4th Circuit Strikes Down North Carolina GOP Effort to Disenfranchise Voters

This blog has noted numerous times that, faced with a shrinking base of aging, angry white voters, the Republican Party nation wide has endeavored to pass voter ID laws to disenfranchise as many minority and college age voters as possible.  The justification?  To prevent "voter fraud" which various reports have shown to be a non-existent problem.  This false justification plays well with the white supremacist element of the GOP base and is foolishly believed by lazy journalists and partisan pundits.  With the GOP take over of the North Carolina legislature, that body - now perhaps the most extreme in the state's history - enacted new voter ID laws aimed clearly and disenfranchising minority and other voters unlikely to vote Republican.  Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit )"4th Circuit") struck down the North Carolina voter disfranchisement ID law.  The court's opinion can be found here.  Huffington Post has details:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered a lower court to block two new voting restrictions in North Carolina, saying there was "no doubt" the measures would disenfranchise minorities.

North Carolina will now be required to reinstate same-day voter registration, as well as allow voters to cast ballots even if they show up to vote in the wrong precinct.

In a two-to-one ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that "whether the number is thirty or thirty-thousand, surely some North Carolina minority voters will be disproportionately adversely affected in the upcoming election" and that it was important to act now, since "there could be no do-over and no redress" once the election was over.

The appeals court ruled that the lower court "failed to adequately consider North Carolina’s history of voting discrimination" and said the new law eliminated "voting mechanisms successful in fostering minority participation."

"The injury to these voters is real and completely irreparable if nothing is done to enjoin this law," the ruling said.

The law eliminated a number of measures intended to protect would-be voters from being disenfranchised and required them to show photo identification at the polls.

The Justice Department joined civil rights groups in suing over the law a month later.

"The election laws in North Carolina prior to House Bill 589’s enactment encouraged participation by qualified voters," the appeals court ruled Wednesday. "But the challenged House Bill 589 provisions stripped them away. The public interest thus weighs heavily in Plaintiffs’ favor."

In its ruling, the 4th Circuit gave the lower court a sever spanking.  It also made this statement concerning specious justifications for disenfranchising voters.  Here is a telling quote:

At the end of the day, we cannot escape the district court’s repeated findings that Plaintiffs presented undisputed evidence showing that same day registration and out-of-precinct voting were enacted to increase voter participation, that African American voters disproportionately used those electoral mechanisms, and that House Bill 589 restricted those mechanisms and thus disproportionately impacts African American voters.

To us, when viewed in the context of relevant “social and historical conditions” in North Carolina, Gingles, 478 U.S. at 47, this looks precisely like the textbook example of Section 2 [Voting Rights Act] vote denial. . . . Neither North Carolina nor any other jurisdiction can escape the powerful protections Section 2 affords minority voters by simply "espous[ing]” rationalizations for a discriminatory law.