The North Carolina Senate gave final passage to a new voter ID requirement Thursday morning, implementing a constitutional amendment voters approved last month. The legislation, passed by the House Wednesday, is now heading to the desk of Gov. Roy Cooper (D), whose potential veto Republicans can override with their supermajority in both chambers.
North Carolina’s previous voter ID law, passed in 2013 after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, was struck down by the courts as part of a package of voter restrictions that a federal appeals court said in 2016 was passed with the intent to discriminate against minority voters.
The new bill is largely similar, but includes a few more accommodations that the old version did not have. It offers more options for acceptable IDs — including college IDs — that the 2013 version of the requirement did not allow.
The legislature passed the bill as an election fraud investigation is under way into a absentee ballot scheme in a U.S. congressional race in the state. Voter ID is designed to prevent in-person voter fraud, which is extremely rare.
In response to the absentee ballot investigation, the North Carolina House added a new provision directing that the state board of elections design a way for absentee voters to also provide their photo ID. The state senate passed that version Thursday morning in a 25-7 vote.
Uhm how is providing a photo ID going to work when you vote absentee? Shouldn’t it be they have to match signatures on file?
Who came up with this crap?
Oh, that’s easy. Just drop off the absentee ballot in person. If that’s a problem, Leslie Dowless can send someone over.
Somehow run out the clock. Use up the 10-day veto period, then use the courts. Weaponize the NC9 shenanigans politically and judicially. All that said, the office of NC governor is notoriously the feeblest in the land.
Voter ID would not have stopped the election fraud in NC. They likely threw out Democratic absentee ballots they illegally collected or filled it in themselves from partially filled out ballots. How is ID supposed to fix that?? IDIOTS.
I’d say they never learn, but that would be assuming they’re willing to learn. They’re not, if it interferes with its their goal of making voting more difficult. Adding a photo ID requirement to absentee voting makes no sense and undercuts the intention of such voting to enable more people to vote. Why don’t they pass a bill saying only the first 15% of minority voters to cast a ballot will
have their vote count? It’s about as subtle as anything else they’ve tried, and it meets their goals.