RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Two high-profile Black leaders in North Carolina held divergent views on congressional intervention in state elections while addressing U.S. House committee members who are examining voting rights.
Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson told a House judiciary subcommittee this week he opposed a measure approved by the chamber last month that places new demands on federal elections run by states, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported.
Robinson said states should remain in charge of their elections and called the bill a “partisan, unconstitutional power grab.”
“We need to stop it at the insinuation that somehow the people in Washington, D.C., know better than the people in North Carolina,” the state’s first Black lieutenant governor told subcommittee members in person on Thursday.
The Rev. William Barber of Goldsboro, who heads the national Poor People’s Campaign, spoke remotely to the subcommittee in support of the “For The People” measure. The bill in part requires states to provide automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting and independent redistricting commissions to redraw congressional districts.
Following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Barber said, Americans are “calling for us to fight for the soul of our democracy and enact full protections of our sacred right to vote.”
Robinson received the majority of questions during the two-hour hearing that featured other speakers. He argued the bill is designed to keep Democrats in power, not to ensure that all citizens have the right to vote.
“It’s time that we modernize our election system in this country and stop playing all these silly games based on race, and please stop using me as a Black man as your pawn, and yes, I said it,” Robinson said.
Barber also cited recent changes to voting laws pushed by the Republican-dominated North Carolina legislature that he said suppressed rights of minority voters.
In the 2010s, courts struck down legislative and congressional districts for racial gerrymandering. And a federal appeals court struck down provisions in a 2013 law that reduced the number of early voting days, eliminated same-day registration and required photo identification to vote. Another voter ID law approved in 2018 is now the subject of federal and state lawsuits.
The “For the People” bill would restore fully a key portion of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that was made unusable by a 2013 Supreme Court decision.
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