RALEIGH, N.C. — The North Carolina Supreme Court issued two important rulings in voting rights cases Friday, on gerrymandering and voter ID.
Both rulings found that Republican lawmakers had acted unconstitutionally to diminish the influence of Democratic voters — by passing a voter ID law with rules that intentionally discriminated against Black voters, and by redrawing the state’s political districts in such a way that rendered many Democrats’ votes essentially pointless in certain elections.
“The right to vote is a fundamental right, preservative of all other rights. If the right to vote is undermined, it renders illusory all ‘other rights, even the most basic,’” Justice Anita Earls wrote in the voter ID case, quoting from a civil rights case from 1964.
