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Senator challenges home state voter ID law

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Senator Kay Hagan. (27882)
Senator Kay Hagan.

The day after North Carolina’s Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed a controversial voter ID bill into law, one of the U.S. senators from his state is seeking to challenge it.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan asked that the Justice Department look into the law she worried would “restrict the ability of minorities, seniors, students, the disabled, and low and middle income citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote,” she wrote.

Hagan urged Holder to review the law “and take all appropriate steps to protect federal civil rights and the fundamental right to vote.”

The first-term Senator specifically took issue with the parts of the law that reduces the early voting period, removes preregistration of high school students, stops registration on the same day as voting and limits provisional ballot voting, along with the requirement to present a government-issued photo ID.

Those same issues are being challenged in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice the same day the bill was signed into law.

Federal oversight over voting laws has already been seriously curbed after the Supreme Court’s June ruling on the Voting Rights Act. That provision required pre-approval of voting laws in certain southern states like North Carolina.

In a statement praising the new bill Monday. McCrory called the law necessary for “ensuring that no one’s vote is disenfranchised by a fraudulent ballot.”

Bryan Koenig | CNN

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