HB 589 itself was directly enabled by the Supreme Court

that the newly required kind of photo identification is not held by more than 300,000 voters who are already registered, disproportionately black and low-income people.

in the 2012 election, 29 percent of early voters and 34 percent of same-day registrants were black

More Voter Suppression Coming in North Carolina

More Voter Suppression Coming in North Carolina

Democrat Roy Cooper, who narrowly beat the Republican governor, Pat McCrory, by 10,000 votes

It turns out the above voters were students at Elizabeth City State University, the historically black college at which Gilbert had also challenged 18 students in 2007, and failed.

This may finally prove the myth pushed by many mainstream media outlets of the superior Clinton get out the vote operation, as measured by the number of Clinton-specific offices in comparison to Trump-specific offices. The vaulted Clinton ground game has been buried in North Carolina by the Republican effort, thus far.

The data also showed that black voters were more likely to make use of early voting — particularly the first seven days out of North Carolina's 17-day voting period. So lawmakers eliminated these seven days of voting. "After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days," the court found.

While Republican lawmakers were drafting the bill, they requested data on the use of early voting practices and IDs by race. It showed African Americans disproportionally lack IDs, especially the most common form of identification: a driver’s license. The forms of allowable ID that made it into the bill were ones African Americans tended to hold in lower percentages. In addition, data shows that African Americans disproportionally used early voting, especially the first 7 of the 17 days of early voting that existed pre-HB 589. The General Assembly proceeded to cut early voting to 10 days.

African American Early Voting is down 8.5% from this time in 2012. 

As a share of Early Voters, African Americans are down 6.0%, (2012: 28.9%, 2016: 22.9%) and Caucasians are up 4.2%, (2012: 65.8%, 2016: 70.0%).

By2009, “the racial gap in voter registration and turnout[was] lower in the States originally covered by §5 than it [was] nationwide.”

(b) The provisions of subsection (a) shall apply in any State or in any political subdivision of a state which (1) the Attorney General determines maintained on November 1, 1964, any test or device, and with respect to which (2) the Director of the Census determines that less than 50 percentum of the persons of voting age residing therein were registered on November 1, 1964, or that less than 50 percentum of such persons voted in the presidential election of November 1964.

Does the renewal of Section 5 of the Voter Rights Act under the constraints of Section 4(b) exceed Congress' authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and therefore violate the Tenth Amendment and Article Four of the Constitution?

Section 5 prohibits eligible districts from enacting changes to their election laws and procedures without gaining official authorization. Section 4(b) defines the eligible districts as ones that had a voting test in place as of November 1, 1964 and less than 50% turnout for the 1964 presidential election.

Gov. Pat McCrory (R) filed an emergency petition to restore the law, but a deadlocked Supreme Court on Wednesday refused his stay request, meaning the law will not be in effect for the Nov. 8 election. Because the lower court did not offer specific guidelines for reinstating early voting, however, local election boards run by Republicans are still trying to curb access to the polls.

Within months of McCrory's victory, emails show, the state election board began receiving requests for demographic data from a group of GOP lawmakers, including Lewis, a top aide to Tillis named Ray Starling, and state Reps. Tim Moore and Harry Warren.They asked for statistics on voter behavior broken down by race: Who voted early, and who voted on Election Day? Who voted out of precinct?They asked about what kinds of people were registered to vote but did not have a driver's license. They asked about student ID cards - which some states allow as a form of voter ID - and how many African-Americans had them.

The new bill shortened early voting by half, cutting one of the Sundays when black churches held their "Souls to Polls" drives. It eliminated same-day registration and out-of-precinct voting.It also proposed changes that, to Stein and other opponents, made no sense unless you were purposely trying to discourage voting. For example, it canceled an existing rule that let 16- and 17-year-old high schoolers to pre-register to vote in civics classes or when they got driver's licenses. And it took away counties' ability to extend poll hours on Election Day during extraordinary circumstances such as long lines.

On July 25, 2013, the bill passed the House, 73 to 41. Everyone who voted for the law was a white Republican, and every black member of the legislature voted against it. As the final vote was cast, Democratic representatives all stood up, held hands and bowed their heads in prayer.

started out in early 2013 as a simple voter ID bill, but then grew quickly later that summer into a 50-page comprehensive package of provisions scaling back previous measures designed to expand voting opportunities.

The lawsuits

on Oct. 8, sending North Carolina voters to the polls in November 2014 with fewer early voting days, without the benefit of same-day registration and unable to cast a ballot if they showed up at the wrong precinct.

many additional provisions, including the following that are being challenged in this litigation: (1) the reduction of the period for so-called “early voting”9from 17to ten days; (2) the elimination of same-day registration (“SDR”), which permitted voters to register and then vote at the same time during the early-voting period; (3) the prohibition on the counting of provisional ballots cast outside of a voter’s correct voting precinct on Election Day (“out-of-precinct” ballots); (4) the expansion of allowable poll observers and voter challenges; (5) the elimination of the discretion of county boards of election (“CBOEs”) to keep the polls open an additional hour on Election Day in “extraordinary circumstances”; and (6) the elimination of “pre-registration” of 16-and 17-year-olds who will not be 18by the next general election.1

preclearance

NAACP allegations that at least three counties purged voter rolls through a process disproportionately targeting blacks.

The explanation seems blindingly obvious. In 2008 and 2012, black voters were electing (and reelecting) the first black president