North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, R, on Monday signed into law one of the nation’s most wide-ranging voter-identification laws, just a few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door for such changes by striking down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act.
The move is likely to touch off a major court battle over voting rights, and the Justice Department is weighing a challenge to the new law.
The measure requires voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polls and shortens the early-voting period from 17 days to 10. It also ends preregistration for 16- and 17-year-old voters who will be 18 on Election Day and eliminates same-day registration.
Democrats and minority groups have been fighting against the changes, arguing that they represent an effort to suppress the minority vote and the youth vote as well as reduce Democrats’ advantage in early voting. They point out that there is little documented evidence of voter fraud, the principal reason Republicans cite for the changes.
Republicans also say that shortening the window for early voting will save the state money, and they further note that while the North Carolina law makes many changes to how the state conducts its elections, most of the major proposals — specifically voter ID and ending same-day registration — bring North Carolina in line with many other states. More than three-fifths of states currently have some kind of voter-ID law, and even more do not allow same-day registration. Not all states allow in-person early voting.
“While some will try to make this seem to be controversial, the simple reality is that requiring voters to provide a photo ID when they vote is a common-sense idea,” McCrory said in a statement. “This new law brings our state in line with a healthy majority of other states throughout the country. This common-sense safeguard is commonplace.”
A spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association called McCrory’s move “cynical” and said it will come back to haunt him.
“When he ran for governor, Pat McCrory pretended to be a moderate pragmatist,” said the spokesman, Danny Kanner. “Today, he proved that he’s just another cynical, ultra-conservative ideologue intent on disenfranchising voters who might not be inclined to vote Republican.”
While there is significant resistance to voter-ID laws on the left, polls generally show that Americans support them by large margins. Recent North Carolina polls and a Washington Post poll last year showed that nearly three-quarters of respondents support requiring voters to show photo ID.
The Justice Department has suggested it will fight the new law. North Carolina is no longer required to obtain pre-clearance from the department for such changes, after the Supreme Court struck down the formula used for determining which states and jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression need pre-clearance.
The Justice Department also is looking to challenge a new voter-ID law in Texas and has fought such a law in Florida.
The other big change in the law — a reduction in the number of early-voting days — could diminish Democrats’ historical advantage in early voting, which accounted for more than half of ballots cast in North Carolina last year.
But Republicans note that the law still requires the same number of hours of early voting — just over fewer days. County election officials can either extend hours on a given day or provide more early-voting locations.
Other provisions in the North Carolina law would ban paid registration drives, end straight-ticket voting (in which a voter can vote for all candidates of one party by making a single selection — another area in which Democrats benefit) and loosen restrictions on poll watchers who can challenge a voter’s eligibility.
The state legislature gave the law final approval in late July.
The changes come as the state has come under Republican control for the first time in more than a century. North Carolina’s legislature went Republican for the first time since 1898 after the 2010 election. McCrory then won in 2012, becoming the state’s first Republican governor since the early 1990s.
