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Of the 3.75 million Tar Heels who cast votes in the 2018 election, 55% supported a “Constitutional amendment to require voters to provide photo identification before voting in person.”
The people spoke, but a state constitutional amendment does not a law make.
With the constitution amended, it was up to the General Assembly to turn the requirement into law. In December 2018, the legislature ratified “An act to implement the constitutional amendment requiring photographic identification to vote,” transforming the 13 words on the 2018 ballot into a 20-page statute. Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the legislation, but the General Assembly voted to override and Senate Bill 824 became Session Law 2018-144, meaning a photo ID would be required in the March 3, 2020, primary.
So when U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs blocked the ID requirement Tuesday, her beef was not with the constitutional amendment voters passed; it was with the law the General Assembly passed to implement the requirement.
Citing North Carolina’s “sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression,” Judge Biggs ordered officials not to enforce the law in 2020.
We are not opposed to a photo ID requirement and neither are 55 percent of the people who voted for it in 2018. It’s not a radical idea. Twenty states require a photo ID to vote, and 15 more require some other form of ID. But it has to be done right and satisfy federal law.
North Carolina’s 2013 voter ID law was struck down in 2016 by a federal appeals court, which said it was approved with intentional racial discrimination in mind. The court ruled there was an unconstitutional effort to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
In her ruling, Judge Biggs said the newest version was no different from the 2013 law. Republican leaders in the General Assembly have asked the state's Department of Justice to appeal.
If the judge’s decision is appealed, a higher court could overturn it and another appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court certainly is not out of the question.
The General Assembly has two groups to placate: the voters who passed the constitutional amendment, but also the federal judiciary, which must ensure state laws do not violate the U.S. Constitution.
It seems that the best and quickest way forward is for the General Assembly to revise the law, taking into consideration issues the courts have raised and looking closely at other states with photo ID laws that have passed federal scrutiny, including from the Supreme Court.
Here’s the bottom line: North Carolina voters made it clear they want a photo ID requirement. The will of the voters will not have been met, however, until the General Assembly enacts a law that can pass muster in federal court and stay on the books.
So far that has not been the case.
Wilmington StarNews, a Gannett publication
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Editorial: ID law must satisfy courts
