2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forum4th Circuit case-“In voter ID case, GOP leader says ‘Daily Show’ source a ‘pain in the …’”
The daily show was cited in the 4th Circuit case on voter id http://electionlawblog.org/?p=84821
News & Observer:
A formal federal court rulings unusual reference to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has left North Carolina Republicans again distancing themselves from a former party official who made racially charged remarks back in 2013 about the states voter ID law.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision, published Friday, quotes former Buncombe County, North Carolina, precinct chairman Don Yelton as saying on the Daily Show three years ago: If the N.C. voter ID law hurts the whites, so be it. If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.
Yeltons interview on the satirical Comedy Central show helped federal judges make the case that North Carolinas voter ID law is discriminatory.
I am geek and so I found the footnote in question-footnote 7 http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/nc-4th.pdf
included a Republican precinct chairman who testified before the
House Rules Committee that the photo ID requirement would
disenfranchise some of [Democrats] special voting blocks
[sic], and that that within itself is the reason for the photo
voter ID, period, end of discussion. See J.A. 1313-14; Yelton
testimony, Transcript of Public Hearing of the North Carolina
General Assembly, House Elections Committee (Apr. 10, 2013) at
51. Responding to the outcry over the law after its enactment,
the same witness later said publicly: If [SL 2013-381] hurts
the whites so be it. If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that
want the government to give them everything, so be it. See
J.A. 1313-14; Joe Coscarelli, Don Yelton, GOP Precinct Chair,
Delivers Most Baldly Racist Daily Show Interview of All Time,
New York Magazine, Oct. 24, 2013. These statements do not prove
that any member of the General Assembly necessarily acted with
discriminatory intent. But the sheer outrageousness of these
public statements by a party leader does provide some evidence
of the racial and partisan political environment in which the
General Assembly enacted the law.
Appeal: 16-1468 Doc: 150 Filed: 07/29/2016 Pg: 47 of 83
48
This really makes me smile
DemonGoddess
(4,640 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)[hr][font color="blue"][center]The truth doesnt always set you free.
Sometimes it builds a bigger cage around the one youre already in.[/center][/font][hr]
TheDebbieDee
(11,119 posts)Good work, gang. GOOD WORK!
Chasstev365
(5,191 posts)but it seens to me that unless a state provides each resident with a free photo ID, requiring one is a poll tax: expressly illegal under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Princess Turandot
(4,787 posts)as the documentation to get that 'free ID' can be limited and difficult to acquire, especially for older/poorer voters. (That's one of the things that the judges in the recent decisions have also noted.) For example, a small variation in the spelling of a name from what a person uses currently, to what a 70 year old birth record might say, would disqualify someone from getting a birth certificate copy and thus the free ID in some states.