North Carolina’s gerrymandering trial in Raleigh continued for its second day on Tuesday, with plaintiffs calling witnesses who said the Republican-drawn congressional maps diminish the power of Black voters.
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A lawsuit filed by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice challenges the constitutionality of North Carolina s 2018 photo ID law.
Paul Kearney is 71 and has lived in Warrenton, N.C., on his family farm all his life. It s been in the family for three generations, Kearney said while testifying during the first week of the trial over North Carolina s latest law requiring voters to present a photo ID at the polls.
Kearney, who is Black, testified in court last week that he has voted for more than 50 years. All of us the poll workers and ourselves live in the same community, they meet and greet at the local convenience store, so everybody knows everybody, Kearney said.
During day two of a trial in a lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s voter identification law, Senate Republicans highlighted supportive comments uttered by Democrats when the General Assembly approved the law in 2018.
“Lawyers for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a left-wing legal organization, have attempted to characterize the law and those who backed it as ‘racist,’ even though the law was sponsored by an African American Democrat,” according to a news release from Sen. Paul Newton, R-Cabarrus.
“They’ve also alleged, improbably, that the bill’s backers, including an African American Democrat, sought to ‘entrench’ Republican majorities through a partisan legislative process,” Newton’s release added.