With North Carolina Senate Republicans having recently passed senate bills 326, 724 and 725 — all measures designed to limit voting rights one way or another — it appears their goal is for North Carolina to remain at the forefront of a wave of repressive voter suppression laws sweeping the country.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, more than 400 proposed voter suppression measures have been proposed in 49 states during the 2021 state legislative session.  At least 18 states have fully enacted laws that make will make early voting and voting by mail more difficult and inflict harsher voter ID requirements and make faulty voter purges more likely.

N.C. Rep. Valerie Foushee

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, but that federal remedy remains stalled in the U.S. Senate.

As a result, nationally and locally, voting rights are under attack in ways not seen since the Jim Crow era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Most people agree that there may be no more important right than voting to strengthen and sustain our democracy, as evidenced by the three constitutional amendments—the 15th, 19th and 26th—that helped guarantee and expand the right to vote to more Americans.

So, why do North Carolina Republicans seek to gut voting rights?

The answer seems to be because they can.

In 2013, in the Shelby County V. Holder decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requiring “certain states and localities” with a history of discriminatory voting practices to submit proposed new voting procedures to the U.S. Justice Department before implementing them—a “pre-clearance” step insuring voting procedures would not be discriminatory before they went into effect and harmed citizens.

Immediately, North Carolina, a state with a well-documented history of discriminatory voting practices, enacted new draconian voting restrictions. Several of the measures crafted by the Republican-led General Assembly were overturned by a federal court which said North Carolina’s new laws were designed to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”

SB 326 would make it harder for absentee ballots to count.  Currently they can be received up to three days after election day.  SB 326 requires that they be received no later than 5 PM on election day to be counted.  SB 326 also requires absentee ballots to be requested much earlier than before.  But how can voters know when unforeseen circumstances will demand their need for an absentee ballot?

SB 724, while allowing visually impaired voters to vote online, would also impose further requirements that certain people who need voter IDs would need to vote in person, something that would particularly affect students, among others.

SB 725 would prohibit county boards of election, even in relatively poor counties, from using private donations to support their elections.  Currently, ninety-seven of North Carolina’s 100 counties rely upon private donations to facilitate elections. Taken together, these bills constitute efforts to turn back the clock and make it harder for North Carolina citizens to vote.

I am proud that while all three bills passed the Senate, my fellow Democrats and I stood firm and not one of us voted for any of these repressive bills. Please know that I intend to keep working with my fellow democrats and Governor Cooper to protect the hard-won rights of all North Carolinians to participate in our democracy and vote. I hope that you will stand with me.

Valerie Foushee represents Orange and Chatham counties in the North Carolina Senate.  She can be reached at [email protected] or (919) 614-0654.

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