Ever since our elementary school social studies classes, we have been told that voting is one of our civic duties as Americans. Every election year we hear the pleas of politicians for people to exercise their rights through voting. The North Carolina General Assembly has taken a markedly different approach to the matter of voting. With their latest attempt to put voter ID laws into the North Carolina Constitution, our elected officials are effectively attempting to gatekeep one of our most fundamental rights as Americans.
A set of six constitutional amendments will be placed on the ballot for midterm elections this year. All six of these proposed amendments were concocted by the Republicans in the General Assembly with little to no backing coming from the Democrats. The amendment for voter ID laws would insert the following into the constitution: “Every person offering to vote in person shall present photo identification before voting in the manner prescribed by law.”
Republican lawmakers often attempt to push these laws under the guise of intuitive ways to fight against voter fraud, but these efforts are nothing more than a way to suppress voter turnout. Voter ID laws in particular have been found to be disproportionately harmful to minorities and poor communities. These groups are the least likely to have forms of photo identification that would enable them to vote.
This push to place voter ID requirements in the state constitution is merely a resurrection of an earlier failed voting reform bill. In 2013, a similar attempt to create statewide voter ID laws was pushed by Republicans in the General Assembly as a House Bill. The bill, however, was struck down by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after the judges deemed that it targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.”
All of this has been done in an attempt to solve a problem that does not really exist. Lawmakers claim that voter fraud is an urgent problem that must be addressed through legislation, but this could not be further from the truth. A study conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice revealed that voter fraud occurs at rates around .0003% to .0025%.
This latest assault on the voting rights of North Carolinians is only part of the larger campaign by GOP lawmakers to undermine our democratic process. Just this year, a three-judge panel ruled that our voting districts for members of the U.S. House of Representatives have been unconstitutionally gerrymandered along partisan lines. In 2016, a conservative group known as the Voter Integrity Project was responsible for illegally removing around 6,700 voters from registration list. That same year, rollbacks on early voting were enacted as another means to suppress voting in the state.
With so many pieces of legislation that have been struck down for being unconstitutional or racist, and relatively nothing to show for, we must ask ourselves: what are the true intentions of these Republican lawmakers? Is it to help fortify our democracy, or to fortify their chances of continually being elected by suppressing their opposition? Lawmakers would of course tell us it is the former, but their dubious history of failed voting rights laws begins to lead one to believe that their intentions are indeed malicious.
For many voters, our current political climate, mixed with uninspiring candidates, has created a deep sense of apathy towards voting. Many wonder what the point of voting is in districts that have already been manufactured to churn out predetermined results. To those voters, I urge you to see the magnitude of your vote for at least this election cycle. You will not only be voting on who represents us; but you will also be voting on whether or not fellow citizens are able to continue participating in our democracy.
