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Supreme Court Denies North Carolina Its Voter ID Law

Supreme Court Denies North Carolina Its Voter ID Law

It’s not racist to think African Americans are incapable of obtaining an ID?

North Carolina wanted to reinstate its voter ID law in time for the elections, but a deadlocked Supreme Court denied them this opportunity. From The Wall Street Journal:

The high court, in a brief written order, declined to stay an appeals court ruling from July that struck down North Carolina’s Republican-backed voting rules. The appeals court found state lawmakers enacted the rules with the intent to discriminate against black voters.

This decision is YUGE because the state is slowly turning blue. Incumbent GOP Senator Richard Burr faces a tough election in November against Democrat Deborah Ross. Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has made the state a high priority, which has led to her rising in the polls. As Clinton rises, so does Ross.

The North Carolina government enacted the law in 2013, which included “a tightening in voter ID requirements, cutbacks on early voting and the preregistration of 16-year-olds.” But the appeals court ruled these parts as unconstitutional:

The appeals court ruling struck down five parts of the law: its voter ID requirements, a rollback of early voting to 10 days from 17, an elimination of same-day registration and of preregistration of some teenagers, and its ban on counting votes cast in the wrong precinct.

The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals even called the law “the most restrictive voting law North Carolina has seen since the era of Jim Crow.” The judges insisted the items in the law “were were used disproportionately by African-Americans, who overwhelmingly voted Democratic.” They even lashed out at the government “for accepting some forms of photo IDs but not others, such as identification cards held by people who received public assistance from the state.”

The North Carolina government didn’t even ask for the Supreme Court to reinstate all of the parts the appeals court shot down. It would allow “same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting this time around.”

The justices did not provide a reasoning in their brief. This is where each justice stood on the case:

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito would have allowed North Carolina to proceed with most of the changes blocked by the 4th Circuit, the Supreme Court said in an order released Wednesday afternoon. Justice Clarence Thomas would have allowed the state to implement all the provisions blocked by the lower court.

The four justices in the court’s liberal wing stood with the 4th Circuit. In the case of a four-four split, the lower court’s ruling is allowed to stand.

Some jeered the ruling, while others cheered it:

Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican who is seeking re-election this fall, asserted that North Carolina had “been denied basic voting rights already granted to more than 30 states.” He noted that four justices had supported the state’s position and that “four liberal justices blocked North Carolina protections afforded by our sensible voter laws.”

“This decision opens the door for fair and full access to the democratic process for all voters,” said Allison Riggs, a lawyer for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “Hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians will now be able to vote without barriers. The voting booth is the one place where everyone is equal and where we all have the same say.”

The Supreme Court will also probably hear about the Texas and Wisconsin voter ID laws before November.

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Comments

Let’s see…. the supremes can discern intent from 1,000 miles away but the FBI can’t seem to figure out intent when sitting next to Hillarious Clinton?

    Worse than that. The SCOTUS can discern implied intent and find it unconstitutional from 1,000 miles away, and the FBI can’t figure out that the statutes Clinton violated have no specific intent requirement (the statute mandates positive actions to safeguard classified information; “extreme carelessness”, or failure to take those positive actions, is enough to warrant criminal charges).

    The real question is, how did the courts find intent in voter ID laws?

    There’s no evidence that “fewer black people voting” is even an outcome of voter ID laws; such laws have not, to my knowledge, been allowed to stand long enough to reliably compare demographic turnouts. It’s only one possible outcome. But even if it did disenfranchise black voters, that doesn’t automatically mean evil intent.

    The outcome only matters if the intent is evil, and where there’s no outcome, the intent doesn’t make any difference.

    (Thought experiment: Imagine if Jim Crow laws specifically intended to suppress the black vote had no effect whatsoever on blacks voting. Would there still be any outrage?)

    Or put another way, “Correlation does not automatically imply causation, but you cannot have causation without correlation.”

      Milhouse in reply to Archer. | September 1, 2016 at 3:21 pm

      SCOTUS didn’t claim to discern intent; it simply denied a stay. The circuit court heard evidence and found that the legislature had conscious intent to discriminate against black voters.

        gospace in reply to Milhouse. | September 1, 2016 at 4:38 pm

        So, circuit court judges can read minds. Since there was no actual evidence of conscious intent, just accusations of same, that’s the only possible explanation.

        Oh, that and liberals are racists who think blacks are too stupid to know how to obtain voter ID. Because without that assumption, conscious intent isn’t possible.

        So, it’s obvious you’re a racist, for it seems that you agree withy them.

        MILHOUSE IS A RACIST! I want to make sure everyone knows it. And in liberal theology, it’s impossible to disprove, so don’t bother trying. Trying to do so is only further evidence you are one.

          Milhouse in reply to gospace. | September 1, 2016 at 6:01 pm

          There certainly was evidence of concious intent.

          Milwaukee in reply to gospace. | September 1, 2016 at 7:15 pm

          “Milhouse | September 1, 2016 at 6:01 pm
          There certainly was evidence of concious intent.”

          conscious

          Milhouse, oh wise one. Could you share with us what the “evidence” of conscious intent was? Other than “All y’all are Southern Whites so we know you are racists.”

          Milhouse in reply to gospace. | September 1, 2016 at 10:52 pm

          If you were following the case you’d already know what the evidence was. It was reported here, so you didn’t even have to go anywhere else.

          “Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.”

          That is valid evidence of the legislature’s intention.

          You seem to imagine that it’s unusual for courts to inquire into people’s intentions, that it requires telepathy or something. All that does is show your ignorance. It is absolutely routine for courts to infer people’s inner thoughts from their actions and words. This is done literally every day, in courts everywhere. And this is precisely the sort of evidence that courts use for this purpose.

          Milwaukee in reply to gospace. | September 3, 2016 at 2:11 pm

          Milhouse. Thank you. Milwaukee.

          The legislature behaved stupidly.

          There are non-racist ways of imagining voter fraud, and then devising ways to diminish those abuses.

          For example, restrict the use of mailing out ballots.
          Restrict early voting.
          Close registration 30 days before the election.
          Match voter registration lists with lists of actual residents of a place.

        So my question still stands:

        The real question is, how did the courts find intent in voter ID laws?

        ANY courts, not specifically SCOTUS. How did ANY court find intent? Because it hypothetically could disenfranchise black voters? One potential outcome (among many) is now considered evidence of intent?

          Milhouse in reply to Archer. | September 1, 2016 at 6:09 pm

          In this particular case there was real evidence that the legilature acted out of a conscious intent to discriminate. Evidence that the appeals court found convincing. I disagree with that conclusion, but it’s not as if the court just made it up out of whole cloth.

    MattMusson in reply to Anchovy. | September 1, 2016 at 3:56 pm

    The court could not find any real discrimination. It ruled only that the Intent was to discriminate. So, we don’t actually have to break the law. We just have to intend to break the law.

    Of course Hillary actually broke the law. But she got off because she did not intend to.

      The difference is that ensuring the accuracy of voter rolls and preventing voter fraud are both legitimate government purposes, so the legislature (or voters, where referendums are allowed) are authorized to pass laws to that effect. With no evidence of actual, verifiable discrimination against minority voters, the intent argument is invalid. It doesn’t matter, hypothetically speaking, if the intent was to disenfranchise black voters if no black voters are, in fact, disenfranchised. That just makes the law a failure.

      Also, the federal statutes Hillary violated have no specific intent requirement. Whether she intended to distribute classified information or not doesn’t matter; she failed to safeguard it as she was required to by law. “Extremely careless” is enough to warrant criminal charges. The “no intent” argument is a cop-out.

      Milhouse in reply to MattMusson. | September 1, 2016 at 6:10 pm

      No, the court found both an actual disparate impact, and evidence that the legislators were aware of this and deliberately intended it. I don’t find that evidence convincing, but the court didn’t make it up.

        gospace in reply to Milhouse. | September 1, 2016 at 6:39 pm

        From the initial federal judge who handled the case: “The plaintiffs “failed to show that such disparities will have materially adverse effects on the ability of minority voters to cast a ballot and effectively exercise the electoral franchise” as a result of the 2013 state law, Schroeder wrote. That argument was made more difficult after black voter turnout increased in 2014, he wrote.”

        So, black voter turnout increased after the law passed, but the appeals court found a disparate impact that made it more difficult for blacks to vote.

        How exactly does that work? Oh, never mind. It doesn’t, and everyone knows it. Have to keep the minorities riled up so they’ll keep voting for Democrats who proclaim that they’re too dumb and lazy to abide by the rules that everyone else can abide by.

          Milhouse in reply to gospace. | September 1, 2016 at 10:55 pm

          The appeals court found that the legislators specifically researched the racial impact of various possible measures, and then chose the measures that would have the greatest racial impact.

    Milwaukee in reply to Anchovy. | September 1, 2016 at 7:28 pm

    Hellfire Anchovy.
    “Let’s see…. the supremes can discern intent from 1,000 miles away but the FBI can’t seem to figure out intent when sitting next to Hillarious Clinton?”

    A guy grows a beard and bores the day lights out of co-workers spouting teachings of the Mohammedan sort, and one day beheads some co-workers and shoots others, all the while shouting “My God is greater than your God” in Arabic, and the FBI can’t figure out what happened. Was that Islamic terrorism or workplace violence or just really bad outbreak of indigestion.

    Foot Hood, et al.

“The soft bigotry of NO expectations…”

    Milwaukee in reply to Ragspierre. | September 1, 2016 at 7:20 pm

    I do recall a town in North Carolina which wanted to move from partisan city council elections to non-partisan city council elections. The Justice Department stopped them on the grounds that the African-Americans wouldn’t know who to vote for if the elections were non-partisan.

With a multi-trillion dollar welfare industry, there is no excuse for any American to remain unidentified. Also, with Planned Parenthood’s demographic bias, and ubiquitous abortion chambers, they could serve as a one-stop shop for abortion rites (i.e. “final solution”), clinical cannibalism (i.e. Mengele division), and voter identification. What is the State-established Pro-Choice Church hiding?

“The appeals court ruling struck down five parts of the law: its voter ID requirements, a rollback of early voting to 10 days from 17, an elimination of same-day registration and of preregistration of some teenagers, and its ban on counting votes cast in the wrong precinct.” This says it all The goal was to enable voter fraud.

    Yep, especially with overturning the ban on counting “wrong precinct” votes.

    Now there’s nothing stopping someone — or several dozen/hundred someones — from skipping around several precincts and casting multiple votes each. No questions asked. They’ll all be counted on election night.

    Mac45 in reply to sdharms. | September 1, 2016 at 3:13 pm

    Yes, this decision had NOTHING to do with discrimination. It had everything to do with enabling vote fraud. And, people still do not understand the Trump phenomenon.

    gibbie in reply to sdharms. | September 1, 2016 at 4:28 pm

    Are you claiming the ability to see into the hearts of Supreme Court justices and discern their intentions?

    Only God can do that. And Supreme Court justices who think they are God.

Discriminating between individuals based on their skin color? The ugly underbelly of [class] diversity mongers. They perceive people as colorful clumps of cells. I wonder what religious/moral philosophy promotes that idea.

If I were large and in charge, I would introduce a voter ID bill modeled on India’s voter ID laws.

http://tnelection.in/tamilnadu-state-voter-id-online-apply-status-and-electoral-rolls-search/

I would invite the Indian ambassador to the signing.

Then I’d dare a court to say it’s “racist” to expect American minorities to be as competent as barely literate Indian farmers living in villages with no electricity or running water.

So let us now be clear.
If Trump wins he will appoint a conservative to the Supreme Court and the tie is broken. NC gets it laws back.

If Clinton wins she will appoint someone who will vote to overturn the law and the ban stands in place. In fact more and more laws/rulings banning anti-fraud measures come into being because anti-fraud is discriminatory.

Not only that, but now it will become harder then ever to beat Democrats because they basically invented and refined voter fraud.

We will never again see a Republican resident, but slowly we will see a country totally controlled by democrats. Like Illinois and California.

    Ragspierre in reply to RodFC. | September 1, 2016 at 3:14 pm

    “If Trump wins he will appoint a conservative to the Supreme Court and the tie is broken. NC gets it laws back.”

    Nope. He’s SAID he will appoint a Scalia-type justice…with whom he radically disagreed in practice.

    But nobody with a working brain believes he would BOTH appoint one and support one.

    Rather, it is MUCH more likely he’ll appoint his sister, the Collectivist judge he’s vaunted.

      Milhouse in reply to Ragspierre. | September 1, 2016 at 3:18 pm

      His sister is 80 years old.

        Milwaukee in reply to Milhouse. | September 1, 2016 at 7:23 pm

        You are perilously close to being labeled an “ageist”.
        I think you might be offending some old person somewhere.
        I know I hope to someday be 80.
        Watch it buddy.

          Milhouse in reply to Milwaukee. | September 1, 2016 at 10:58 pm

          No president is putting an 80-year-old on the Supreme Court. Even Merrick Garland, at 63, is too old for a serious nomination; 0bama only named him because he knew the senate wouldn’t consider him.

    So let us now be clear.
    If Trump wins he will might appoint a conservative to the Supreme Court and the tie is broken, one way or the other. NC could gets it laws back.

    There. FTFY.

    (No, I’m not a #NeverTrump person, but I want people who support him to be realistic about what they’re voting for. He’s no conservative to begin with, and as he moderates himself to gain broader appeal he becomes even less so. There’s no guarantee he sticks to his “short list” of SCOTUS picks. He’s better than Hillary, for sure, but you have to admit that’s a pretty f@#$ing low bar.)

    tom swift in reply to RodFC. | September 1, 2016 at 4:03 pm

    We don’t know what Trump will do.

    But we do have a pretty damn good idea what Hillary will do.

    Which should be all that any American really needs to know about the election of #45.

      Agreed, 100%.

      However, I still believe it’s important to drive this point home to overzealous Trump supporters (a.k.a. “Trumpkins”).

      Trump is an unknown quantity. Odds are VERY good he’ll be better than Hillary, but as I said above, that’s a pretty f@#$ing low bar. It’d be HARD to be worse!

      But odds are also very good he won’t be a “conservative” president, as most of us understand the term. Trumpkins’ claims to the contrary are disingenuous at best.

      I’m no #NeverTrump person, but I want people to understand this come election day so we know what we’re getting, which ironically is an unknown.

        Barry in reply to Archer. | September 2, 2016 at 12:24 am

        “Trump is an unknown quantity.”

        What was George W Bush? Known, or unknown? We know who he put up first, Harriet Myers. And we know who we got, Roberts, Mr. SC Obamacare.

        There is zero reason to believe Trump will not appoint the exact type justice he has stated he would.

        Those folks trying to claim he would appoint his sister are disingenuous at best, and downright deceiving at worst.

        We know without a doubt the type “justice” shrillary will appoint. And it will be more than 1, quite possibly 2 – 4. If you allow shrillary to become president you can kiss this country good bye.

      We do know that whoever Hillary appoints will be in the bag for Dems and stacking the voting landscape heavily Dem.

      We don’t know for certain that Trump will appoint conservative justices, but we do know his short list, and if he veers too far from that list there will be a big cry from conservative Senators and the McCain/Graham’s who will suddenly want a conservitive justice. Expect a Harriet Meyer’s reaction.

      We can’t be 100% certain that the justices will work out. Just like with Stevens( Ford ), O’Connor ( Reagan ), Kennedy ( Reagan ), Souter (HW ), Roberts( W ) or Harriet Meyer ( W ).

      But it as good a result as we can expect.

Democrats stop these laws to cheat the system so illegal aliens can vote for them by the millions because Americans with brain cells know better.

We have gone from the explicit racism by some local and state governments in the past to more subtle racism by the federal government today by assuming that blacks are less capable of behaving like intelligent and responsible adults than whites.

In both cases, Democrats are in control and blacks are being harmed.

4th armored div | September 1, 2016 at 3:59 pm

why stop there –
no drivers license needed to drive –

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST DMV.

    Actually, a drivers license should come from an insurance agency, which has verified your ability to drive.

    The state gives drivers licenses which it then takes away to punish people. I recall that in Colorado, at the Cave of the Winds in Colorado Springs, there was a sign that defacing the cave wall was a crime. One of the consequences would be having your driving license taken away. Dad’s behind on child support occasionally lose their driving privileges. I guess the left has long had a really weak understanding of the connection between cause and effect.

They even lashed out at the government “for accepting some forms of photo IDs but not others, such as identification cards held by people who received public assistance from the state.”

Um, that would be forms of identification that do NOT show the citizenship status of the identified. We ran through this in Kansas. Citizens vote. Non-citizens don’t. An ID that does not show your citizenship status is not a valid form of ID for voting.

“How dare you not accept my Dillons SuperShopper card for identification! Racist!”

Ignore the court tell the clerks to stay with the state laws as written.
obama and his administration has been doing it in regards to the FOIA’s. He’s appointed enough social justice “jurists” to make the courts another branch of the democrat party. And they’re toeing the line as required.

I’m curious about this notion that it’s “raaacist” to expect people to show ID to vote. You also have to show ID to establish identity and eligibility to work. It’s on the I-9 form.

List A (establishes both identity and authorization to accept employment) and List B (establishes identity only) consist almost exclusively of photo IDs.

How the f*** is racist to expect people to produce the same identification cards if, should they not have such ID, they can’t work?

    Arminius in reply to Arminius. | September 1, 2016 at 11:07 pm

    Facepalm. Double facepalm. The answer to my own question is so obvious I’m embarrassed I asked it.

    Clearly, it’s raaaacist to expect minorities to work.

    I denounce myself for mentioning the I-9 form.

Perhaps the voting law should read something like this:

To vote, a person must produce suitable identification. Identification which can satisfy 4 of the following 7 situations will be suitable.
1. Fly on an international flight originating in the U.S. of A.
2. Enter a Federal courthouse.
3. Cash a check.
4. Register and title an automobile.
5. Buy a resident fishing or hunting license.
6. Buy Draino or Liquid Plumber in Illinois. (I’m shitting you on this one. Since those can be used to make meth, restricting the purchasing of this ingredient is believed to slow down meth cooks. )
7. Buy Sudafed, and certain other over-the-counter medicines.

The Supreme Court didn’t find anything. It deadlocked and that left standing the lower court ruling. It’s important to note that voting #NeverTrump will fix the deadlock problem.

buckeyeminuteman | September 2, 2016 at 1:21 pm

So the black judge didn’t see anything racist about the requirement for a photo ID…

Don’t forget how Antonin Scalia was found with a pillow over his head. Apparently lot’s of people sleep that way. Make no mistake that was Hillary’s way of clearing the way for the liberal district courts to throw out every single voter ID law across the country, thus racking up thousands of fraud votes.

This is beyond absurd and disgusting.