I have written this contribution for the New York Times Room for Debate forum on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. A snippet:

When a state rolls back conveniences for voters and makes it more burdensome to register and vote (as North Carolina did), or if a state’s existing rules make voting onerous (as New York does, by providing neither early voting nor absentee balloting), a state should have to alleviate voter burdens unless the state proves it has a good reason not to do so. Preventing voter fraud and building voter confidence are both important state interests, but they usually cannot justify laws that burden voters because these laws tend to neither prevent fraud nor instill voter confidence. Rollbacks like North Carolina’s, or strict voter ID requirements like Texas’s (which a federal court held was motivated by race discrimination) have less to do with fraud prevention than with partisan politics.