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Editor-in-Chief
If you pay any attention at all to news or politics or if you’ve attended any of the recent Moral Monday protests, you would know that during the summer Governor Pat McCrory signed House Bill 589, a bill that will drastically change the North Carolina voting procedure in 2016. The signing of the bill, which is aimed at preventing voter fraud, sparked much controversy over its true purpose.
The GOP supported bill will end voting preregistration for 16 and 17 year olds, the early voting period will be shortened by seven days (from 17 to 10), and voters will no longer be able to take advantage of same day registration. The questions are, however, do these changes have anything to do with preventing voter fraud? What effect could preregistration possibly have on voter security? This part of the bill was written to make it harder for young people to vote, an idea further supported by the fact that school issued Student IDs are no longer an acceptable form of voting identification. Who else would be voting with a Student ID other than a high school or college student who will, by the way, typically vote in favor of the Democratic Party? According to civicyouth.org, in 2012, 60% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for President Obama, as opposed to the 37% who voted for Mitt Romney. It’s obvious what group of people this part of the bill is aimed at affecting. In a study conducted by CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) it was revealed that in 2010 over 25% of college students did not register to vote, based on the fact that they did not know where or how to register. Shortening the window for early voting and putting an end to same day registration will surely increase this percentage.
On the issue, McCrory said, "Even if the instances of misidentified people casting votes are low, that shouldn’t prevent us from putting this non-burdensome safeguard in place.” McCrory himself acknowledges the fact that voter fraud is not a very big issue in the state, so what made him choose to focus on this issue above any others? How could he call this move “non-burdensome” when the facts show that this will only cause problems among voters who utilize early voting periods and same-day registration?
In a statement, McCrory defended the bill saying, “While some will try to make this seem to be controversial, the simple reality is that requiring voters to provide a photo ID when they vote is a common-sense idea.” He added one more defense, "Just because you haven’t been robbed doesn’t mean you shouldn’t lock your doors at night or when you’re away from home." What McCrory leaves out in his analogy, however, is the fact that if you were to live in a neighborhood with little to no crime, it wouldn’t be necessary to lock your doors and the government wouldn’t force you to. So, if you have little to no cases of voter fraud, is requiring a photo ID really necessary? The answer is no.
Shortly after the bill was signed, the North Carolina Conference of the NAACP and the ACLU of North Carolina both filed lawsuits against the bill, saying that the bill violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
