Keep an eye on voting case

Editorial by Asheville Citizen-Times, July 17, 2015.

Massive changes regarding how people vote in North Carolina may have resulted in fewer minorities in the state being able to participate in elections.

That’s the issue before U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder in Winston-Salem, a question that essentially boils down to this: Was legislation passed in North Carolina flawed in a way that may prevent some people from voting, or is it fact designed to prevent some people from voting and therefore unconstitutional?

The 2013 law being challenged overhauled a number of election statutes. It curtailed the number of early voting days from 17 to 10, ended pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds, and eliminated out-of-precinct voting and same-day registration.

Those measures had been put in place to encourage more people to vote, and were effective. Same-day registration, for example, was used by 90,000 North Carolina voters in 2012.

The North Carolina bill in question, HB 589, also added a voter I.D. provision that was essentially eliminated by the legislature earlier this year.

The plaintiffs in this case — including the NAACP, League of Women and a group of state students, have a high bar to clear: they seek to prove HB 589 violates the Constitution’s 14th and 15th Amendments, along with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for HB 589 when it struck down provisions of the Voting Rights Act that required preclearance of changes to voting laws in states with a history of racial discrimination. In fact, HB 589 essentially passed before the ink was dry on that decision.

But are the moves discriminatory or the end of voting conveniences many other states don’t offer? Attorneys have been busy presenting evidence that thousands of North Carolinians lost their chance to vote in 2014 due to the changes.

The bottom line is that the voting changes, with an emphasis on the voter ID component, were put into place to prevent a widely-hyped type of fraud that belongs alongside Bigfoot and unicorns: In-person impersonation of another voter, thus taking away that voter’s ballot.

By all means, clean up voting rolls. By all means, make sure those voting are eligible.

But don’t start throwing barriers in front of those who are.

We hold that taking away an eligible voter’s right to exercise the franchise is indeed voter fraud. And we contend that making someone who’s been eligible and voting for years jump through new and often difficult hoops takes away that franchise just as thoroughly and also constitutes voter fraud.

As the case plays out in coming days, Judge Schroeder’s focus will be on whether these changes violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, i.e. whether HB 589 makes it harder for minorities to vote as compared to white voters.

The bar is high, but we hope the court sees the case is clear. It’s ironic that this issue is back in the courts on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act. Little wonder some are calling Winston-Salem Winston-Selma.

It is history we shouldn’t have to re-fight.