Lisa Dixon, executive director of election law integrity firm Lawyers Democracy Fund (LDF) predicts that the North Carolina General Assembly will again approve a voter ID requirement in the new year after the state Supreme Court invalidated the law earlier this month.
“It will again be challenged, but we can count on the incoming Supreme Court to evaluate the measure using traditional legal analysis and conclude it is valid, respecting the will of North Carolina voters who have clearly spoken on the issue,” she told the Old North News in an email.
The North Carolina Supreme Court.
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The high court ruled Dec. 16 that a 2018 law that required voters to show a photo ID was unconstitutional. The Democrat's current 4-3 advantage on the court will flip to a 5-2 Republican advantage in the new year.
Dixon said that the voter ID law invalidated by the courts in Holmes v. Moore was well within the scope of voter ID laws approved in other states. An amicus brief filed by LDF lawyers compares North Carolina’s voter ID law to several other voter ID laws that have been upheld in other states.
“The voter ID law the General Assembly passed to implement the constitutional amendment was objectively reasonable, and this law would have been upheld in any almost other court,” Dixon said. “There was nothing wrong with this law, except that it was challenged before a partisan court with its own agenda.”
In a separate ruling, the Supreme Court in Harper v. Hall tossed North Carolina’s state Senate election map.
In late June, North Carolina voters won a victory on the U.S. Supreme Court level in the Berger v. NC State Conference of the NAACP ruling, which gave Senate President Philip Berger and House Speaker Rep. Timothy Moore the right to intervene in the voter ID case. The legislative leaders had questioned North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein’s commitment to defending it. Stein is a Democrat.
Then in August the Supreme Court called into question the 2018 constitutional amendment to require voter ID in North Carolina after claiming the measure is likely invalid because members of the General Assembly that referred the amendment to the ballot were elected from gerrymandered districts.
“The Court condemned the General Assembly for proposing the amendment in the lame-duck session and passing it over the Governor’s veto, but here this same Court is utilizing its own lame-duck session to override the will of North Carolina voters who indisputably want voter ID,” Dixon said.
Numerous Polls have shown strong support among voters for voter ID laws.
A 2021 poll by the Honest Elections Project showed that 81% of voters asked support voter ID. Another 2021 poll by Franklin & Marshall College showed 74% of Pennsylvania voters who responded to the survey support voter ID.
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