The trial over North Carolina’s law may be the biggest test yet of the remaining strength of the Voting Rights Act. Already, the court has heard from citizens who voted for years without difficulty, but whose votes were tossed out or could not be cast in 2014 because of the new law.
The state’s lawyers argue that North Carolina is behaving no worse than other states, New York included, that have no early voting, same-day registration or out-of-precinct voting. Those lapses are a discredit to those states, but they are not an excuse for North Carolina to turn back its own clock.