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The Supreme Court deals a significant blow to discriminatory voter ID laws enacted by Republican-controlled state legislatures.

In an exceedingly rare but entirely welcome bit of good news to start off the week, the Supreme Court declined this morning to hear a challenge to last year's federal appeals court ruling that struck down most of North Carolina's discriminatory voter ID law, which means that that appellate court's decision will stand, for now.

Among other things, the North Carolina law had reduced the length of the early voting period and eliminated same-day voter registrationboth of which, according to data specifically requested by the lawmakers who enacted the bill, were tools disproportionately used by minorities to cast their ballots. Most famously, the legislature imposed strict voter ID requirements that just so happened to include as eligible forms of ID those more often held by white voters, and exclude those more often held by minority voters. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was having none of it, unceremoniously striking down those provisions after finding that lawmakers had targeted African-Americans with "almost surgical precision." This may shock you, but North Carolina's legislature is controlled by Republicans.

The Supreme Court's decision came with an unusual bit of editorializing from Chief Justice Roberts, who reminded observers that the Court's decision to deny certiorari should not be interpreted as a ruling on the merits. This is likely an allusion to a recent flurry of politicking in North Carolina, where the newly-elected Democratic governor and the incumbent Republican legislature are fighting over which entity actually controls the lawsuit. If the legislature prevails, or if it launches its own independent challenge to the Fourth Circuit's ruling, the substantive issue may well come before the Court again.

But, for now, let us celebrate. Voter ID laws are vehicles for state-sanctioned race discrimination disingenuously trussed up as common-sense solutions for a problem that literally does not exist. They lead to significant drops in minority turnout wherever they are implemented, cleverly and quietly preventing untold numbers of Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote for their elected leaders. And they lead to heartbreaking results like this one, the product of the voter ID law enacted by the Republican-controlled state legislature in Wisconsin:

[Glady Harris] had lost her drivers license just before Election Day. Aware of the new law, she brought her Social Security and Medicare cards as well as a county-issued bus pass that displayed her photo.

Not good enough. She had to cast a provisional ballot that ended up not being counted.

For the last two decades, she has lived and voted in Wisconsin. Retired from her job working at an HIV/AIDS community resource center, she no longer drives and relies on public transit and friends to bring her to doctors appointments, the grocery storeand the voting booth.

She was distraught when she was told her vote would not be counted unless she went to a local DMV office for a replacement card and then return with it to a local election office.

"There is no understanding this. It was unfair, and I think it was cruel," Harris said.

A few days after the election, Harris found her drivers license. It had fallen between her mattress and headboard.

It is cynical, undemocratic bullshit for Republican politicians to claim a popular mandate for their ideological agenda when one of the party's primary strategies for obtaining political power is systematically thinning the electorate. Voter ID laws are only steps removed from the overtly racist Jim Crow-era poll taxes and literacy tests, which were similarly arbitrary barriers perniciously employed by Southern states in a desperate, despicable effort to disenfranchise minority voters. Stories like Gladys' Harris help to expose this for what it is: a fraudulent scheme designed to protect the political interests of people who fear losing a fair right in the marketplace of ideas. Today's Supreme Court decision, God willing, means that its days are numbered.

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Excerpt from:
Voter ID Laws Show that Republicans Can't Win Elections Anymore Without Gaming the System - GQ Magazine