No surprise the News & Observer doesn’t care for the proposed voter ID constitutional amendment that would go on the November ballot:

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore announced on Thursday his plan to put a photo voter identification requirement in the state constitution. The idea is as craven, political, misleading and ineffective as it was when a federal court ruled in 2016 that an N.C. photo ID provision and other voting restrictions targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.”

Moore and his backers made that clear themselves Thursday, offering the same lame justifications that have been exposed as flimsy before.

…Don’t buy the ruse that this is about avoiding in-person voter fraud. With such fraud virtually nonexistent, this is a waste of time and money. This, like so many things Republican legislative leaders have done in recent years, is purely about politics – thinly disguised maneuvering to dampen turnout for their opponents no matter the cost to democracy.

Legislators should defeat this gimmick. If they don’t, voters should in November.

And if voters approve the amendment in November? I suppose the N&O will like it even less, never mind the liberal yelling over the suppression of democracy during the state budget process.