Voting safeguards will be needed

When legislators approved voting law changes this year, they branded them as a voter identification bill.

Others, including the Journal editorial board, were not as positive, calling the legislation voter suppression.

If lawyers at the Raleigh law firm of Bailey & Dixon are right, however, the new law may best be remembered for Election Day chaos.

The lawyers have petitioned the N.C. Board of Elections to write three rules clarifying how the new law will be implemented. All three point to potential areas of confusion and conflict when people vote in 2016.

The lawyers fear that many voters will have a form of photo identification that does not perfectly match their voter registration information. For example, they foresee a John Robert Smith registered to vote using his full middle name but holding a license on which his name is J.R. Smith or John R. Smith.

The lawyers say a rule should be written to protect against someone being barred from voting in such situations.

Then there’s the question of address on the photo identification card and the possibility that it does not perfectly match that on the voter registration rolls. We can think of any number of scenarios in which a voter would have a license with an address that differs from that on the election rolls – procrastination in completing both changes being the most obvious.

The lawyers want the rules to say that addresses won’t be checked because the identification card is being used solely to comply with what is a voter identification law, not an address verification law.

Finally, the lawyers are concerned that the new political party observers allowed under the law will try to stand close enough to the voter as to be able to read the voter’s identification card or hear the voter’s conversations with precinct officials. They want the rules to say they must stand far enough away so that neither occurs.

The state board would be wise to consider these proposals closely before confusion reigns on Election Day.