318,000 of N.C.’s registered voters — including students and seniors — lack a qualifying voter ID. Guess what percentage are registered as Republicans?
Shortly after the North Carolina Voter ID law was signed, civil rights groups including the League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union joined in filing a lawsuit in federal court. The actual hearing may be at least a few months away and will likely be in the appeals process for some time after. However, North Carolinians can take comfort in that these groups have been successful in many venues at getting Voter ID laws temporarily suspended for elections and eventually tossed for good. The bad news is that there are a dozen other bills like the Voter ID law currently in the Legislature that are aimed at the the heart of Democratic viability.
The Voter ID law, which is formally know as the Voter Information Verification Act or VIVA, earned the titles of ? most draconian voting rights legislation? by the?”Daily Show” and ?most sweeping anti-voter law in at least decades? by the Election Law Blog. Of the 318,000 registered voters that the Board of Elections estimates currently do not meet the photo-ID requirement, only 21% identify as Republican, and that is just one provision of the 49-page law. Other provisions include drastic reductions in the Early Voting period that Democrats exercised 3-to-2 ratio over Republicans, turning away voters mistaken about their polling place, and elimination of election-day registration. As damaging as the VIVA is, the dozen active bills that could ride the GOP super-majority into law are equally troublesome.
S667?revives a law struck down in 1979 depriving in-state students of rights protected by a host of federal and state constitutional provisions. If passed, students are ineligible to be claimed as a dependent if register at a different address. H19 starts off by banning the protest of funerals and somehow gets off-track, becomes confused, and ends up criminalizing anything deemed ?disruptive? to an educational institution.?The most repulsive part of H19 is that a bill intending to protect the dignity of a fallen soldier from funeral protest does a far greater indignity by restricting the rights he or she died protecting.
North Carolinians that have been ruled “mentally incompetent” by any court could be disenfranchised under S668. While that may not seen radical, state law allows for a ruling of incompetency for?conditions?that include: ??epilepsy, cerebral palsy, autism, inebriety, disease, injury? or ?other conditions? that could provide reason for supporting the Affordable Care Act. While that may seem far-fetched, the mentally-challenged were unable to vote prior to this bill.
Oh, just in case seniors missed the VIVA provision protecting them from being denied to vote because expired ID, S712?protects homebound citizens by providing an ID card. ? Other bills ?reform? judicial elections, campaign expense laws, redistricting procedures, and the restructure of the state Board of Elections. Oh, and we are only 8 months in.
In 2012, the state investigated 121 cases of voter fraud for both the Primary and General elections. With over 6.7 million votes cast, voter fraud accounts for .000018% of the vote. The GOP is not solving voter fraud, they are preventing Americans from voting that are unlikely to vote for them.
Photo from Talking Points Memo.
edited/published eap
