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The right to vote is fundamental to
American democracy—as is the integrity of each vote. Which is why the debate
over whether voter ID laws prevent fraud or encourage disenfranchisement has
been raging for years.
Election law experts
have long held that the biggest voter registration fraud was the push for laws
that make it harder for
African-Americans and the poor to vote. Even so, 17 states have passed more
restrictive voter registration laws since the 2012 presidential election. Civil
rights groups have filed lawsuits challenging voter registration restrictions
in Arizona, Georgia, Texas, and Ohio. Now it appears the tide is turning with
rulings in North Carolina and Wisconsin overturning restrictions.
North Carolina
The federal Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965
to put a stop to state-level disenfranchisement of minority voters through
restrictive voter registration laws. In addition to establishing nationwide
provisions that largely mirrored the 15th Amendment, the Act contained special
enforcement provisions targeting areas of the country, mostly in the South,
where voter discrimination was most prevalent.
Citing data on racial differences in voting behaviors
among North Carolina voters, the state specifically identified its concern that
too many African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, were
voting.
The formula for
determining which areas would be subject to these special provisions was
spelled out in Section 4 of the Act, while the provisions themselves were
delineated in Section 5 of the law, which stated that these jurisdictions could
not implement any change to voter policies without the approval of the US
attorney general or the United States District Court for the District of
Columbia.
In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the
Voting Rights Act, eliminating the formula for determining which areas of the
country were subject to preclearance. Freed of the need for preclearance, North
Carolina’s legislature wasted no time, eliminating same-day voter registration,
cutting off the first week of early voting, and putting an end to
out-of-precinct voting in an omnibus bill passed shortly after the Shelby decision. The Justice Department and
civil rights groups responded equally promptly with a lawsuit charging that the
state had selectively eliminated voting provisions disproportionately utilized
by African Americans.
On July 29, the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that North
Carolina’s Republican-led legislature had enacted new voting restrictions in
2013 to intentionally blunt the growing clout of Democratic-leaning African
American voters. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote “The new provisions target
African Americans with almost surgical precision” and “impose[s] cures for
problems that did not exist.”
A critical factor in the
decision was the so-called “smoking gun” – the state’s own defense of the elimination of
Sunday voting hinged explicitly on race. Citing data on racial differences in
voting behaviors among North Carolina voters, the state specifically identified
its concern that too many African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for
Democrats, were voting.
Wisconsin
Parts of Wisconsin’s voter
ID requirements had already been struck down by a federal judge when (on the
same day as the North Carolina decision) U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson chipped further away at
Wisconsin’s voter law, eliminating elements of Wisconsin’s voter ID
requirements, limits on early voting, and restrictions on early voting.
“To put it bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of voter
ID law is a cure worse than the disease.”
Peterson wrote that despite a
Supreme Court ruling in favor of properly written voter-ID laws to guard
against voter fraud, “The evidence in this case casts doubt on the notion that
voter ID laws foster integrity and confidence. The Wisconsin experience
demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to
real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance
confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities. To put it
bluntly, Wisconsin’s strict version of voter ID law is a cure worse than the
disease.”
Upcoming Elections
It’s no surprise that
the twin fears of voter fraud and voter disenfranchisement are receiving
heightened attention now, with a presidential election only months away. In
light of dataindicating that voter fraud of the sort voter ID laws
are meant to prevent is largely an imagined phenomenon, the federal judiciary’s
stand against discriminatory voter laws almost certainly improves access to the
polls for millions of Americans.
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