Monday, August 12, 2013

NC NAACP Responds to Governor's Approving the Most Restrictive Voting Rights Bill in the United States

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

12 August 2013

Contact:        Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, President, 919-394-8137 

         Atty. Jamie Phillips Cole, Public Policy Coordinator, 919-682-4700

NAACP Holds News Conference Tomorrow (Tuesday) Morning

DURHAM - Governor Pat McCrory and the North Carolina Legislature are on the wrong side of history.  This Anti-Voting Rights Bill tramples on the blood of our martyrs, desecrates the graves of freedom fighters, and in the 21st Century lines up with the extreme racially-driven philosophy of interposition and nullification promoted by past political figures like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond. 

Their direct attempts to suppress the civil rights of black people in North Carolina and secure power through manipulation of the electorate are the ultimate crimes against democracy, driven by extremists in our state.  For the Governor to sign this horrific bill less than a week after Julius Chambers was laid to rest is dishonorable.

The North Carolina NAACP will hold a news conference tomorrow, Tuesday August 13, 2013 at 9:30 AM at the NC NAACP office, 114 W. Parrish Street, Durham, NC on the third floor.

A few years ago the NC General Assembly passed the most race-based redistricting plan we had seen since the 19th century. Now this atrocious voter suppression bill the Governor signed, which represents the worst of every voting rights attack in the nation combined in one piece of legislation, seeks to end same day registration, limits early voting, unleashes vigilante poll observers, undoes public financing, disallows 16 and 17 year olds the ability to preregister, and mandates a 21st century poll tax in the name of voter ID, is more restrictive than South Carolina and Alabama. It is 57 pages of regressive, unconstitutional acts to rig and manipulate elections through voter suppression.

It seems as though this legislature and the Governor view the Supreme Court's Shelby decision in the same way the radicals of the South viewed the removal of the federal troops in 1877. Immediately after that, southern legislatures began to pass all forms of voter suppression and Jim Crow laws.  The 14th, 15th, and 24th amendments, and Section 2, 3 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act are still the law of the land. We will fight this race-based, immoral and regressive bill with everything we have and believe we will be victorious. 

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Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.

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