In 2018, North Carolina’s legislature passed a law to require voter ID in elections. Left-wing activists challenged the statute, which has overwhelming public support, and last Friday, a lame-duck North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the law. At the same time, in a separate case, the Court invalidated the Republican legislature’s redistricting plan. For now, let’s focus on voter ID:
Both rulings were 4-3 decisions, purely along party lines with all the court’s Democrats in the majority and all the Republicans dissenting.
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In the voter ID ruling, the Democratic justices noted that Republicans had rushed to pass the law during a lame-duck session, after Democrats had taken away some of their power in the 2018 midterms. In a press release Friday, House Speaker Tim Moore said now it’s the Supreme Court doing the same thing, with the parties reversed.
The 4-3 majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court expedited hearing of these cases so they could be decided by Democrats. As of January, the Court will have a 5-2 Republican majority.
Why would a voter ID requirement, which polls indicate is supported by around 70% of Americans, including large majorities of minorities, be illegal?
[Justice] Earls wrote that “even though the General Assembly had reason to know that African-American voters would be disproportionately affected by (the law), it still chose to pass a law that required the specific IDs African-American voters disproportionately lack.” A dissent from the court’s Republican justices, however, argues that “there is no evidence that (the law) was passed with race in mind, let alone a racially discriminatory intent.”
Basically, it is an article of faith among Democrats that if you try to prevent voter fraud, you are discriminating against African-Americans. Liberals apparently believe that blacks commit a lot of voter fraud. I don’t know about that, but evidently a lot of Democrats do commit voter fraud, or else why would Democratic politicians and judges be so viciously hostile to any effort to promote ballot integrity?
This story will have a happy ending, courtesy of voters who want honest elections:
The rulings came at the last minute for the voting rights activists who won the cases, since in January the court will switch to a Republican majority. GOP judges swept all of this year’s statewide midterm elections.
And:
Republicans, who hold a majority in both houses of the state legislature, vowed to pass another — perhaps even stricter — voter ID law in response to the court’s ruling.
Let’s hope they follow through.
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