Good news here in the war against voter suppression.
In a significant legal battle against North Carolina’s highly effective voter suppression laws which have been ruled unconstitutional because they are constituted as "race-based vote suppression" by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, the new Democratic Governor, Roy Cooper, has announced that he will no longer defend these laws as they progress to the Supreme Court. Also, the Democratic State Attorney General, Josh Stein, also will no longer support defending these laws, which have cost the state $5 million dollars so far.
Also, as stated by Attorney General Stein:
"Attorneys representing the plaintiffs have agreed to waive up to $12 million of legal fees from the more than three-year litigation if the petition is dismissed and the litigation ends.”
In its ruling, the Appellate Court determined that the Republican lawmakers set out to suppress African-American voters “with almost surgical precision.” Further:
“the court noted, of “the inevitable tendency of elected officials to entrench themselves by targeting groups unlikely to vote for them.”
Some of the odious parts of the law included the following : eliminated same-day voter registration, cut a full week of early voting, barred voters from casting a ballot outside their home precincts, scrapped straight-ticket voting, and got rid of a program to pre-register high school students who would turn 18 by Election Day. That law also included one of the nation’s strictest voter ID requirements.
This does not guarantee abdication of the State defending the law, however. There is a State Elections Board, which historically the Governor had the right to appoint members, but after the results of the election, the Republican legislature, determined by very aggressive partisan gerrymandering, wrote new laws which kept control of the election board in GOP hands. This rather dubious action is also being fought in court. This means that the GOB controlled election board and legislature can continue to fund the dense of this law.
talkingpointsmemo.com/…
Actually, this Diary/article should be posted by DK’s DocDawg, who has done a lot of work in this fight in North Carolina.
So, the props for this fight should go to DocDawg