"North Carolina has a lengthy history of voter discrimination." It's time to get rid of it once and for all.

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COMMENTS:
*  any Id that requires someone to spend hundreds of $ and/or takes a lot of time off work to get the Docs required to get the "Free" ID is NOT free.  To make it easy for you to understand, is a cup of coffee free if you have to pay $1 for the cup it is put in?
*  We need electronic voting that would enable people to vote from computers, smart phones, and tablets. Security would be no less effective than it is now for banking and other personal access matters. Fraud would be no higher either, may even go down to zero from basically zero now. It would give every able citizen the chance to vote for who they want to, Mickey Mouse and all. LoL.
*  Why now. For years no one cared about an ID card for voting. So why now. Oh right, the black guy won and we don't never want to see that again.
*  Hello America:  As a child I was taught that "If you have to cheat to win then you really will never be a true winner or a real man or woman". The GOP/TP know that they can't win in a "LEGAL AND HONEST" election (remember the 2000 Presidential election) so they lie like the dogs they truly are and use every underhanded and ungodly ploy in their sinister book to rig elections and stay in power simply because there are more honest and honorable people in America then there are bigoted and racist haters.  They are all dying out and as Darwin's research on the evolution process proves "IN NATURE IT IS THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST" and the era of American Apartheid is in its last days - THANK GOD!!!!!!!!
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This Fresh Fight for Voting Rights in North Carolina Could Change America
By Rebecca McCray, July 14, 2015

As the 2016 presidential race heats up, a legal battle to dismantle what experts say is the worst discriminatory voting law in the country is under way in North Carolina. This week marked the opening of a federal trial in which racial justice advocates are challenging a law that arguably suppresses the votes of blacks and Latinos.

North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature passed the law in 2013, just after the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial decision in the voting rights case Shelby County v. Holder. The North Carolina law essentially requires all voters to present a state-issued photo ID, reduces the early voting period by one week, outlaws out-of-precinct voting, and bans same-day registration. These measures were intended to make it easier for all Americans—particularly historically disenfranchised groups, such as people of color and the elderly—to participate in the voting process, and for good reason: 25 percent of eligible black voters and 16 percent of Latino voters don’t have photo IDs, compared with 9 percent of whites, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The Shelby County decision struck down a critical section of the Voting Rights Act, essentially allowing certain states to enact restrictive voting laws without federal clearance. North Carolina was the first state to pass such a law. Similar laws were swiftly passed in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Texas—all battleground states in presidential elections. Denise Lieberman, an attorney for racial justice organization the Advancement Project, which is representing the plaintiffs in the trial, says the North Carolina legislation is the worst.

“The law targets voting at every step of the process,” Lieberman told TakePart. “It was done in a very intentional way to tackle the very practices that were responsible for opening the doors of democracy to voters of color in North Carolina.”

So, Why Should You Care? These restrictions disproportionately affect black and Latino voters. In 2012, for example, 70 percent of black voters in North Carolina used early voting, and 41 percent of voters who used same-day registration were black. These statistics mirror national racial and ethnic voting trends. With a presidential election looming, the outcome of NAACP v. McCrory in North Carolina will set a precedent for protecting—or demolishing—the rights of voters of color, a critical voting bloc, particularly for Democrats. “This is a historic case, and it has profound implications for the future of democracy in general,” Lieberman said. “We’re never going to have a full democracy in this country if the Voting Rights Act can’t strike down laws like this that have a discriminatory impact.”

North Carolina has a lengthy history of voter discrimination. In 1900, the North Carolina General Assembly introduced a constitutional amendment that effectively excluded prospective voters of color through literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses. Lawmakers have not removed the literacy test from the books, though it is no longer enforced. With the passage of the Voting Rights Act, North Carolina’s voter turnout has increased steadily. That progress is the direct result of options such as preregistration, voting out of precinct, and early voting, which enable more people of color to get to the polls—all of which have been suppressed by the law, which is known as House Bill 589.

The trial takes place on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act—it was signed into law in July 1965—which was enacted to eliminate voter discrimination. The plaintiffs, which include the League of Women Voters and a group of North Carolina students in addition to the NAACP, argue that H.B. 589 violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Yesterday and today, North Carolina residents testified before the court about how H.B. 589 has prevented them from casting their ballots. The trial is likely to run for two to three weeks.
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