A not-so-measured report on efforts to implement voter identification requirements in North Carolina:

“The impact of the voting restrictions was dramatic: Voting participation by African-American males, largely Republicans, plummeted across the South from 98 percent in 1885 to 10 percent in 1905, according to historian J. Morgan Kousser.

Today, voting rights advocates in North Carolina fear that history may be repeating itself. After winning control of the state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction, Republican lawmakers have made it their top legislative priority to pass new election restrictions that require voters to produce photo identification at the polls.”

The article also brings up the Georgia voter identification law, inaccurately and incompletely:

“In 2005, a federal judge halted Georgia’s new voter ID law on the grounds that it amounted to a new poll tax, because of the costs and burdens it placed on voters.”

Full stop.  The article fails to note that this was a temporary order and upon closer examination, both federal and state courts allowed Georgia’s law to take effect.  The courts rejected the arguments that voter identification laws in Georgia were discriminatory or illegal.

Two important observations about this unbalanced article, and this debate:  First, it is a shame when important public debates about voter identification attract a cottage industry of commentators who use half-truths and rhetorical diversions – such as leading readers to believe the Georgia voter identification law was struck down when it was not.  Second, this is an issue with staggering popular support.  Polls show between 75 to 85 percent of voters support voter identification laws.  It is a suicidal effort by people like the author.  The only thing that could make support for voter identification grow is if the opponents aren’t straight and true when they write about the issue.