Opinion ID: 2738874
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Out-of-Precinct Voting

Text: In 2002, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 15301-15545. Under the Help America Vote Act, states are required to offer provisional ballots to Election Day voters who changed residences within thirty days of an election but failed to report the move to their county board of elections. See 42 U.S.C. § 15482(a). However, such provisional ballots are only required to be counted “in accordance with State law.” Id. § 15482(a)(4). In response, the North Carolina General Assembly passed Session Law 2005-2, removing the requirement that voters appear in the proper precinct on Election Day in order to vote. 2005 N.C. Sess. Law 2, § 2 (codified at N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-55(a) (2006)). The law provided that “[t]he county board of elections shall count [out-of-precinct provisional ballots] for all ballot items on which it determines that the individual was eligible 16 under State or federal law to vote.” Id. § 4 (codified at N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-166.11(5) (2006)). The General Assembly made a finding when it adopted the mechanism in SL 2005-2 that “‘of those registered voters who happened to vote provisional ballots outside their resident precincts on the day of the November 2004 General Election, a disproportionately high percentage were African-American.’” McCrory, 997 F. Supp. 2d at 368 (citation omitted). The district court found that (1) between the years 2006 and 2010, an average of 17.1% of African Americans in North Carolina moved within the State, as compared to only 10.9% of whites; and (2) 27% of poor African Americans in North Carolina lack access to a vehicle, compared to 8.8% of poor whites. Also, the court accepted the determinations of Plaintiffs’ experts that “the prohibition on counting out-of-precinct provisional ballots will disproportionately affect black voters.” Id. at 366. According to calculations the district court accepted, the total number of African Americans using outof-precinct voting represents 0.342% of the African American vote in that election. The total share of the overall white vote that voted out-of-precinct was 0.21%. Id. House Bill 589 bars county boards of elections from counting such ballots. 17