Listen Live
1053rnb app
105.3 RnB Featured Video
CLOSE

Republican-led voter ID restrictions, which negatively impacted people of color, suffered a major blow last week in three states.

On Friday in North Carolina, a federal judge rolled back obstructive voting measures. They included requiring a photo ID card to vote, reducing the number of early voting days, and prohibiting same-day voter registration.

The 83-page decision read in part:

“Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist.”

In Wisconsin, a federal judge left the photo ID requirement intact, but said the state must make free photo IDs more accessible and accept a broader range of student IDs.

In Kansas, a county judge ruled the state must count potentially thousands of votes in state and local races from people who registered without citizenship documents.

Additionally In Texas, a federal court recently ruled that the state’s voter ID laws were discriminatory and ordered a lower court to come up with a remedy before the November elections.

Donita Judge, Senior Attorney at the Advancement Project, joined Roland Martin on Monday’s edition of NewsOne Now to discuss the battle against voter suppression and the rulings against discriminatory voting laws in several states across the nation.

Judge told Martin, “When we look at what has been happening with these laws, it’s basically been this premise that we need to make elections safer, that there is election fraud, this is about integrity.

“I think that what the court found in North Carolina is basically that was pre-textual,” Judge said. “There is very little voter fraud. There is basically no reason to impose these rigid restrictive voting laws that make it almost impossible for African Americans to vote.”

She interpreted the ruling in North Carolina to say, “We’ve looked at the record and what we see here is that this was intentional discrimination.”

Judge continued her assessment of the ruling and said the court looked at the data compiled by the North Carolina legislature which “clearly shows” before the legislature instituted their voting laws, African-Americans overwhelmingly used same-day registration, out of precinct voting, and early voting.

Judge later added the appeals court in North Carolina “got it right.”

Watch Roland Martin, Donita Judge, and the NewsOne Now panel discuss the rulings against discriminatory voter ID laws in the video clip above.

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty

Watch NewsOne Now with Roland Martin, in its new time slot on TV One.

SEE ALSO:

Virginia High Court Invalidates Gov. McAuliffe’s Executive Order Restoring Voting Rights To 200K Ex-Felons

Racial Discriminatory Voter ID Laws Struck Down In Kansas, Wisconsin & North Carolina  was originally published on newsone.com