N.C. governor signs voting law

North Carolina has become the latest state to sign into law overly restrictive changes to their election laws. In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling striking a key provision from the Voting Rights Act, states like North Carolina, who previously needed federal approval before making significant changes to their voting laws, are now free to make sweeping changes. Critics say these changes disenfranchise typically minority voters, young voters, and the elderly.

North Carolina’s governor on Monday quietly signed a measure into law that overhauls the state’s election laws to require government-issued photo IDs at the polls and to shorten early voting, moves that drew stinging criticism and threats of legal action from the NAACP and other groups.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union joined two other groups in announcing that they were filing suit against key parts of the package. This came hours after Republican Gov. Pat McCrory said in a statement that he had signed the measure, without a ceremony and without journalists present.

 

Republicans lawmakers who backed the measure said it was meant to prevent voter fraud, which they allege is both rampant and undetected in North Carolina. Independent voting rights groups joined Democrats and libertarians in suggesting the true goal was to suppress voter turnout, especially among traditional Democratic constituencies such as blacks, the young, the elderly and the poor.