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NC Senate Passes Voter ID Measure

Voters passed a photo ID requirement for voters in the general election this month.

The state Senate has given its final approval for photo ID requirements for in-person voting.

This is the first effort for the legislature to put into practice a constitutional amendment requiring photo ID. Voters approved that mandate this month in a statewide referendum with 55 percent of the vote.

Two previous voter ID measures passed by Republicans this decade failed. One was vetoed by then-Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat. Another one was blocked by federal judges who found the legislation unfairly discriminated black voters.

This latest version is less restrictive than that in part because it allows many more types of photo identifications, including student IDs from public and private colleges.

The measure now goes to the state House, where it's likely to be debated next week in the ongoing lame-duck session before new members are sworn in.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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