Voter ID ruling opens floodgates to voting changes

by Jim Tynen, Civitas Institute, August 2, 2016.

After a panel of three federal judges struck down the state’s 2013 voter ID law on Friday, observers say the floodgates have been opened for local boards of elections to adjust their own one-stop voting schedules – and more.

The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, known for its left-leaning judges, issued a blunt ruling saying that the law was passed with discriminatory intent and said that the “provisions target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”

The ruling said – through use of vague language that didn’t identify the Republican Party by name – that leaders in the Republican Party targeted the votes of African-Americans by curtailing the methods in which that community usually votes.

The ruling recognized that the stated goal of the 2013 law was to defend against voter fraud, but says that the law was imposing “cures for problems that did not exist.”

The court did not, however, surgically remove sections of the law that it found cancerous, but instead threw out the entire law.

The ruling stated, “Faced with this record, we can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the district court to the contrary and remand with instructions to enjoin the challenged provisions of the law.”

Civitas Institute President Col. Francis De Luca (USMCR) says that the court ruling throws the baby out with the bathwater, opening up the floodgates for all of the 100 local county boards of elections to write their own rulebook on one-stop voting, including reductions in time and availability of sites.

“The 4th District ruling does a lot of bad things in term of the voting law,” he said. “All the things that they said are unconstitutional have been found to be constitutional in different rulings. Also, to say that somehow [the voting laws] are discriminatory when they cannot show any one person being prevented from voting by any of these rulings is on its face laughable.”

But one of the widest reaching effects of the court ruling beyond removing the voter ID requirement is the flexibility local boards of elections have in setting up one-stop voting again.

“The really interesting thing is because the 2013 law set very specific standards for one-stop voting in terms of the hours and availability, and that if you opened one site you had to open all sites immediately,” De Luca said. “What [the federal judges] have done by reverting to the previous law is throw back onto the 100 county boards of elections the ability to go back and re-open their entire one-stop voting plan. And also those plans, in terms of the review, now fall back under the old law, not under the new law, in which the legislature had given the state board more authority over one-stop voting sites.

“The local boards now have the freedom to do what they want on one-stop voting, so you could see on the extreme a county like Mecklenburg County opening one one-stop site for 17 days and that would comply with the law.”

De Luca said that local boards can potentially save money over their current plans while still serving their communities.

“It’s costing them a lot of money,” he said. “There’s a lot of the counties that actually don’t need as much as they have, but because the law required them not to reduce hours, then they really are kind of between a rock and a hard place. This again gives them complete freedom.

“In fact I would recommend that every county board of elections look at their one-stop voting sites and revisit that immediately and make sure that what they do fits their counties,” De Luca said. “They can save money, they can better serve their public, and the court has given them carte blanche to do what they want with one-stop voting.”

He also said that the ruling opens the door for boards to write voting policies for political gains, as happened in 2008.

“The court, by throwing out the 2013 law, in total has now allowed local board of elections to be completely political, like they were in 2008,” De Luca said. “Because in 2008 (some local boards) were very selective with one-stop voting sites. In fact in Cumberland County they opened one that was right next to [a Barack Obama] campaign rally in 2008. That was where they used the law for completely political purposes, they didn’t have other sites open in the county, they opened it on a Sunday near an Obama rally.

“So all now the 100 Republican-controlled county boards of elections can be just as political with it. Remember it’s partisan politics, its not racial or anything. These are about winning elections, and since in 2008 Democrat-controlled boards used it to help them win elections, there is nothing preventing county boards from doing the same thing, unless the Fourth District wants to come in and run every county board of elections themselves.”

De Luca said that the ruling is another example of an out-of-control federal judiciary micro-managing the affairs of the states.

“This is where we just have a judiciary that is out of control, micro-managing the states. Election law has always been left to the states to within certain parameters,” he said. “It is the purview of the states to decide how they run their elections.”

The Civitas Institute is a conservative think tank based in Raleigh.

State leaders respond to voter ID ruling

Gov. Pat McCrory issued a statement following the federal court of appeals ruling saying that he disagrees with the ruling and will pursue appeals and any other options.

“Photo IDs are required to purchase Sudafed, cash a check, board an airplane or enter a federal court room,” He said. “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.”

Senate Leader Sen. Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) and House Speaker Rep. Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) issued a joint statement Friday in response to the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling on voter ID saying, “Since today’s decision by three partisan Democrats ignores legal precedent, ignores the fact that other federal courts have used North Carolina’s law as a model, and ignores the fact that a majority of other states have similar protections in place, we can only wonder if the intent is to reopen the door for voter fraud, potentially allowing fellow Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton and Roy Cooper to steal the election. We will obviously be appealing this politically motivated decision to the Supreme Court.

“The voter ID law ensures any North Carolina citizen who wants to vote will have that opportunity. The law establishes a list of valid government-issued photo IDs that voters can present at their polling places, allows anyone without a photo ID to obtain one at no cost through the Department of Motor Vehicles, and allows anyone who still has difficulty obtaining a valid ID to fill out a reasonable impediment affidavit and still have their vote counted. It also brings North Carolina into the mainstream of other states on matters of same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting.”

Attempts to reach representatives of the State Board of Elections for comment were not returned by press time.

http://nccapitolconnection.com/2016/08/02/voter-id-ruling-opens-floodgates-to-voting-changes/