North Carolina became the first state to pass a restrictive voter ID law since the United States Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act this summer.  This decision has led the Department of Justice to file a lawsuit against North Carolina Monday on the grounds that this law targets minorities unfairly and disproportionately. 

In a press conference on Monday morning, Attorney General Eric Holder said, “The Justice Department expects to show that the clear and intended effects of [the voter ID law] would contract the electorate, and result in unequal access to the participation in the political process on account of race.”

Although this claim is highly difficult to prove in a court of law and will likely take years to sort out, it is abundantly evident to an unbiased observer and can be discerned within seconds that this was precisely the intent of this Republican-backed legislation. 

 “The state legislature took extremely aggressive steps to curtail the voting rights of African-Americans,” Holder also said.

The law contains four main objectives: requiring a North Carolina-issued ID to vote, cutting back the early voting period, eliminating same-day registration for early voters and stopping the counting of provisional ballots that are cast in the correct county but in the incorrect precinct. 

The timing of this law is more than a coincidence; although North Carolina voted Republican in the last presidential election, African-American voter turnout has increased considerably in the 2008 and 2012 elections.  Moreover, according to North Carolina voting records, more than 70 percent of ballots cast by African-Americans were early ballots.

However, despite the statistical observation that African-Americans, who frequently vote Democratic, are more likely to be targeted by the effects of House Bill 589, Republicans dismiss this correlation as coincidental. They assert the aims of the voter ID legislation are common sense and that because the law applies to all voters equally, it is unreasonable to claim that it targets specific groups.

At face value this assertion seems perfectly reasonable. After all, if voter fraud is a serious concern, why should it matter what race people are?  Shouldn’t everyone have to prove, using accepted methods of identification, that they are who they say they are in order to vote?  If they didn’t, wouldn’t voter fraud be an epidemic? 

As it turns out, voter fraud is not a serious concern. According to the North Carolina Board of Elections, of about seven million votes cast in the 2012 presidential election, only 121 or 0.00174 percent were referred to the district attorney’s office for allegedly committing voter fraud. 

Clearly, these 121 alleged cases of voter fraud aren’t worth turning away the 318,643 registered North Carolina voters who do not have any form of identification. It is important to note that 58 percent of the aforementioned voters are registered  Democrats, according to the North Carolina Secretary of State.

And how could voter fraud feasibly become a serious issue? What person is going to try to take politics into their own hands by running around to different voting sites pretending to be other people to try and influence a national election?

There are many factors that influence people to not vote. Some people may feel fundamentally disconnected from the political process, or have logistical issues about getting to a polling place such as finding transportation or getting time off work. This legislation is just one more burden that dissuades Democrats from getting to the polling booth and Republicans are fully aware of that.