Editorials: The long road ahead for voting rights | NC Policy Watch

State GOP lawmakers wasted no time ramping up their efforts to drastically change voting in North Carolina after the U.S. Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder, gutted the requirement that certain jurisdictions get proposed voting changes pre-approved. “Now we can go with the full bill,” Senator Tom Apodaca told WRALthat same day, referring to an omnibus voting bill that would do more than just require voter ID; it would reduce early voting, eliminate Sunday voting and ban same-day registration. Go they did, pushing House Bill 589 through both chambers and on to Gov. Pat McCrory’s desk for signature in just weeks and prompting voting rights advocates and even the Attorney General to warn that, by signing the bill into law, the governor would be casting the state into a protracted and costly battle in the courts. And those groups wasted no time, after the governor signed H589 into law on Monday, hauling McCrory and the state into court, filing three separate lawsuits challenging the law.
“Our goal is to make sure that these voting changes never become law in North Carolina,” said Penda Hair, an attorney for the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, one of the groups filing suit.
But the flurry of activity by lawmakers and the swift reaction from voting rights advocates will now switch gears to the deliberate and often expensive plodding in state and federal courts, with trials leading to appeals, possibly even to the Supreme Court.
And in the interim, one if not two elections will take place.
“Whether or not the law violates the Constitution, or some other law, doesn’t determine whether or not it’s good policy,” said Justin Levitt, a voting rights expert and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “And North Carolina voters should remember that litigation is not the only recourse to bad policy.”
Full Article: The long road ahead for voting rights | NC Policy Watch.