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Democratic lawmakers say voter ID law was rushed

Opponents of North Carolina's Voter ID law speak outside of federal court in Winston-Salem Monday. DAVID FORD/WFDD

Opponents of North Carolina's Voter ID law speak outside of federal court in Winston-Salem Monday. DAVID FORD/WFDD

Two Democratic state representatives testified in federal court Thursday that the voter identification law passed in 2018 was rushed through the General Assembly by Republicans.

The law was passed in the wake of the 2018 election when voters approved an amendment to the state constitution requiring photo identification to vote.

Republicans still held a veto-proof supermajority at the time but were about to lose it after Democrats picked up seats in the November election.

Representatives Robert Reives and Marcia Morey both testified that the session felt hurried, lacked the usual debate, and ended with a law that had little bipartisan support.

Voter ID has been in place since the fall. Morey said she saw student primary voters turned away when they tried to use digital college IDs, and others leave when they were told by campaign workers about the requirement.

David Thompson, an attorney representing the lawmakers, hammered away at the fact that registered voters could obtain a free ID from their county elections office.

Morey said she worries about the impact of the voter ID requirement in the November election, when turnout will be much higher.

 

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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