North Carolina Supreme Court rules state voter ID law is constitutional and should be enforced

By arseniotoledo // 2023-05-01

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The North Carolina Supreme Court has handed the state's Republican Party a major victory after ruling that the state's voter ID law is constitutional. The court became a Republican majority this year following the election of two Republican-leaning justices, and the Supreme Court wasted no time revisiting the opinion of the previous liberal-majority court regarding voter IDs. This led to the state supreme court throwing out the previous claim that a law requiring voters to present photo identification as being racially biased. (Related: Americans want stricter voter identification laws, a new poll shows.) North Carolina voters in November 2018 approved a constitutional amendment requiring all voters to present photographic identification before being allowed to cast their ballots. The North Carolina state legislature, the General Assembly, then passed a bill – Senate Bill 824 – that would have implemented the amendment into law. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the bill, but the GOP was able to override the veto, only requiring a simple majority to do so. The court held re-hearings on the voter ID law in March, and in a five-to-two vote allowed the state legislature to enforce the voter ID law. The North Carolina Supreme Court also threw out previous rulings that declared it illegal for the state to redistrict maps for excessive partisanship, and it upheld a law requiring felons to complete their full sentences before regaining ballot access.

Voter ID victory upholds will of the people

Democrats and liberal activists in North Carolina continue to claim that voter ID laws are prejudiced or have a racial bias against the state's Black and other non-White populations. "Future generations will remember today as the day that democracy was gutted in North Carolina and voter suppression re-emerged in the supreme court," claimed Dennis Gaddy, director of the Community Success Initiative, a non-profit that is supposedly dedicated to voters' rights. "It shows their commitment to knowingly and willingly upholding racist laws and practices designed specifically to disenfranchise Black voters. We are disappointed but not deterred." But the North Carolina Republican Party argued that the state supreme court's ruling represents a victory over Democratic attempts to obstruct the will of the people. "A strong majority of North Carolina voters … voted to adopt voter ID requirements," wrote the party in a statement. "For the last decade, Democrats have obstructed the will of the people, but now North Carolina will be among the three dozen states requiring some form of ID to vote." Michael Whatley, chairman of the North Carolina GOP, noted how the supreme court "reinstated the proper balance in the courts and the legislature." "I think this is great for our elections and it's going to be great for our state," said Whatley. "I don't think that this is a threat to democracy in any way. I think that we want to make sure that it is easy to vote and hard to cheat in North Carolina." A federal lawsuit challenging the voter ID law is still pending, but without an injunction, the North Carolina State Board of Elections announced that its staff would start working toward "a smooth rollout" of the photographic identification requirement for municipal elections scheduled for this November. Learn more about vulnerabilities in elections, like the lack of voter ID laws, at VoteFraud.news. Watch this video from "Recharge Freedom" debunking the claim that voter ID laws are racist. This video is from the Recharge Freedom channel on Brighteon.com.

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Voter ID victory upholds will of the people

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