Photo above showing Gov. Pat McCrory’s expression as the court’s ruling was explained to him.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down North Carolina’s voter ID law. The crux of the opinion is that Republicans in the North Carolina legislature are not just racists, they are colossally stupid racists.
Sure, the court addressed the fantastic arguments that “voter ID laws are necessary to protect the integrity of the process,” noting that the integrity of American elections is not in question. Or as The Washington Post summarized:
One of the most comprehensive studies on the subject found only 31 individual cases of voter impersonation out of more than 1 billion votes cast in the United States since the year 2000. Researchers have found that reports of voter fraud are roughly as common as reports of alien abduction.
But the court went on to address just how little the racists in the North Carolina legislature did to cover their tracks. Again, the Post:
In particular, the court found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. “This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV),” the judges wrote.
So the legislators made it so that the only acceptable forms of voter identification were the ones disproportionately used by white people. “With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans,” the judges wrote. “The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess.”
Most strikingly, the judges point to a “smoking gun” in North Carolina’s justification for the law, proving discriminatory intent. The state argued in court that “counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black” and “disproportionately Democratic,” and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result.
“Thus, in what comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times, the State’s very justification for a challenged statute hinges explicitly on race — specifically its concern that African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise,” the judges write in their decision.
“Faced with this record,” the federal court concludes, “we can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent.”
This kind of trail of bigoted, self-serving conduct is really pretty breathtaking. The only two possibilities are that 1) the racism in North Carolina’s legislature is so rampant that the racists don’t even know the rest of us think they should be ashamed, or 2) this was really the best they could to do conceal their conduct. Neither option paints a flattering picture.
Gov. McCrory, never one to let careful thought get in the way of a political opportunity, can’t understand. “”Photo IDs are required to purchase Sudafed, cash a check, board an airplane or enter a federal court room. Yet, three Democratic judges are undermining the integrity of our elections while also maligning our state. We will immediately appeal and also review other potential options.”
I wonder if the North Carolina legislature knew the instance of criminal use of Sudafed when they clamped down on its purchase? Or if they specifically requested an analysis of whether Republicans or Democrats used more Sudafed?
The ‘smoking gun’ proving North Carolina Republicans tried to disenfranchise black voters