Fact check: Here’s what you need to know about NC voter ID and voter fraud
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The issue: North Carolina voters approved a voter ID constitutional amendment in 2018, and ID rules were supposed to start during the 2020 elections. But a federal judge has blocked it — in a ruling that said the law was motivated at least partly by racial discrimination. Opponents of voter ID claim it will stop eligible people from voting, while supporters of voter ID claim it will stop fraud. We’ll look into both, as well as how strict the law would be and who supports it.
Why we’re checking this: Voters have been getting mixed messages about whether they need ID to vote, so we’ll try to clear up the confusion. With fast-moving legal developments in the lawsuit against North Carolina’s voter ID law — the state’s second attempt at such a law in the last seven years — there are plenty of questions to answer about what’s happening and what it means.
What you need to know:
You won’t need to show ID to vote in the primary election on March 3. But pay attention — it could change by the general election Nov. 3.
The jury is still out on whether voter ID disenfranchises legitimate voters, particularly minorities. But we do know that voter fraud is incredibly rare regardless of whether a voter ID law is in effect.
North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast without some form of voter ID in place. That was supposed to change this year, with new voter ID requirements set to start in the 2020 elections. But on Dec. 31, 2019, a federal judge blocked the voter ID law from taking effect, at least temporarily.
U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs ruled that while a trial can still sort out the issues, it appears that parts of the law “were impermissibly motivated, at least in part, by discriminatory intent.”
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat who is representing the state officials including Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper who were sued over the law, has said he will appeal that ruling. But since the 2020 primaries are so close — absentee voting for the March primary starts Jan. 13 — Stein said he won’t fight to retain voter ID in the primary election. So only the general election in November is still in question.
People in North Carolina support voter ID by a double-digit margin. So as these legal developments unfold, many are likely wondering what the controversy is all about.
Here’s how we got here, as well as answers to some common questions and misconceptions.
What is voter ID?
There’s not really one set definition of voter ID, although at its most basic level it’s the concept that voters have to provide some sort of documentation about their identity before casting a ballot. Sometimes that means a photo identification, but not always.
Not every state has a voter ID law, but most do . And North Carolina remains — after the court ruling last week blocking it — the only state in the Southeast without it.
Around the country, details of how voter ID laws work varies widely. Some states have instituted the laws with few problems. But North Carolina isn’t alone in attracting lawsuits; Texas’ law has also been tied up in court for years, for example.
Some North Carolina Republicans, including Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, have said North Carolina’s law would be among the least strict in the nation.
In reality, just by requiring a photo ID, North Carolina’s law would be stricter, in one important respect, than 16 other states that only require a non-photo ID.
But among the 18 states that require photo identification, GOP leaders’ claim that the law is lenient by comparison appears to be true.
According to an analysis of every state’s voter ID law by the National Conference of State Legislatures, North Carolina’s rules are considered in the “non-strict” category along with nine other states. North Carolina stands out for both the variety of IDs that people would be able to use if the law were ever restored, as well as possible excuses, based on the NCSL analysis.
“We’re referring to a number of factors, including the number of acceptable IDs but especially the reasonable impediment clause,” wrote Pat Ryan, a Berger spokesman, in an email to The News & Observer, about what makes North Carolina more lenient. “This permits a voter without a photo ID to cast a vote and sign an affidavit about why they don’t have a photo ID. ... Reasonable impediments include lack of transportation, illness, work, family responsibilities, lack of required documentation, etc.”
History of voter ID in NC
In 2013, North Carolina’s Republican-led state legislature passed a sweeping elections law that included a new requirement for voter ID, as well as restrictions on early voting and other forms of voting.
It was only in place in one election, however, before being struck down as unconstitutional due to racial discrimination in 2016.
After losing that battle, Republican lawmakers placed a proposed constitutional amendment for voter ID on the 2018 ballot, with changes that supporters hoped would make it less likely to be overturned in federal court again. (Passing it as a constitutional amendment would also protect it from challenges in state court.)
The amendment passed, with roughly 55% of the vote. And that was during the “blue wave” midterm elections as Democrats won a majority of votes statewide, for legislative seats. So it’s evident that voter ID is not purely a partisan issue.
In the 170-member state legislature, however, the issue is much more politically divisive with the votes falling almost entirely along political lines.
Black Democrats’ support
The judge’s ruling citing racial motivation came despite two African-American senators initially supporting the bill that was sponsored by a third.
Berger’s office responded to the ruling by pointing out that Sen. Joel Ford, Sen. Ben Clark and Sen. Don Davis, all African-American Democrats, voted in favor of Senate Bill 824 at various phases of the legislative process.
“The way I saw it, we had a constitutional mandate as determined by the election, to establish a voter ID law,” said Clark, of Hoke County. “I thought it was unnecessary, but I thought I had an obligation to work across the aisle to support my constituents.”
Clark said the initial bill was “very bad” but bettered through revisions. To gain his support, Clark needed same-day registration and free ID cards to be offered to voters. Under those concessions, he agreed to vote the bill through the Senate, and he hoped the House would continue to revise it.
In the end, he supported Cooper’s decision to veto the bill and voted against the override of Cooper’s veto. So did Davis, who initially supported the bill for the same reasons as Clark. “For me originally, my position has been and maintains, I’ve not seen enough cases — broader cases of fraud that justified this — but I do see that my constituents are in support of voter ID,” said Davis, of Pitt County.
When Ford, a former senator from Mecklenburg County, sponsored the 2018 voter ID bill, he didn’t see it as racist.
“My motivation was the pure protection of the vote and to help people who did not have an ID secure one,” Ford said.
In the end, Ford was the only Senate Democrat to vote to override Cooper’s veto. But he isn’t the only black voter in North Carolina to support voter ID, although he is an outlier. While the state as a whole was split roughly 55-45 in favor of voter ID, the recent court ruling said that around two-thirds of white voters supported the voter ID amendment in 2018, while around two-thirds of non-white voters opposed it.
What about voter fraud?
Voter fraud is incredibly rare — no, there are not thousands of dead people “voting,” nor are immigrants without U.S. citizenship voting en masse, as President Donald Trump falsely claims in numerous speeches.
But while voter fraud is rare, it does sometimes happen. How much is an unknown question, since there’s no nationwide data, and almost no state data, either. North Carolina, in fact, is perhaps the only state in the country to track such data.
North Carolina compiled a voter fraud audit after the 2016 elections. Officials didn’t repeat it after the 2018 elections — although they did stop an alleged fraud scheme in Bladen County to help a Republican congressional candidate.
In the state’s audit of the 2016 elections, North Carolina documented 508 allegations of voter fraud. That’s about 0.01% of the 4.8 million votes cast. Officials said that even if every allegation turned out to be true, no election results would have changed.
And only one case out of those 508 was of someone impersonating another voter at the polls — which is the kind of fraud that voter ID would stop.
All in all, the state’s 2016 election audit concluded, voter fraud is “neither rampant nor non-existent in North Carolina” and “ineligible voters are not isolated to one political party or any geographical region of the state.”
Patrick Gannon, the state election board’s spokesman, said he has never heard of another state doing a comprehensive audit of fraud allegations, adding that, “if there are any other states, there aren’t many.”
Does voter ID decrease voter turnout?
This is a question academics have begun to ponder in recent years, with mixed results.
Three separate studies published since 2017 have come to three separate conclusions.
One academic study concluded that voter ID laws do suppress “the turnout of racial and ethnic minorities,” and that they also “skew democracy toward those on the political right.”
A different study, however, found voter ID laws didn’t have any effect on voter turnout — or on voter fraud.
“Overall, our results suggest that efforts to reform voter ID laws may not have much impact on elections,” the paper’s authors wrote.
A third study cast doubt on any definitive proclamations one way or the other, saying there is “no clear evidence” on what voter ID laws actually do to voter turnout.
All three studies were co-authored by multiple college professors, and two were published in the University of Chicago’s “Journal of Politics.” The other was published by a prominent think tank, the National Bureau of Economic Research.
In 2014, the federal government did a brief survey of the issue, looking at 10 states with voter ID laws. That report, published by the Government Accountability Office, found that turnout decreased in five of the 10 states, didn’t change in four of the 10, and increased in one.
BEHIND THE STORY
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We check claims that are widely shared or published; are about a topic of concern to many of our readers; can be proven or disproven through facts; and could cause people to act or vote in a certain way. This topic met all the criteria.
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Our sources. Here’s where we found information and research on this topic:
News & Observer article on voter ID being blocked, including a full copy of the judge’s order
North Carolina’s 2016 “Post-Election Audit Report”
News & Observer fact-check on claims about immigrants voting
US government 2014 study on voter ID effects on turnout
2017 academic study: “Voter Identification Laws and the Suppression of Minority Votes”
2018 academic study: “Obstacles to estimating voter ID laws’ effect on turnout”
2019 academic study: “Strict ID Laws Don’t Stop Voters”
North Carolina voter registration rules and FAQ
This story was produced by The News & Observer Fact-Checking Project, which shares fact-checks with newsrooms statewide. It was edited by politics editor Jordan Schrader and managing editor Jane Elizabeth. Submit a suggestion for what we should check, or a comment or suggestion about our fact-checking, at bit.ly/nandofactcheck.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Fact check: Here’s what you need to know about NC voter ID and voter fraud."
