Attorney General Eric Holder announced that new voting laws in North Carolina will be challenged.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department will proceed with filing charges against electoral laws in North Carolina, claiming that the laws restrict voting rights of minorities.
The Justice Department is currently battling similar electoral laws in Texas. According to Attorney General Holder these laws threaten the democratic process and will work to disenfranchise certain voters.
The electoral law, which will not be enforced until 2016, requires that residents show a photo ID at polling locations prior to voting. It also eliminates the first 7 days of early voting, among other restrictions.
North Carolina officials claim that the new electoral law is meant to protect the dependability of the voting process. Governor Pat McCrory (R) defended the new measures saying they will help ensure that “no one’s vote is disenfranchised by a fraudulent ballot.”
The Supreme Court disagrees with Governor McCory. They will challenging key aspects of North Carolina’s new electoral law. These include the requirement of photo ID, the elimination of the first 7 days of early voting, the elimination of same-day early voting registration and the prohibition of provisional ballots cast by voters inside their home county but outside of their voting district.
Holder spoke passionately about the voting laws being challenged. In his announcement on Monday he said, “Today’s action is about far more than unwarranted voter restrictions. It is about our democracy, and who we are as a nation. I stand here to announce this lawsuit more in sorrow than in anger. It pains me to see the voting rights of my fellow citizens negatively impacted by actions predicated on a rationale that is tenuous at best — and on concerns that we all know are not, in fact, real.”
