By Joseph Kyzer
Office of NC House Speaker Tim Moore
July 19, 2019
RALEIGH – A bipartisan three-judge panel ruled Friday that voter ID implementation can move forward in North Carolina and dismissed all but one of the plaintiffs’ six claims in a legal challenge to legislation implementing a constitutional amendment approved by voters last Fall.
Thirty-four other states have some form of voter ID law. North Carolina is the last state in the Southeast to start requiring some form of voter ID.
State House Speaker Tim Moore (R-Cleveland) sponsored the voter ID constitutional amendment and said its implementing law was a model for balancing election integrity with accommodations for all voters.
“North Carolinians know election integrity is essential to our democratic process and strongly supported voter ID,” Speaker Moore said. “This law accommodates all voters’ access to a secure ballot with common sense standards already in place in most states.”
The case – Holmes v. Moore – is a state court challenge brought by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Wake County. The court denied the plaintiffs’ requests for a preliminary injunction.
North Carolina’s voter ID law allows any voter to assert a “reasonable impediment” at the polls for why they don’t have a qualifying ID.
It further accommodates religious objectors, provides for free state-issued IDs, and accepts a broad range of qualifying IDs including student IDs, drivers’ licenses, passports, military and veteran IDs, voter and state employee cards, and Native American tribal cards. S.B. 824 even allows drivers’ licenses from other states to qualify in some circumstances.
Governor Roy Cooper’s vetoed the legislation – Senate Bill 824 Implementation of Voter ID Const. Amendment – accusing a majority of North Carolina voters of “sinister” motives in supporting a constitutional amendment proposing voter ID and calling the people’s approval of voter ID the “cynical origins” of the law.