I’m sure you’ve read quite a bit about Wednesday’s Supreme Court deadlocked vote on the North Carolina’s voter ID law, left intact the federal appeals court decision striking down the law.
The Supreme Court was reviewing the five key parts of the law: voter ID, rollback of early voting to 10 days from 17, an elimination of same-day registration and of preregistration of some teenagers, and its ban on counting votes cast in the wrong precinct:
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan voted to reject the state’s arguments. Justice Clarence Thomas would have revived all of the contested provisions, while Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr. would have reinstated the voter ID and early voting provisions.
Surely the irony is lost on no one that on a “case about the use of race to achieve partisan ends” the lone African-American judge sees nothing unconstitutional about a law establishing provisions to the franchise.
