Plugging along on this ongoing soap opera, a reader remarks:
The Daily North Carolina Disaster.
Yes, it sure is, and here’s today’s, courtesy DocDawg @ The Daily Kos:
With the start of oral arguments in a U.S. District Court challenge to its worst-in-the-nation voter suppression law just three weeks off (plus an accompanying massive protest to be held just outside the courthouse doors in Winston-Salem), last night North Carolina state House and Senate Republicans hurriedly introduced and passed – all within a matter of minutes and without advance notice to house and senate Democrats – a confusing revision to the state’s onerous voter ID requirements which are set to take effect in the 2016 election cycle. …
The bill (House Bill 836) provides a new means for registered voters who are unable to present a photo ID at the polling place to nonetheless cast a ballot – but by means so byzantine that few if any voters are likely to be able to take advantage of the new provision. It provides that a voter without acceptable ID may, no later than the last Saturday before election day, submit in person and only at the county Board of Elections headquarters an application for an absentee ballot, whereupon he or she may receive and cast that ballot. …
In short, this latest sleight of hand still bars a voter who lacks ID from voting on election day itself, and requires a voter who by definition lacks a driver’s license to somehow find a way to get to the county Board of Elections headquarters (in a state whose poorest and blackest counties are very large and lack adequate public transportation), during office hours, in order to vote.
The Progressive Pulse reports that Democracy NC‘s Bob Hall disagrees (their website appears to lack any such announcement):
The new provisions in HB-836, passed by wide margins in both the NC Senate and House yesterday, add a measure of protection for legitimate voters, a back-up way to provide documentation or confidential data that verify the person at the poll is the voter. The new “reasonable impediment” provision still requires the extra time and uncertainty of filling out a provisional ballot, but now there’s a better chance that the vote will actually be counted.
In the context of a needless and likely unconstitutional law, this is clearly a victory for citizens and citizen participation. During his comments yesterday about HB-836, Rep. David Lewis acknowledged the importance of citizen voices at the recent voter ID rule-making hearings across the state. Democracy North Carolina played a leading role in encouraging hundreds of citizens to attend and speak out at these hearings, and we will continue to work hard to make sure no one is blocked from voting.
