Wednesday, December 12, 2018

NC NAACP Urges Governor to Veto Voter ID Legislation


By Mildred Robertson

The North Carolina NAACP Conference has called on North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper to veto lame duck legislation recently pushed through by the GOP. The organization says it believes Senate Bill 824, “Implementation of Voter ID Constitutional Amendment,” will negatively impact minority voters in the state. 

The NAACP has drafted a letter, dated December 12, 2018, that outlines in great detail why the legislation is bad for the citizens of North Carolina. The letter further details that the  U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has already struck down North Carolina General Assembly’s previous attempt to enact a photo voter ID requirement in the 2013 omnibus voter restriction and photo voter ID law. The Court found that the voter ID legislation targets African-Americans "with almost surgical precision.” It further found that the legislation was “enacted with racially discriminatory intent,” and that it imposed cures for problems that did not exist.

Rev. Dr. T. Anthony Spearman, president of the North Carolina NAACP Conference, states that there is no new justification for the implementation of this law and that it provides no additional safeguards for the voting process in the state. This legislation, he says, is simply evidence of the General Assembly’s “improper motivations.”

To read the letter in its entirety follow this link: LETTER

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