On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case related to a North Carolina voter ID law.
The case, Berger v. North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, will determine whether or not state officials can intervene to defend a state’s voter ID requirement in constitutional challenges and lawsuits related to the Voting Rights Act. This comes after a ballot question passed in North Carolina in 2018 that enacted voter ID. The North Carolina Legislature enacted legislation following the vote, the state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, vetoed the bill, and the Legislature overrode his video. However, the NAACP’s North Carolina chapter sued the state over the law.
It’s absurd that a voter ID law is being challenged in court. It’s a commonsense rule, supported by most people, and something that is a nonissue in many parts of the world, including Europe.
Outside of the United States, voter ID often isn’t a contentious issue. Other countries understand that requiring someone to show an ID to vote makes perfect sense. Society often asks us for proof of who we are when buying alcohol/tobacco, picking up tickets at a will-call window, boarding an airplane, and more.
If you’re a citizen of France and want to vote in the first round of the presidential election next month, you’ll need to present a photo ID — whether it’s an ID specific to voting, a national identity card, a passport, a driver’s license, a health insurance card, a military ID, or something else.
Meanwhile, if you’re an Irish citizen and want to vote in Ireland, the identification requirements are similar. People can use a passport, driver’s license, employee identification card, student identification card, or a public services card to prove their identity, among other methods.
And in Portugal, one must present an identification document, usually a national ID called the Citizen Card, to cast a vote.
Most European nations require identification to vote. A 2021 Crime Prevention Research Center study found that 46 out of 47 European countries require voters to provide some form of identification to vote — the United Kingdom was the lone exception. However, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson supports voter ID. So while 80% of Americans support voter ID, according to a June 2021 Monmouth poll, and it’s common in the rest of the world, it remains a divisive political issue among elected officials.
That’s unfortunate, because voter fraud happens in the U.S. While voter ID can’t solve every instance of voter fraud, it would help mitigate the problem and likely result in greater public trust in election results. Every state should have relevant laws and provide IDs to anyone who wants one. There is no need for this to be a divisive issue.
Tom Joyce ( @TomJoyceSports ) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.
