The Charlotte Observer today offers up hard data on why photo voter IDs will create undue hurdles for citizens to exercise their fundamental right to vote and argues that the proposed rules should not be passed in North Carolina (and they are taking a lot of flack about it in the comments sections.) The editors reference the Justice Department’s ruling yesterday that Texas’s photo voter ID law would disproportionally impact Hispanics, and the editors cite data that show that hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians also lack photo voter ID:
In the Texas case, the bulk of the disenfranchised voters were Hispanic … Information supplied by the Texas secretary of state showed that the number of people lacking any personal ID or driver’s license issued by the state ranged from 603,892 to 795,955. Of that number, 29-38 percent were Hispanic. …
The bill N.C. lawmakers crafted would affect more than 450,000 N.C. residents, the nonpartisan voter advocacy group Democracy North Carolina has said. More than 800,000 people statewide don’t have photo identification from the Department of Motor Vehicles, according to a State Board of Elections and DMV analysis. More than a half-million North Carolinians – 556,513 – have no identification at all.
Yesterday was also an important day for voting rights, because a Wisconsin judge placed a permanent injunction on that state’s photo voter ID rule. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess wrote, “(But) voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression.” What the judge is saying is that suppressing the vote is fatal to our democracy. Photo voter ID rules are really about turning citizens away from the polls. The Charlotte Observer gets it right.