4th Circuit case-“In voter ID case, GOP leader says ‘Daily Show’ source a ‘pain in the …’”

News & Observer:

A formal federal court ruling’s unusual reference to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” has left North Carolina Republicans again distancing themselves from a former party official who made racially charged remarks back in 2013 about the state’s voter ID law.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision, published Friday, quotes former Buncombe County, North Carolina, precinct chairman Don Yelton as saying on the Daily Show three years ago: If the N.C. voter ID law “hurts the whites, so be it. If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.”

Yelton’s interview on the satirical Comedy Central show helped federal judges make the case that North Carolina’s voter ID law is discriminatory.

Some of the statements by those supporting the legislation
included a Republican precinct chairman who testified before the
House Rules Committee that the photo ID requirement would
“disenfranchise some of [Democrats’] special voting blocks
[sic],” and that “that within itself is the reason for the photo
voter ID, period, end of discussion.” See J.A. 1313-14; Yelton
testimony, Transcript of Public Hearing of the North Carolina
General Assembly, House Elections Committee (Apr. 10, 2013) at
51. Responding to the outcry over the law after its enactment,
the same witness later said publicly: “If [SL 2013-381] hurts
the whites so be it. If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that
want the government to give them everything, so be it.” See
J.A. 1313-14; Joe Coscarelli, Don Yelton, GOP Precinct Chair,
Delivers Most Baldly Racist Daily Show Interview of All Time,
New York Magazine, Oct. 24, 2013. These statements do not prove
that any member of the General Assembly necessarily acted with
discriminatory intent. But the sheer outrageousness of these
public statements by a party leader does provide some evidence
of the racial and partisan political environment in which the
General Assembly enacted the law.
Appeal: 16-1468 Doc: 150 Filed: 07/29/2016 Pg: 47 of 83
48