Appeals court strikes down North Carolina’s voter-ID law

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down North Carolina’s requirement that voters show identification before casting ballots and reinstated an additional week of early voting, finding that legislators had acted with “discriminatory intent” in imposing strict election rules.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit was an overwhelming victory for the Justice Department and civil rights groups that argued the measures were designed to dampen the growing political clout of African American voters, who participated in record numbers in elections in 2008 and 2012.

“We can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the panel.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...0b5844-4f72-11e6-aa14-e0c1087f7583_story.html

 

Salty, other states do not seem to have a problem. What the court is saying is that such laws have to be fair and not racist.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/u...n-north-carolina-voter-id-provision.html?_r=0

The judges noted that Republican leaders had drafted their restrictions on voting only after receiving data indicating that African-Americans would be the voters most significantly affected by them.

“We cannot ignore the record evidence that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,”
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“A political majority doesn’t give you the power to run roughshod over the Constitution,”
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“The ability of Americans to have a voice in the direction of their country — to have a fair and free opportunity to help write the story of this nation — is fundamental to who we are,”