will be accepted. Student identification cards will not be an acceptable form. Eliminating the use of student ID cards as an acceptable form of identification forces students to not vote in the county of which their campus is located. College students must request an absentee ballot from the precinct of their permanent address or parents may pay a $2,500 fee so that their child may vote out of their district. It is also unclear if students will be able to use their on-campus addresses as their permanent residence in order to get a DMV issued ID.

North Carolina: Voter registration for 2013 election affected by voter ID bill | Tryon Daily Bulletin

North Carolina voters will see some changes during the upcoming election even though the law a new voter ID bill signed by Gov. Pat McCrory doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2016. The new law will specifically require photo identification for the November 2016 election. As of Oct. 1, 2013, however, same day voter registration (G.S. 163.82.6A) is repealed. This means residents will no longer be able to register to vote during early voting. Previously, residents could register to vote during early voting as long as they voted when they registered. Residents will have until 5 p.m. Oct. 11 to register for the Nov. 5 municipal election. Registration can be done at the Polk County Board of Elections Office in the Womack building in Columbus. Another change as of Sept. 1, 2013 is that persons must be at least 17 years old and turning 18 by Election Day in order to register. Previously, North Carolina allowed 16-year-olds to preregister to vote at the department of motor vehicles while obtaining a driver’s license.

Editorials: Equal voting rights still a dream in North Carolina? | Al Jazeera America

For Noah Read, Mondays have become a day set aside for civil disobedience. For months, the 42-year-old from Burlington, N.C., has rearranged his work schedule as a restoration contractor so he can participate in weekly protests. The Moral Monday rallies, launched by the North Carolina NAACP outside the state’s general assembly in late April, continue to attract thousands to Raleigh to voice opposition to a spate of Republican-led legislation that critics pan as socially regressive. The issues range from an education budget devoid of teacher raises to the state’s decision to end federal unemployment benefits. “There’s one issue that affects all of the constituents that are gathering at Moral Mondays, and that is voting rights and voting access,” Read said. Now, 50 years after Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech at the March on Washington, the state that was the site of the Greensboro sit-ins protesting segregation in 1960 is again a flash point in the debate over voting rights — proving for many that the struggle for racial equality is not over.

Editorials: Creating barriers to voting | San Francisco Chronicle

A recent panel discussion on the Latino vote at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, moderated by actress Eva Longoria, took a couple of unexpected turns. One was the claim of a Republican strategist who said he was blacklisted on the orders of panelist John Pérez, the state Assembly speaker, a flap that drew the most media attention. The other, and more consequential, takeaway was the content of the session itself. The focus was not on immigration reform, education, high unemployment rates or even the Republican Party’s inability to connect with an emerging demographic force in American politics. The main topic of the day? Vote suppression. “This is the No. 1 issue that Latinos and other communities should be worried about,” Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, told the gathered journalists. Sanchez knows a little something about vote-chilling tactics. In 2006, a mailer was sent to 14,000 registered voters with Latino surnames and foreign birthplaces telling them it was a crime for immigrants to vote in a federal election. Her Republican opponent was convicted of obstruction of justice in connection with the scheme.

Editorials: North Carolina’s Student Voting Battle Is Not Over | Penda D. Hair/Huffington Post

Apparently, it wasn’t enough for the state of North Carolina to pass the most far-reaching and extreme voting law in the nation. The radical rollback of voting rights, signed into law by Governor Pat McCrory a few weeks ago, cuts a week from early voting, eliminates same-day voter registration, creates a strict photo ID requirement (which specifically prohibits college IDs from being accepted for voting), bans the pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds, and expands the ability to challenge voters, among other sweeping provisions. Collectively, these changes make it harder to vote for people of color, students, seniors, people with disabilities and low-income North Carolinians. Yet the state did not stop there. Now two county election boards have employed a top-down approach to take over the voting process at the local level. They are specifically taking aim at student voting. Just days after the state’s restrictive voting law took hold, election officials in Watauga and Pasquotank counties announced policies to drastically curb student voting. First, the local elections board of Watauga County, home to Appalachian State University, voted to eliminate an early voting and general election polling place on campus. Now students seeking to cast a ballot will have to travel to an off-campus voting site that is absurdly difficult to reach: inaccessible by public transportation, and over a mile from campus, alongside a 45 mph road with no sidewalk. Worse still, in the Watauga County election board’s decision to condense what used to be three county polling places into one, this single precinct — which was designed for 1,500 voters and only has 35 parking spaces — will have to serve 9,300 voters.

North Carolina: Elections board reverses decision, allows dorm-living student to run for office | McClatchy

Under the glare of a national media spotlight, the North Carolina Board of Elections ruled on two cases Tuesday that offered a glimpse of where the five members appointed by Gov. Pat McCrory stand on the changed electoral landscape. The board members unanimously agreed that an Elizabeth City State University student can run for local office, reversing a decision by the Republican-controlled Pasquotank County elections board. But in a 4-1 vote, the state board brushed aside an attempt to overturn a Watauga County elections board decision to close an early-voting site on the Appalachian State University campus for the coming municipal election. The decisions came amid extensive state and national attention to rulings and proposals by new Republican-controlled county boards that critics describe as attempts to squelch the under-30 vote.

North Carolina: Elections Board to hear cases that touch on student voting rights | News Observer

As college students across the country settle into new routines that the start of a semester typically bring, many in North Carolina are complaining of feeling unsettled about their voting rights. Since mid-August, when Gov. Pat McCrory signed broad revisions to North Carolina’s elections law, local elections boards in several counties – including Pasquotank and Watauga – have initiated changes that college students are fighting as attempts to suppress their votes. Three cases are scheduled to be heard by the state Board of Elections on Tuesday afternoon. Students and civic groups including NCPIRG, Common Cause, Ignite NC, NCSU Student Power Union, Democracy NC and Rock the Vote will gather outside the meeting to urge the board to reverse local county board decisions that protest organizers describe as ones “that make it harder for young people to vote and participate in our democracy.”

North Carolina: New North Carolina law could discourage participation by young voters | The Voter Update

Gov. Pat McCrory signed a sweeping elections overhaul bill on Aug. 12, and on Sept. 1 one of the first provisions of that new law will go into effect. Beginning on that day, 16- and 17-year-olds will no longer be allowed to pre-register to vote. North Carolina implemented voter pre-registration in 2010 after being passed by the General Assembly with broad, bipartisan support. Through the program, 16- and 17-year-olds could “pre-register” to vote, which didn’t lower the voting age but meant these young people would be automatically added to the voter rolls when they turned 18. Since many teens are going to the DMV to get a driver’s license during this time, it was convenient to offer them the opportunity to pre-register to vote as well. Students are also being taught civics in high school at this age, which seemed like an appropriate time to translate the abstracts of lesson plans into a real-world activity like pre-registering to vote. In the end, the goal was to encourage teens to get involved in the voting process at an early age and hopefully instill in them an interest and passion for civic engagement.

Editorials: North Carolina Restricts Voting Access in the Name of Reform | Jurist

In the final hours of the North Carolina General Assembly’s 2013 session, the Republican-controlled legislature passed House Bill 589 [PDF] (HB 589), an omnibus package of election law “reforms” aimed at further “securing the vote.” A few weeks later HB 589 was signed into law by Republican Governor Pat McCrory, despite the Governor’s initial admission that he “doesn’t know enough” about certain provisions of the legislation and in the face of growing opposition from the public. The legislation’s expected effect of diminishing the ability of North Carolina voters from casting their ballots seems incongruous with the legislation’s preamble stating in part: “[a]n act to restore confidence in government.” In effect, this legislative effort appears to be a not-so-veiled attack on voting which will make the registration process and actual act of casting a vote more onerous, particularly for the poor, minority, college-age youth and elderly voters. Until recently, 40 of North Carolina’s 100 counties were covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Prior to the US Supreme Court ruling on Shelby County v. Holder in June, election law changes impacting any of these counties (and many others nationally) required preclearance review by the US Department of Justice. The Shelby County holding invalidated Section 4 (which set forth the formula for determining those jurisdictions subject to preclearance) and effectively voided Section 5 (the preclearance provision) of the VRA. It now appears that the Court’s June decision prompted Republican members of the General Assembly to revisit previously filed legislation [PDF] intent on further restricting ballot access and scaling back current election laws knowing that the sometimes long and arduous road of preclearance would likely not need to be traveled.

North Carolina: House GOP Hopeful Compares N.C. Voter ID Law to Excrement | Roll Call

Jason Thigpen, a political newcomer looking to unseat Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., has parted company with his fellow Tar Heel State Republicans over a voter ID change he insists just plain stinks. “You can paint a turd and sell it as art, but it’s still a turd,” Thigpen asserted in a Facebook postdenouncing the election tweaks that state lawmakers approved in late July. North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed the new restrictions — which mandate voters to show a government-issued ID, trims the early voting window by a week and abolishes same-day registration — into law on Aug. 12. “This is 2013 and any legislator that puts forth such a discriminatory bill should be laughed out of office. This is America, not Russia,” Thigpen argued. His opposition, however, appears to be more technical than purely ideological.

North Carolina: Colin Powell: Voter ID law punishes minorities, hurts Republicans | UPI.com

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday new changes in North Carolina voting law punish minority voters and will hurt Republicans. Powell, in a speech at the North Carolina CEO Forum in Raleigh — an annual gathering of private and public sector executives and managers — Powell said the state’s new voter ID law is not even necessary because there is no evidence of the kind of voter fraud its backers said it was designed to address. “You can say what you like, but there is no voter fraud,” he said. “How can it be widespread and undetected?”

North Carolina: State elections chairman calls for respect | Charlotte Observer

Cary, N.C. County election board members must work as colleagues and not political rivals, the new Republican chairman of the State Board of Elections said Wednesday as recent local board dust-ups have led to allegations of partisanship and voter suppression. Josh Howard addressed nearly 500 local elections board members, directors and staff at a statewide training seminar, the first since all 100 county boards came under GOP control this year after 20 years in Democratic hands. Republicans now hold 2-1 majorities in counties because Gov. Pat McCrory was elected. But the division has gotten more attention in the past week as Democrats and civil rights groups are fuming over actions by Republican elections board members in Pasquotank and Watauga counties that could make it harder for college students to vote.

North Carolina: New law cancels ballots cast in wrong precinct | Associated Press

For a decade, registered North Carolina voters who didn’t go to their home precincts on Election Day – by error or on purpose – could still ensure their top choices would count. They’d fill out a conditional ballot from the incorrect precinct. If officials confirmed soon after that they were legally able to vote in the county, their votes for elections not specific to their home precinct would be tabulated. But Republicans at the legislature say people should be responsible to know where they’re supposed to vote, rather than force election workers to crosscheck their ballots and figure out their lawful choices. So they inserted in their elections overhaul bill passed last month a new law barring those out-of-precinct ballots- usually thousands combined annually in primary and general elections – from being counted at all. “If you do cast you ballot, you should know which precinct you belong in,” said Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg, who shepherded the election law through the Senate, calling the change a “small part of the overall streamlining of the election process.”

North Carolina: Lawmakers may defend laws in court if AG won’t | NBC News

After passing politically divisive legislation on voting laws and setting in motion new abortion restrictions, North Carolina’s Republican-led General Assembly has given itself the authority to defend them in court. Last month, in a last-minute move before adjourning for the year, lawmakers inserted two sentences into legislation clarifying a new hospital-billing law that would give the state House speaker and Senate leader the option to defend a state statute or provision of North Carolina’s constitution and not rely on Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat. Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, has until Aug. 25 to veto the measure. Cooper hasn’t refused to defend the state in any case, though counterparts in California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania said they would not defend their states’ same-sex marriage bans.