The head of the state’s NAACP said the civil rights organization is broadening its lawsuit against North Carolina’s new voter ID law and election law changes.
The Rev. William Barber, North Carolina NAACP president, said the organization was making it clear in the lawsuit that the new law would have a disparate impact on Hispanics as well as African Americans. He also said that the state would add the elimination of pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds to the lawsuit. Meantime, a former U.S. Department of Justice official who dealt with voting-rights issues said the expanded lawsuit still fails to prove that aspects of the state’s election reform laws are unconstitutional. (See Editor’s Note at end of story.)
“We will take on the issue of Latinos, and how this bill is impacting the Latino community,” Barber said Thursday during a telephone press conference. He said Maria Palmer, a newly elected member of the Chapel Hill Town Council and the first Hispanic elected to that post, was being added to the lawsuit as a plaintiff.
Barber said Palmer would be harmed by the new law. Before she could run for re-election, he said, she would incur time and expense in educating voters about the law’s voter ID requirements.
“We also have amended this complaint to challenge the law that says you cannot in fact register 16- and 17-year-olds,” Barber said. “It is strange to us that this governor and this legislature would want to dampen the hopes and the dreams and the participation of young people.”
Under the now closed pre-registration system, high school students were allowed to register, but they could not vote until they reached age 18.
An expert on election law and voting rights issues said that the changes in the NAACP’s lawsuit wouldn’t help its chances for success.
“Both of these claims that he has made are frankly silly and don’t meet the requirements of the law,” said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former official with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Von Spakovsky said that assertions that Latino turnout would go down after a voter ID law was enacted in Texas proved to be untrue. He said that during off-year elections in 2013, turnout was higher in Texas counties with the highest concentration of Hispanic voters than it was during similar off-year elections in 2011.
In addition, von Spakovsky said the pre-registration change was “a frivolous claim.”
“The vast majority of the states do not allow 16- and 17-year-olds to register to vote,” von Spakovsky said.
Legal counsel Denise Lieberman joined Barber in arguing elimination of the pre-registration program would help their lawsuit.
Lieberman said “absolutely” the change would have a disparate impact on minority voters.
Data show that the laws would have a “discriminatory impact on voters of color in North Carolina,” Lieberman said. “We know that voters of color are going to be disparately impacted, are far more likely to use voting opportunities like early voting, same-day registration, and are more likely to be excluded from the process by expanded the ability to challenge voters at the polls.”
Von Spakovsky disagreed.
“First of all, I don’t think they can show disparate impact,” Von Spakovsky said. “You’ve got to show disparate treatment, that people are being treated differently than other people because of their race.”
Von Spakovsky said that the state is well within legal bounds in the election law changes, including shortening the early-voting period from 17 days to 10 days. He noted that a number of states do not allow no-excuse early voting.
“The state could entirely get rid of early voting if it wanted to and that would in no way be a violation of the law,” von Spakovsky said.
Barry Smith (@Barry_Smith) is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.
Editor’s Note: This story was corrected after publication to reflect that Von Spakovsky was nominated by President George W. Bush to serve on the Federal Elections Commission but withdrew from the confirmation process when he faced opposition from Democratic senators.