A Legislative Fix for the Student Photo ID Fiasco Passed the NC House Yesterday. What Will the Senate Do?

Rep. Ray Russell

H 646 passed the NC House on a vote of 100 to 9 (wow). It's titled AN ACT TO CLARIFY THE APPROVAL PROCESS FOR STUDENT AND EMPLOYEE IDENTIFICATION CARDS FOR VOTING PURPOSES; TO PROVIDE AN ADDITIONAL WINDOW FOR APPROVAL OF STUDENT AND EMPLOYEE IDENTIFICATION CARDS FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS; AND TO PROVIDE FLEXIBILITY IN THE NUMBER OF HOURS OF EARLY ONE-STOP VOTING IN ODD-NUMBERED YEAR ELECTIONS.

It would do much to alleviate the recent disenfranchisement of college students (and college/university employees) across the state, primarily because no longer would the college be responsible for taking the actual photos. The last clause in the title above refers to more flexibility for local BOEs to set up early voting sites for municipal elections. Gerry Cohen, our guru on election matters, tweeted on April 9, "It looks like a good bill."

Ray Russell of Watauga County has been a prime mover on this issue from the beginning of the crisis, joined by Zack Hawkins of Durham. They're both primary sponsors. Powerful Republican Chair of the Rules Committee, David Lewis, also signed on and actually introduced the bill, which accounts for those Republican votes (along with the creeping fear that the entire law could be thrown out by an advancing lawsuit if drastic action isn't taken).

All attention now turns to the Senate. Sen. Ralph Hise (R-Spruce Pine), one of the co-chairs of the Redistricting and Elections Committee in the Senate, had already said he liked the original law just like it was, but WRAL reported that he may have moved a little. He said "he has some questions about the bill, including language on confirming the identities of people whose ID's have self-taken pictures." Another co-chair of that committee, Sen. Warren Daniel of Burke County, said that the House and Senate agree on "the broad strokes" of Lewis' bill. Whatever that means.

Perhaps the chances of getting this "fix" through the NC Senate have improved. We've never felt sanguine about that prospect, but we're prepared to be amazed.

New Developments in the UNC System Student ID Crisis

Rep. Russell

NC House members Ray Russell (Dist. 93) and Zack Hawkins (Dist. 31) have introduced a bill to extend the deadline for colleges to certify the process of producing acceptable student IDs, from March 15 to September 15 (House Bill 167). The duo (perhaps with others in the House) are scheduled to hold a press conference today, and we hear that Republican Rep. David Lewis, the powerful Rules Committee Chair and the king of the gerrymander, is supporting the bill. That's significant, if true.

If there's bipartisan support in the NC House for fixing the crisis in allowing university student IDs for purposes of voting, then maybe there's hope. But what about Phil Berger and the Republican Senate?

Meanwhile, Thomas Shanahan, the top lawyer for the UNC Board of Governors and the man who pretty much precipitated this crisis, has remained silent though he had supposedly promised a press conference early this week to declare why student IDs weren't acceptable. If he were very smart, about now he might want to say something like this :

"I'm so glad that legislators in the North Carolina House have introduced a bill to give our universities time to iron out any difficulties in certifying the process by which students are given photo IDs. We have solid expectations that the bill will pass both houses of the General Assembly, which would be the best thing for protecting the voting rights of all our citizens, especially with the March 15 deadline fast approaching, a deadline that could disenfranchise so many of our students."

UPDATE
The press conference will be today at 1 pm in the Legislative Building press conference room. You can listen to the press conference at by clicking on the link: https://www.ncleg.gov/.
Click on audio, then press conference room.

Zack Hawkins, Running in NC House District 31

After 20 terms in the NC House, legendary civil rights activist and statesman Henry "Mickey" Michaux is retiring from the General Assembly. Stepping in to run for his District 31 House seat is Zack Hawkins, well known Democratic activist from Durham. Hawkins was one of 13 "superdelegates" from North Carolina at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. He's also 2nd

Zack Hawkins with Mickey Michaux

Vice Chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party and works for the office of student affairs at UNC-Chapel Hill. He previously was Director of Development at East Carolina University.

In 2008, when Hawkins was chair of the North Carolina Young Democrats, he was featured in a Bob Geary article in the Independent Weekly as one of three up-and-coming African-American men in the state:

Zack Hawkins grew up in the tiny town of Chocowinity, in Beaufort County, where his grandmother and mother were school board members, church was central, and his parents always said, "Doing the right thing is the right thing to do." He caught a break when a high school science teacher plugged him into biology, which helped him land an internship at an environmental institute in RTP. He got another break in 2000 when Democrats reached out to the HBCUs—historically black colleges and universities—while he was the vice president of student government at Elizabeth City State University.

Twice bitten, he landed in Durham where he earned his master's degree in biology at N.C. Central University and a "Ph.D. in politics" by working on campaigns for U.S. Rep. David Price and U.S. Senate candidate Erskine Bowles. Four years ago, he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, where he heard Obama's stunning keynote address and felt he was "in the moment" of history.

Michaux last had a Republican opponent in the general election of 2014. He often ran for his 20 terms (first elected to the House in 1982) without Republican opposition. Since it's now an open seat, the Republicans would be crazy lazy not to put up a candidate, but at the moment there's no announced person willing to run under the GOP label.

Zack Hawkins will be hard to beat.