Stacey Stitt, a fast food worker in Charlotte, North Carolina, wanted desperately to vote in his state’s presidential primary in March. But the 35-year-old, who does not own a car and takes the bus to work, did not have the ID needed to vote under the state’s strict new law.
“I tried to get a drivers’ license, but I couldn’t, because I didn’t have copy of my birth certificate,” he told reporters. “Since I was born on a military base in Germany, there was a big delay in getting all my paperwork.”
Though Stitt could not get a license in time, he still wanted to vote, using a loophole the state approved last-minute to help voters like him who face impediments to obtaining an ID. But he said the legislature’s cuts to early voting made it impossible for him and many other low-income workers to make it to the polls on time.
“We have to request days off work at least two weeks in advance,” he said. “My bus commute is more than an hour each way, and if I’m even just a few minutes late I can get written up. So I couldn’t get to the polling place. This may have just been a nuisance for someone with ability to choose their work schedule, but it prevented me from voting.”
North Carolina’s voting laws went back to court on Tuesday, challenged by impacted voters like Stitt and civil rights groups who say the laws were passed with the intention of preserving Republicans’ political majority.
Tuesday’s hearing is the next step in a multi-year legal battle over the law. After a conservative federal judge upheld the law in April, the plaintiffs appealed. The Circuit Court hearing the case this week may be North Carolina voters’ last hope for having the rules repealed before this November’s presidential election.
“I hope the court will make the right decision so people regardless of their race and their job can all have the right to vote,” Stitt said.
The laws in question eliminated same-day voter registration, cut a full week of early voting, barred voters from casting a ballot outside their home precinct, ended straight-ticket voting, and scrapped a program to pre-register high school students who would turn 18 by Election Day. It also mandated one of the country’s strictest voter ID requirements, which does not count student IDs.
Attorney Irving Joyner, representing the North Carolina NAACP, argued the case before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia on Tuesday. “When the North Carolina general assembly passed the bill, it was done with the intent of minimizing the political participation of African Americans and Latinos,” he told reporters before the trial.
The NAACP is arguing that this 2013 law was in part a backlash against the “increased political power” of voters of color in the state. Over the past few decades, both the number of residents of color and the percentage of them who showed up to vote have increased exponentially, thanks in large part to a series of laws making it easier to vote.
That access and increased turnout, the NAACP argues, threatened the Republican majority in the state legislature, since residents of color generally vote for Democrats. Their legal brief cites evidence that the Republican lawmakers who crafted the ID provision specifically requested and received data indicating that it would disproportionately burden voters of color, who are twice as likely as white residents to lack an official form of identification. African Americans are also more likely to vote early and utilize same-day voter registration.
During the arguments on Tuesday, one judge did note that the timing of the Republicans’ actions “looks pretty bad,” while another grilled attorneys for the state about why they excluded student IDs and public assistance IDs from the list of acceptable forms of identification.
“This is an attack on the very heart of our democracy, which is the right to vote,” said North Carolina NAACP President William Barber, one of the lead plaintiffs in the case. “This monster voter suppression law is a moral travesty. It’s a constitutional violation. It’s a dangerous precedent.”
This is an attack on the very heart of our democracy.
The state has disputed these accusations, arguing that their true goal in passing the law was preventing voter fraud. Yet multiple investigations have revealed no evidence of such fraud.
The package of laws was recently upheld by a conservative federal judge in North Carolina, who argued that since voter turnout among African Americans actually increased after the restrictions were passed, the burdens on voters aren’t as severe as the plaintiffs claim.
Barber does not dispute that more voters of color mobilized and voted in 2014, but he said the court is drawing the wrong lesson from that data.
“Under Jim Crow we had groups training people to pass literacy tests so they could vote,” he said. “That did not nullify the fact that literacy tests were unconstitutional.”
Barber also noted that had the U.S. Supreme Court not gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, North Carolina would not have been able to pass the voter ID law and other restrictions.
An investigation by the group Democracy North Carolina found that thousands of North Carolinians’ votes were not counted in 2014 because of these changes. The vast majority of them were African American. The NAACP gathered stories from some of the impacted voters and presented them as evidence in court.
They told the story of 95-year-old Rosanell Eaton, who had to take nine trips to the DMV, totaling more than 250 miles of driving, to get the ID she needed to vote. They presented testimony from Carnell Brown, a low-income, elderly, illiterate North Carolinian who has no phone and no car. The elimination of out-of-precinct voting and same-day registration prevented him from casting a ballot in 2014. When attorneys asked Brown whether voting was important to him, he replied in a rasping drawl, an effect of his emphysema, “I want to be heard.”
With the presidential election just a few months away, the stakes for North Carolina voters are high. Not only could the swing state state decide whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton sits in the White House next year, but their controversial governor and Republican senator are both up for reelection.
Fewer than 14,000 voters won the state for President Obama in 2008. Senator Thom Tillis (R) won his seat by fewer than 50,000 voters, handing control of the U.S. Senate to the GOP.
An estimated 218,000 voters lack the proper ID needed to cast a ballot under this law. Following the fast-tracked hearing on Tuesday, a court ruling on the fate of the law could come at any time.