News

Advocates fight confusion over voter ID law

By Bill Moss, Published: February 15, 2016

Advocacy groups are fighting voter confusion over the new photo ID law amid a shifting landscape of the spring election season brought on by a court decision invalidating the state's congressional map.

North Carolina voters for the first time must show a valid photo ID to vote in the March 15 primary. It’s not always as simple as it sounds.
“We recommend that they follow the law and the law currently says that you have to have a valid ID,” said Sharon Burlingame, of the League of Women Voters. “However, we would encourage them to vote if they have a reasonable impediment” that prevents them from getting an identification card. “I just think there’s a lot of confusion, even on the part of intelligent people.”

The murkiness is not limited to voters without ID cards. In at least one case the local Department of Motor Vehicles office seemingly got it wrong when an official issued a photo ID card.
When Mack Fowler heard about the new law, he knew he needed to help his sister get a state-issued ID.
“My sister had been able to drive or nothing,” he said. Mabel Fowler, 53, is handicapped and lives in a nursing home. “She’s been voting ever since she’s 18 years old,” Fowler said. “She’s been interested in politics, too, elections and stuff, always voted.”
On Jan. 11 Fowler drove his sister to the DMV office to comply with the new law.
“We got all her papers right, got her birth certificate, and then what happened we went over to the motor vehicles office,” he said. “I told him about three times this is for voting and he said, ‘Well, you can do more than one thing with it.’”
The DMV official charged Fowler for the ID card.
“So I went ahead and paid $13,” he said. “I knew it wasn’t right. I reported it to Democratic headquarters and the lady from the Women Voters talked to me about it. I found out that they said you wasn’t supposed to pay.”
The state Board of Elections confirmed that.
“The woman from Raleigh called here and said it was a misunderstanding and I wasn’t supposed to pay,” he said. “I was supposed to get my money back. But I haven’t got my money back. … I’m going to have to call her back about that. She’s got my address. That’s what she said. It was a big misunderstanding. Since then they put out a pamphlet at the motor vehicles office (saying) it’s free. That’s what I understand.”
Henderson County Elections Director Beverly Cunningham also confirmed that a photo ID is free.
“If you’re requesting one for voting purposes it should be free,” she said. The state Board of Elections, she pointed out, is aggressively publicizing the new rules. “There’s tons of videos being played that are public service announcements. There’s billboards out there that has the number” for the state Board of Elections.

SUBHED
‘Not a big problem’ here

The Legislature has debated, enacted and tweaked the voter ID law since 2011, and it’s under appeal in a federal lawsuit even now.
In a defensive move against the legal threat, “we amended the law to offer a ‘reasonable impediment’ for voters who can verify significant or unseen circumstances for not having a valid ID when the election comes,” state Rep. Chuck McGrady, a Hendersonville Republican, told the Land of Sky Regional Council last month.
The concession did little to appease opponents of the voter ID law, who argue that the legislation would disenfranchise poor people and minorities.
The Henderson County Board of Elections office has not seen much confusion and is getting few questions.
“We’ve been educating the public for three or four elections,” Cunningham said. “Every time somebody comes to vote we’ve told them that beginning in 2016 you’re going to need a photo ID to vote.”
Pollworkers also showed them a part of the form all voters sign that allowed voters to declare that they had no ID and needed help getting one.
“We probably had 10 to 15 people that signed a form saying that they didn’t have an ID,” she said. “I don’t see it being a big problem in our county. I see it more in the urban areas where people use public transportation and have never had a drivers license.”
Because of the potential for confusion and the opportunity to vote a provisional ballot and prove legal residency later, the state Board of Elections won’t bar people from voting even if they have no ID.
“I think they’re really working hard to educate people and train the poll workers,” the League’s Wilkes said.
If a voter has none of the acceptable forms of ID, he or she can still vote a provisional ballot and claim a “reasonable impediment.”
“Examples of a reasonable impediment,” the state Board of Elections says, “include but are not limited to the lack of proper documents, family obligations, transportation problems, work schedule, illness or disability, among other reasonable impediments faced by the voter.” The voter must sign a form describing the impediment, provide birth date and Social Security number and document a home address. If those conditions are met, the ballot will be counted.

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Court decision clouds primary date

The photo ID is not the only new wrinkle.
In the old days, North Carolina voters sat idly by while Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina voters enjoyed the affections — or suffered the pain — of candidates for president. No more. The Legislature moved the primary up six weeks with the idea that a March vote would increase the influence of North Carolina voters in the primaries.
In the meantime, volunteers have been working to register voters during lunch periods at Henderson County’s public high schools. Volunteers have registered students at Balfour Education Center, Hendersonville High School on Monday and Early College and plans signup opportunities at East Henderson High School on Thursday, North Henderson High School on Friday, and West Henderson High School on Monday, Feb. 15.
“Most high school students don’t know that they don’t need an ID card to register,” said Judy Wilkes, a League of Women Votersn who has been helping with the registration effort. Seventeen-year-olds can vote in the primary (except for the bond issue) if they will be 18 by the fall Election Day, Nov. 8.
To register, new voters must either show a photo ID or give the last four numbers of their Social Security card, Cunningham said. “They just have to put it on the form and then when we verify that,” she said.
Added to the crosswinds of change is the decision late Friday by a federal appeals court throwing out two of the state’s congressional districts. The decision upheld a challenge from the NAACP that the districts were racially gerrymandered in a way that reduced the voting influence of African-American voters. The judges ordered the Legislature to redraw them before the March 15 primary. Legislative leaders immediately filed an emergency appeal.
“Should this decision be allowed to stand,” they said in a statement, “North Carolina voters will no longer know how or when they will get to cast their primary ballots in the presidential, gubernatorial, congressional and legislative elections. And thousands of absentee voters may have already cast ballots that could be tossed out. This decision could do far more to disenfranchise North Carolina voters than anything alleged in this case.”
For now, the primary election is scheduled as planned.
“What the state is telling us is to conduct business as normal,” Cunningham said. “We’re proceeding like we’re going to have election.”