Editorial: Judge shows way to legal voter photo ID, legislators should embrace it

He was also right to delay that appeal until after the March 3 primary – thus avoiding more confusion among both those headed to polling places to cast ballots and those charged with overseeing our elections.

What he should do, as part of his appeal, is to use the observations and insights in Judge Biggs’ order to work and negotiate with the plaintiffs to come up with a mutually agreeable voter photo ID regulations that could be adopted as rules by the state Board of Elections and that WOULD win their support. The legislature doesn’t need to take up its time to pass a detailed law. It can delegate that job to the state Board of Elections, which will need to administer it anyway.

This is no pie-in-the-sky ambition. The judge was careful and convincing in not merely pointing out the failings in the legislature’s law (rushed into passage over the governor’s wise veto) but offering clear and specific ways that a voter ID law or regulation could pass constitutional muster.

“The important metric for the Court’s purposes isn’t so much the variety of the IDs as how readily they are possessed by North Carolinians of different backgrounds,” the order states. This is no casual observation. “The state’s newly expanded list of IDs is that it continues to primarily include IDs which minority voters disproportionately lack and leave out those which minority voters are more likely to have.

It is the judge’s clear signal of what it would take to have a voter ID law that could achieve constitutional muster. “The continued exclusion of public-assistance and federal employee photo IDs, along with the piecemeal acceptance of state and local government IDs, invites skepticism.”

Here’s what’s critical about presenting a photo ID when voting. It is NOT about proving citizenship. It is NOT about proving residence. It is NOT about proving age.  Eligible voters have already proved that when they successfully registered to vote.

All a photo ID at the polling place needs to prove is that the holders of the IDs are the same persons as those who already proved they were eligible and qualified to vote. Simple.

There is plenty of time for the attorney general and the plaintiffs, using the guides Judge Biggs included in her order, to come up with a settlement agreement for a Photo ID regulation that WON’T discriminate and WILL be constitutional.

There’s even plenty of time to reach such an agreement and provide for FULL AND OPEN discussion through the state’s rule-making process.

It would clearly be a stretch to have it enacted in time to fully inform voters before the 2020 elections.

But getting a law enacted and rules adopted, avoiding a prolonged legal battle and the accompanying voter confusion – would get a photo ID law in place.

That should be the real motivation of those who back such a law. They should urge Stein’s efforts in that direction.