Voting Rights Act Strikedown Gives North Carolina Power to Suppress Student Vote

The GOP is at it again, making longer strides in stripping the people's democratic right to vote. This time, the targets are college students in the state of North Carolina.

The Republican-led State House, recently liberated from changes to voter regulation restrictions after the Supreme Court rejected Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (which covered several counties in North Carolina), didn't take too much time to pass a new, strict voter ID bill in their state. The bill by itself would have already generated its issues and revolts. But apparently the ID bill wasn't enough for these guys. They needed more.

The Southern politicians took their poignant attack a step further by proposing a bill to eliminate half of the forms of ID that citizens can use under the state's new voter ID legislation. The proposed list of rejected IDs is said to include cards from UNC colleges and state community colleges, according to the Charlotte Observer.

This clear jab at the youthful, educated vote —– predominantly dDemocratic, as we all know — – is the second hand of the state senate's one-—two punch against their particular adverse voting demographic. Last April, State Representative Bill Cook (who, anecdotally and objectively, does have a pretty hilarious website url if you follow the link), introduced a bill that would add a tax to families whose college student registered to vote in the city or town where he or she goes to school rather than in the one where the family is situated.

I mean, how obvious can these guys be? Take the college kid out of his liberal, college bubble so that maybe his parents can get him to vote conservatively again is the clear aim of this legislation. It's certainly not lost on anyone. They're one step shy of forcing college deans to lock their students in the classrooms on election days. If the government strips the college towns of the college kids, they're jeopardizing the community engagement and attachment intrinsic to institutions of higher education,; they're sacrificing the potential GDP boost to the college town if the students decide to stay in the area,; and they're (I hope) infuriating college students who will now have to travel miles back to their parents' homes, with alternative IDs, just to exercise their democratic rights.

But, it's all in the name of securing those seats in office, so who cares, right?