WINSTON-SALEM, NC — Carnell Brown cannot read or write. He owns no phone, no car, and has never used the Internet. Now retired and living on Social Security, he spent decades share-cropping cotton and corn and transporting livestock, after dropping out of school at a very young age to help support his family. Still, Brown told Winston-Salem’s federal courtroom via video testimony, he has voted in every election possible — including casting his ballot for President Obama in 2008 and 2012. In 2014, hitched a ride with his brother to a neighboring county, and tried to both register and cast his ballot early, as he has done for the past several years. But due a law the state passed in 2013, Brown could no longer vote outside his home precinct or register the same day he voted.
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.”
Brown was the final voter to testify Monday in Winston-Salem’s wood-paneled, windowless federal courtroom, where a conservative, George W. Bush-appointed judge is hearing weeks of arguments over North Carolina’s voting law. Among other provisions, the law 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 originally included the nation’s strictest voter ID requirement, but the state passed a bill just a few weeks before the trial began to allow alternate forms of ID.
According to an investigation by the group Democracy North Carolina, Brown was one of of thousands of North Carolinians whose votes were not counted in 2014 because of these changes. And like Brown, the vast majority of that group is African American.
In her opening statement, Justice Department attorney Catherine Meza told Judge Thomas Schroeder that this was no accident. “Individually and collectively, the provisions we are challenging have the result and were enacted with the purpose of denying and abridging the right of vote of African Americans,” she said. “And North Carolina has a long and undisputed history of enacting laws with the purpose of excluding black citizens from the political process.”
In his testimony Monday as one of the lead plaintiffs, Rev. William Barber with the NAACP told the courtroom about the state’s history of voter suppression, which still rears its head today.
“I’ve seen precincts moved last minute, robo-calls to voters with false information, having to wait hours in line to vote, and acts of intimidation,” he said. “I personally saw, unfortunately, a casket placed outside an early voting location that had then-Senator Obama’s name and picture on it along with a circle that looked like a noose.”
In cross-examining Barber, lawyers for North Carolina spent nearly an hour arguing that he was hypocritical in his opposition to the voter ID provision, because the NAACP’s own elections require one.
“You have said it’s important to have integrity in the NAACP’s elections by ensuring only card-carrying members can vote,” asked attorney Phil Strach,” so why do object to the same principle for state elections?”
“We’re not a democracy, we’re a private membership organization,” Barber shot back. “We also have a poll tax, since you have to pay to be a member. I know you’re not suggesting we have a poll tax in North Carolina elections. Besides, our ID is not a photo ID, and we allow the Secretary to vouch for someone if they don’t have their ID.”
Lawyers for the NAACP loudly objected to the line of questioning, saying it’s irrelevant to the case and violates Barber’s right to free association in a private organization under the First Amendment. Judge Schroeder allowed the state to continue, but seemed unimpressed with the argument. “What is the relevance of the NAACP’s internal rules? he asked.
When the plaintiffs poured out of the courtroom into the late afternoon heat, they joined thousands of demonstrators from around the country in a march taking over the city’s streets. Faith leaders wearing clerical collars and yarmulkes walked beside students from the state’s many historically black colleges and universities, and elder NAACP members who have been marching for voting rights since the 1960s.
“We stand together united in one cause: to stand for the people being denied their voting rights,” plaintiff Armenta Eaton told the crowd. “We met with our legislators and tried to tell them not to make changes to the laws, not to fix something that’s not broken. We asked them to listen to us, but because they did not, we had to take them to the courts. And we plan to be victorious.”
The trial will last for about two weeks. No matter if the state or the plaintiffs win, the case is expected to be appealed to a higher court, and could reach the Supreme Court for a final ruling on what states can do when they’re not bound by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.