North Carolina Republicans Want a Constitutional Amendment to Require ID to Vote
The voter ID law was struck down in court, so now the GOP is putting it on the November ballot.
ARI BERMANJUN. 7, 2018 6:03 PM
North Carolina Republicans are resurrecting their efforts to require voters to present specific forms of identification in order to cast a ballot, after an earlier voter ID law was struck down for discriminating against African Americans. This time, they’re trying to do it through a constitutional amendment.
On Thursday, Republicans in the legislature introduced a constitutional amendment that would require a photo ID to vote. It is expected to pass the legislature in the coming days and be placed on the ballot for voters’ approval in November.
A voter ID law passed by the legislature in 2013 was blocked by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2016 for targeting “African Americans with almost surgical precision.” The court found that African Americans in North Carolina “disproportionately lacked DMV-issued ID” and that the legislature wrote the bill to exclude IDs that African Americans were more likely to possess, such as student IDs and public employee IDs. According to the state’s own numbers, 316,000 registered voters didn’t have a driver’s license or state ID from the DMV; 34 percent were African Americans (who make up 22 percent of the state’s population) and 55 percent were registered Democrats.
Now North Carolina Republicans are asking voters to pass the same type of law. But given that the earlier law was struck down in federal court for violating the US Constitution, it’s not clear how an amendment to the state constitution would change that.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/06/north-carolina-republicans-want-a-constitutional-amendment-to-require-id-to-vote/
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