Supreme Court OKs strict North Carolina voting law for midterms
10/08/14 07:25 PM
By Zachary Roth and David Taintor
The entirety of North Carolina’s sweeping voting law, seen by many as the strictest in the country, can go into effect for the impending midterm elections, the Supreme Court ordered Wednesday.
The Supreme Court’s move clears the way for the elimination of same-day voter registration and bans the counting of votes cast in the wrong precincts. An appeals court put a hold on those two provisions last week.
A trial on the voting law is scheduled for the summer of 2015.
The court did not explain its decision in the brief order it issued, and it wasn’t clear how many justices made up the majority. Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg dissented.
Nearly 100,000 voters—disproportionately minorities—took advantage of same-day registration in 2012. Experts say it’s one of the most effective ways to bring new voters into the process.
The law also eliminated other measures that make voting easier, including a week of early voting and a program that allowed high school students to register to vote. Minorities are more likely than whites to use same-day registration, early voting, and pre-registration, according to evidence contained in briefs filed by the law’s challengers.
The law’s voter ID measure does not go into effect until 2016. But the appeals court said the state could move ahead with its “soft rollout” of voter ID, in which poll workers are directed to ask voters whether they have ID but not stop them from voting if they don’t.
“We are disappointed with the Supreme Court’s ruling today,” North Carolina NAACP head Rev. William Barber II said in a statement. “Tens of thousands of North Carolina voters, especially African-American voters, have relied on same-day registration, as well as the counting of ballots that were cast out of precinct, for years.
more:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/north-carolina-strict-voting-law-cleared-midterms-supreme-court-orders
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