Still not enough

State Republicans rolled out the Voter Information Verification Act in 2013 to combat alleged voter fraud, which is about as rare as Democratic victories in Raleigh these days. Starting in 2016, voters have to show a government-issued photo ID to vote. Driver’s licenses, passport and military IDs are OK; college IDs aren’t.

The immediate problem, of course, is that plenty of people don’t have IDs that meet the requirements of the law. According to various analyses of the state’s voting rolls, somewhere between 320,000 and 380,000 registered voters in North Carolina — 5 to 6 percent — don’t have photo IDs. Critics noted that the law would hit hardest at the elderly as well as African Americans and college students, two groups more likely to vote for Democrats. Critics also argued that people shouldn’t be denied the right to vote because they didn’t have the time or money to get an ID. Worse, the law didn’t make allowances for people who lost their ID cards or whose IDs expired.

Lawsuits quickly followed Gov. Pat McCrory’s signature. One, filed by voters and civil rights organizations, is pending in Wake County Superior Court. A federal lawsuit, which focuses on the voter ID requirement as well as other voting-law changes, is scheduled to start in Winston-Salem next month.

It might have been the thought of losing in court that prompted Republicans lawmakers to drop the voter ID changes into an unrelated elections bill two weeks ago. Both chambers voted overwhelmingly for the revisions, and McCrory signed the bill with little fanfare Monday. Senate leader Phil Berger said the tweaks reflected what he called “feedback” received since 2013. House Rules Chairman David Lewis of Harnett County wrote on his personal blog that the changes are “reasonable.”

Whatever the reasons, the new law addresses some of the obvious shortcomings of the old law. It lets voters present expired driver’s licenses at the polls. If prospective voters have no ID at all, they can sign an affidavit that says a “reasonable impediment” prevented them from getting one. Those eight statutory impediments include a lost or stolen ID, work or family responsibilities, disability or illness, lack of transportation or lack of a birth certificate or other documents needed to get a photo ID. To cast a provisional ballot on Election Day, voters would have to present their voting registration card or provide their birth date and last four digits of their Social Security number. If everything matches as it should — remember, instances of in-person voting fraud were essentially nil before all of these changes came down — local elections boards will have to count that vote.

Now that lawmakers are thinking about voting law changes, they should go further fix some of the other things they broke when they passed the 2013 law. There was no good reason to exclude college IDs from the list of acceptable forms of identification, especially when most student IDs in North Carolina are issued by colleges and universities established by the General Assembly. There was no good reason to shorten the early voting period by a week. And there was no good reason to get rid of same-day voter registration.

The reasons, of course, were political, as Republicans sought to neutralize Democratic votes by making it a lot harder for Democratic supporters to vote. But if fairness and access to the polls for all is the goal here, state lawmakers still have a lot more work to do.

http://www.greensboro.com/opinion/n_and_r_editorials/still-not-enough/article_c5098d10-1b91-11e5-a9c3-07d9547de187.html