UNC-Chapel Hill professor of law Gene Nichol talked to students in Park Shops Tuesday about the new voter ID laws that were been passed by the NC General Assembly, but then overturned in July by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“I should say that one of the ways that students have been discriminated against across North Carolina is closing poll sites on campuses, we’ve had some skirmishes about that here and around North Carolina,” Nichol said.
Nichol believes that the intent of the state legislature in creating the voter ID law was to prevent young voters from voting because of their contribution to the election of Obama in 2012, when people under 30 had the highest voter participation that demographic ever had in North Carolina history.
Nichol went on to discuss how the bill also discriminates against black voters, talking about how a North Carolina 3-judge panel came together and struck down North Carolina’s new voter districts based off the notion that they were racially motivated in creating these districts.
Black voters tend to be Democratic, according to Nichol, and because of this he believes that the current legislature has targeted them and made sure that they are grouped in the same districts in hopes that they will not have much influence on the November election.
“When the constitutional system won’t abide, these people say ‘Our purpose, our goal, is to hurt our political adversaries;’ that doesn’t deny they are using tools of race to litigate,” Nichol said.
Nichol claimed that the legislature went after blacks by banning Sunday voting and by requiring people to get voter IDs.
“If your true motive is to go after voter fraud, why not ban the absentee ballot?” Nichol said.
After Nichol’s discussion concluded, the students were allowed to ask the professor some questions about how they are affected and how they can still register to vote in the upcoming election.
Renee Wells, the director of the GLBT center at NC State and one of the faculty members hosting the event, took over this question explaining to students how they could vote and what they should be aware of so they can be prepared.
“There’s early voting that starts on Thursday, if students haven’t already registered they can register on site during early voting,” Wells said. “They can’t do that on election day.”
Students can take the Wolfline to the polling location, which is in the Creative Services Building, to vote early.
Cameron Ryan, a sophomore studying sports management, says he learned more about voter ID laws from the event and how others have to struggle to vote due to these voter ID laws.
“My most memorable experience about this is learning about how they manipulate the ID laws to make it particularly harder for out-of-state people to vote,” Ryan said.
Molly Madden, a freshman studying psychology, also thought it was interesting to learn about the laws and how they worked since this was her first time hearing about something like this.
“I’ve never actually learned anything about this before, so this is my first time ever being taught about the voter ID laws and how they work … I was particularly interested about how [Nichol] talked about how the system manipulated people,” Madden said.
