How did photo ID affect NC’s primary election? The numbers tell only part of the story | Opinion
After presiding over a trial in Winston-Salem last week, U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs will decide whether Republican lawmakers’ tinkering with North Carolina’s voter photo ID law made it legal for use in this November’s election.
Biggs temporarily blocked the law with an injunction in 2019, but was overruled by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Now she must consider whether this latest version of the law discriminates against Black voters, just as the 2013 version did with what a panel of federal judges called “almost surgical precision.”
In terms of common sense, the law is still clearly targeted at a group of voters who tend to vote Democratic. Why else would Republicans be so insistent on having the photo ID requirement? They say it prevents in-person voter fraud, but that’s virtually nonexistent and such fraud is already a felony.
Still, proving that Republican lawmakers had discriminatory intent is difficult. And the law’s first major test in the March primary didn’t reveal a problem with voters being turned away at the polls for lack of a photo ID. A total of 1,185 voters out of 1.8 million voters had to cast provisional ballots for reasons related to the photo ID requirement. Of those provisional ballots, 473 ballots were not counted, or about 2.6 ballots for every 10,000 cast.
Patrick Gannon, a State Board of Elections spokesman, said voters appear to be aware of the new requirement. “Based on the small number of voters who did not bring ID in the primary, we believe the word is getting out,” he said.
The challenge for the NAACP and others seeking to get the law thrown out is that its damage is largely invisible. The issue isn’t so much what happens at the polls. It’s how many voters are discouraged from going to the polls because they lack the resources to get the records needed to obtain a valid photo ID.
Making the absence of these voters visible is hard, but researchers have tried.
A 2022 report published in The Journal of Politics analyzed 16,000 Texas voters who filed “reasonable impediment declarations” for not having a valid photo ID. The researchers concluded, “Our findings indicate that strict identification laws will stop a disproportionately minority, otherwise-willing set of registered voters from voting.”
A 2020 study of North Carolina by two Stanford University political scientists concluded that a previous North Carolina voter ID law deterred voters in the 2016 general election even after the court struck it down. The researchers said the deterrent effect endured because “voters inferred they would be unable to vote and therefore declined to turn out at all.”
Despite numerous studies, the impact of voter ID laws is still hard to quantify. It’s possible that the requirement will affect more Republican voters than Republican lawmakers anticipated. And a perceived effort to limit voters may actually drive up turnout by the targeted group, at least for an election or two.
Whatever the actual effects, adding a strict voter photo ID requirement is part of a broader Republican effort to reduce voting.
The state Supreme Court’s new Republican majority last year reversed a trial court ruling that that allowed people convicted of felonies to have their right to vote restored once they complete their active prison time. In the reversal, the state Supreme Court said those with felony convictions must also complete their periods of probation, parole, or post-release supervision. That rescinded the right to vote for as many as 56,000 people who had completed their prison sentences.
In another trimming of the vote, the Republican-controlled legislature eliminated the three-day grace period for the arrival of absentee ballots – a voting method recently used mostly by Democrats. The State Board of Elections reports that in the March primary 747 absentee ballots were rejected that would have counted if the grace period was still in effect. In the November general election, that number could swell into the thousands.
In a democracy, the right to voting should be protected and exercising that right should be encouraged. There was once bipartisan support for increasing turnout by making it easier to register and vote. Now Republicans – seeking to protect their shrinking base – are making it harder.
Today, the opportunity to vote is being narrowed and democracy is being diminished in many states. Perhaps Judge Biggs will find cause to stop a further stifling of the right to vote in North Carolina.
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@ newsobserver.com
