The voices contesting North Carolina’s elections law just grew stronger. The News & Observer reports that six churches have added their names to an NAACP lawsuit challenging the law.
The churches in Merry Hill, Brevard, Durham, Hickory and Chapel Hill argue in an amended complaint that cuts to the number of days for early voting and the ban on same-day registration and voting would affect them negatively, the report says.
Specifically, the churches complain that they would have to redirect money for food banks, computer classes and other social-service programs to assist members in need to travel to polling sites and locations to obtain IDs and supporting documentation in order to vote, the report shows.
The reduction in the number of early voting days, Emmanuel Baptist Church in Winston-Salem argues in the complaint, the report shows, “will place a strain on the church’s transportation services, will make it difficult for the church to operate the programs as they have in the past, and will lead to a reduction in the number of voters and congregants the church is able to transport to the polls.”
A number of African-American churches in North Carolina were able to assist voters to the polls during early-voting periods in the 2008 and 2012 elections.
Soon after Gov. Pat McCrory signed a law overhauling North Carolina’s voting procedures, a series of lawsuits were filed. Rosanell Johnson Eaton was a lead plaintiff in a suit filed in August by the state NAACP and a voter rights organization.
A month later, the Obama administration announced plans to sue North Carolina to stop the new voting rules, including the photo-ID mandate.
Read more at the News & Observer.