Last year, North Carolina passed the most sweeping voting restrictions since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Civil rights groups like the North Carolina NAACP and ACLU asked the courts for an injunction against three major parts of the law before the midterms—a reduction in early voting by a week, the elimination of same-day registration during the early voting period and a prohibition on counting ballots accidentally cast in the wrong precinct. In early August, District Court Judge Thomas Schroeder denied the injunction, saying the plaintiffs had not proven “irreparable harm.” Two of three judges on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled parts of Schroeder’s ruling today, reinstating same-day registration and the counting of out-of-precinct ballots for 2014. In not-so-good news for voting rights, the appeals court also upheld: “(i) the reduction of early-voting days; (ii) the expansion of allowable voter challengers; (iii) the elimination of the discretion of county boards of elections to keep the polls open an additional hour on Election Day in ‘extraordinary circumstances’; (iv) the elimination of pre-registration of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds who will not be eighteen years old by the next general election; and (v) the soft roll-out of voter identification requirements to go into effect in 2016.”
“With respect to these provisions, we conclude that, although Plaintiffs may ultimately succeed at trial, they have not met their burden of satisfying all elements necessary for a preliminary injunction,” wrote Judges James Wynn and Henry Floyd, two Obama appointees.
The restoration of same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting is an important victory for voters in North Carolina. Nearly 100,000 North Carolinians used same-day registration in 2012, including twice as many blacks as whites.
Roughly 7,500 voters also cast their ballots in the wrong precinct but right county in 2012. Judge Wynn noted during oral arguments that he lived next door to a voting precinct, but was registered to vote at one a few miles away, which was highly confusing for voters.
Full Article: Voting Rights Victory in North Carolina | The Nation.