NC voting anti-law struck down, VRA upheld.

[wildeyed]

The NC anti-voting law is exhibit A for why we still need the Voting Rights Act. Because it was WORKING! I do voter registration and education in NC and I am SO DAMN HAPPY about this.

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-countrys-worst-anti-voting-law-was-just-struck-down-in-north-carolina/

During the period in which North Carolina jurisdictions were covered by Section 5, African American electoral participation dramatically improved. In particular, between 2000 and 2012, when the law provided for the voting mechanisms at issue here and did not require photo ID, African American voter registration swelled by 51.1%.

African American turnout similarly surged, from 41.9% in 2000 to 71.5% in 2008 and 68.5% in 2012.

Then, after these gains occurred and the Supreme Court gutted the VRA, North Carolina Republicans swiftly curtailed or eliminated every voting reform in the state that expanded political participation.

After years of preclearance and expansion of voting access, by 2013 African American registration and turnout rates had finally reached near-parity with white registration and turnout rates. African Americans were poised to act as a major electoral force. But, on the day after the Supreme Court issued Shelby County v. Holder, 133 S. Ct. 2612 (2013), eliminating preclearance obligations, a leader of the party that newly dominated the legislature (and the party that rarely enjoyed African American support) announced an intention to enact what he characterized as an “omnibus” election law. Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.

In response to claims that intentional racial discrimination animated its action, the State offered only meager justifications. Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist. Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation.

Faced with this record, we can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent.

The court’s opinion is a striking rebuke to Chief Justice John Roberts’s ruling that voting discrimination is largely a thing of the past. “It calls Shelby into question,” says Allison Riggs of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which argued the case along with the Justice Department, Advancement Project, and ACLU. “Justice Roberts says we live in post-racial society, and this is strong evidence we don’t.”