Let America Vote Statement on North Carolina Proposed Voter ID Constitutional Amendment

Following the introduction of a proposed voter ID constitutional amendment (HB 1092) by North Carolina House of Representatives Speaker Tim Moore, Let America Vote President Jason Kander made the following statement:

“This afternoon, Republicans in the North Carolina legislature reignited their campaign to block people of color and low income North Carolinians from voting. They keep doing this because they know that if they succeed it will improve their chances of winning elections by tipping the scales of democracy in their favor. It’s wrong, it’s undemocratic and it’s part of a years-long, racist campaign to diminish and dilute the votes of African-Americans in the state. Let America Vote won’t stand for it and neither should North Carolina voters who value a free and fair democracy.”

Let America Vote last year inducted Speaker Tim Moore into its Voter Suppression Hall of Shame, a list of the country’s most notorious vote suppressors.

This is not the first time Republicans in North Carolina have pushed for voter ID. In 2013, shortly after the US Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a monster voter-suppression bill that created extreme voter ID requirements, rolled back early voting from 17 days to just 10 days, eliminated same-day registration and pre-registration for some teenagers, and banned counting certain votes.

In 2016, a federal judge struck down that law, calling it an unconstitutional effort to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”

Between 2000 and 2012, out of approximately 40 million votes cast, only two cases of in-person voter fraud were referred to a prosecutor.