Standoff Over Voting Laws
RALEIGH, NC – Gov. Pat McCrory is vowing to fight a lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department challenging the state’s new elections laws. McCrory has hired a lawyer to help defend the new law from what he suggested was a partisan attack by President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration. “I believe the federal government action is overreaching and without merit, and I firmly believe we have done the right thing. I believe this is good law,” said McCrory.
North Carolina’s new election law cuts early voting by a week, ends same-day voter registration, and includes a stringent photo ID requirement.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said that his agency will show that the intent of North Carolina’s new elections law is to suppress voter turnout, especially among minority and low-income voters. Holder said North Carolina’s new voting law, “would shrink, rather than expand, access to the ballot.” He called it “highly restrictive.”
The lawsuit, filed at U.S. District Court in Greensboro, is to counter a Supreme Court decision that struck down the most powerful part of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. The 5-4 decision handed down this year freed states, many of them in the South, from strict federal oversight of their elections.
