The closing arguments marked the final day of a trial that has gained national attention as lawyers representing the Department of Justice and the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP seek to overturn North Carolina’s voter ID law in federal court.
“Onerous, confusing, costly”
Hair said the voter ID requirement placed an unconstitutional burden on minority voters, who are twice as likely as whites to lack the required photo ID. She called the process of getting the required ID “onerous, confusing, costly.”
Hair also criticized the reasonable impediment declaration, an affidavit created to soften the ID requirement. Signed into law as part of a package of “Voter ID Modifications” in June 2015, the reasonable impediment declaration allows voters to sign an affidavit instead of showing a photo ID. Voters can select one of eight ‘impediments’ listed on the form, such as lack of transportation or work schedule conflicts, or write in an impediment of their own.
Voters signing the affidavit will be offered a provisional ballot.
The reasonable impediment declaration was modeled on South Carolina’s Act R54, which offered a similar affidavit and was approved by a three-judge panel in U.S. District Court in 2012.
Judge Schroeder asked Hair what more the State of North Carolina could do.
Hair said state officials should take some “pointers” from South Carolina’s implementation of Act R54.
South Carolina permits voters to get a photo ID at their County Board of Elections or the local Department of Motor Vehicles office. State officials also took mobile equipment to county fairs and other public gatherings and created photo IDs there, Hair said.
By contrast, North Carolina voters who need an ID must go to a DMV office. Hair called the North Carolina DMV “notorious” for it’s poor customer service. She said the reasonable impediment declaration was “burdensome” because “Voters are still being sent to a dysfunctional DMV.”
Not all of North Carolina’s 100 counties have a DMV office, and some offices only operate a few hours per week.
Hair also said the reasonable impediment declaration form would be intimidating to low-literacy and non-English speaking voters. She said those voters would be responsible for bringing someone to the polls to help them fill out the form, and poll workers were not being adequately trained to help them.
Hair also said the rules for approving or rejecting a voter’s “reasonable impediment” were unclear. Voters might be afraid to sign the affidavit if it meant they could be accused of fraud, she said
“I can tell you, there’s a lot they can do to make it better,” she said.
“They turned around an dramatically changed the law.”
The North Carolina General Assembly had ample evidence the photo ID law would discriminate against African American and Latino voters, Department of Justice attorney Catherine Meza told Judge Schroeder.
“Every analysis” revealed that hundreds of thousands of North Carolina voters lacked the required ID, Meza said.
Meza asked Judge Schroeder to consider the “sequence of events” that led to the final passage of North Carolina’s voter ID law. She pointed out that the first version of the H.B. 589 passed by the North Carolina House of Representatives in April 2013 offered a much longer list of acceptable IDs, including college and public assistance IDs.
After the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act in June 2013, effectively freeing North Carolina from federal preclearance for any changes to the state’s election laws, a new version of the H.B. 589 emerged from the state Senate, with a much shorter list of acceptable voter IDs.
“They turned around and dramatically changed the law,” Meza said. College and public assistance IDs were dropped from the list.
“They kept ID that they knew African Americans were less likely to have,” said Meza. The new law, she claimed, was “meant to suppress the emerging political power” of minority voters.
Meza reminded the court that the reasonable impediment declaration, meant to soften the ID requirement, was not part of the original law. It was passed as an amendment in June 2015, just three weeks before the first trial challenging the North Carolina’s election law changes was due to begin.
“It’s nothing more than hyperbole.”
In his closing argument, Defense Attorney Thomas Farr said the Plaintiffs had never presented any concrete evidence that the photo ID requirement would burden minority voters.
“It’s nothing more than hyperbole,” he said.
Farr said the Plaintiff’s claims “make good sound bites for the media,” but weren’t supported by any evidence. He said there was no evidence that the new law would hurt minority voters because it hadn’t been put into practice yet.
“It’s all speculation and argument by lawyers at this time,” he said.
Farr said 94% of North Carolina’s African American voters had been able to get an ID at the DMV. He said the General Assembly had selected the DMV as the only agency to issue IDs for the sake of consistency. He dismissed the idea that dealing with the DMV was a burden.
“It’s a minor inconvenience in life that we all have to deal with,” he said.
He pointed to a poll by Frank De Luca, president of the conservative Civitas Institute showing that 74% of North Carolina voters supported voter ID.
Judge Schroeder asked Farr why the General Assembly waited two years to pass the amendment softening the ID requirement.
“It did kind of pass at the eleventh hour,” the Judge said.
Farr said he could not recall why the General Assembly waited.
Schroeder said the right to vote was the right that all other rights stand on.
“It’s got to be freely available,” he said.
“Some of the average things we take for granted in life” could be more difficult for the less fortunate, he told Farr.
Farr said a law couldn’t be declared illegal simply because it was more difficult for the uneducated or less fortunate to comply.
“Your Honor, at the end of the day, this is just a policy dispute,” Farr said.
“Working diligently”
The six-day trial was the second challenge to North Carolina’s new election laws in federal court. In July 2015 the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the Justice Department and other plaintiffs sue to overturn cuts to the state’s early voting calendar, the elimination of out of precinct ballots, and other changes. Judge Schroeder has not yet ruled on the July trial.
In his closing remarks, Judge Schroeder said the current trial had generated over 20,000 pages of evidence and other materials, in addition to the thousands of pages produced by the July trial. He did not set a date for his ruling.
“I’m working diligently,” he said.
