ASHEVILLE – One of the most hotly debated questions on the Nov. 6 ballot in North Carolina pits concerns about voter participation against worries about ballot security.

Backers of the proposed constitutional amendment that would require photo identification for people to vote in future elections say it would prevent fraud and increase trust in the outcome of elections.

"Common sense tells us (the electoral process) should be protected with enthusiasm and a photo ID is frankly a minimal standard and can be easily obtained," said Carl Mumpower, chairman of the Buncombe County Republican Party.

Opponents say it would keep many people from voting at all because they have difficulty getting a photo ID and is an unwieldy and expensive solution in search of problem that almost does not exist.

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Allison Riggs, senior attorney at a group that helped fight the previous voter ID law, said the number of cases in which the requirement would prevent fraud is minuscule: "There's absolutely no evidence of a problem that warrants a solution like this."

The outcome of the referendum could affect who wins subsequent elections.

WNC's demographics are different

State figures complied in 2015 found about 281,000 people in North Carolina who did not have a driver's license or state ID card. A disproportionate share were African-Americans, who strongly tend to vote Democratic.

The picture is a little different in Western North Carolina. Some of the counties with the highest percentage of registered voters without IDs from the Division of Motor Vehicles are among the region's most rural and have small minority populations.

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Figures from a 2015 study say Cherokee County had one of the highest rates in the state with 4.5 percent of voters lacking a DMV license or card. Rates were 4 percent or higher in Clay, Graham and Jackson counties.

The numbers are not an exact measurement because study is three years old and the legislature is likely to allow use of other forms of photo ID, although which ones has not been decided yet.

A tortured history

Current state law only requires that voters state their name and address when they come to their polling place.

The state General Assembly adopted a photo ID requirement once before, in 2013, as part of a bill that made a series of changes in election laws that generally made voting more difficult. Other provisions pushed through by the legislature's Republican majority included reducing the early voting period and ending pre-registration of some teenagers before they turned 18.

A panel of federal judges ruled in 2016, after the laws were employed in primary elections that year, that several of the changes collectively "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision" and were thus unconstitutional.

In 2016: Appeals court strikes down NC voter ID law

The legislature, split again along party lines on the question, decided to try again this year by setting a referendum on whether to require a photo ID.

This year's ballot question will not affect other aspects of the 2013 law that were struck down. The law setting the referendum does not say what types of photo IDs would qualify, but the legislature has set a special session to begin Nov. 27 at which it could make that decision.

A solution in search of a problem?

Opponents suggest the law would be like using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat: not worth the effort, and likely to cause other damage.

"Since the year 2000 ... there have been four instances of alleged voter impersonation. That's out of tens of millions of votes cast," said Riggs, who works at the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

"One thing we know both nationwide and here in North Carolina is this is really rare," said Tomas Lopez, executive director of Democracy NC, a group that promotes ballot access.

An audit performed by the State Board of Elections of the 2016 election found 508 ineligible votes cast out of a little less than 4.8 million.

The most common problem was votes by convicted felons, 441, followed by 41 ballots cast by noncitizens. The number of votes cast that the board said would not have counted if the state had a photo ID law was smaller still: one.

"It's not like the system is completely blind. I think election officials deserve some credit for being watchful," Lopez said.

Backers say ID would improve trust

Amendment supporters like Jay DeLancy, head of the Raleigh-based Voter Integrity Project and a voter ID proponent, say figures cited by opponents are misleading because no one can count fraud that no one catches.

DeLancy says fraudulent votes cast by someone claiming someone else's identity is "something that's very real."

"We've gotten multiple eyewitness accounts of people who are doing just that and the election officials stand by and do nothing," he said.

For four years this decade — during Gov. Pat McCrory's term in office — state and county elections boards were directed by Republicans, members of the party pushing for photo ID.

DeLancy said officials nonetheless have been slow to act on reports of voter impersonation and at least two Republican prosecutors declined to act on reports his group brought to them.

He said his organization's efforts have resulted in three felony charges in recent years, but as a nongovernmental agency, it is difficult for the group to detect voter impersonation without the power to subpoena witnesses and documents.

"We have spent several years investigating this but we're at our limit," he said.

Mumpower, a former Asheville City Councilman who has been involved in local politics for years, could not recall specific examples in Buncombe County of people being caught impersonating a registered voter. That's the crime a photo ID requirement is intended to prevent.

But, it's still a concern, he said.

"I can promise you that Republicans worry about it a lot. We do not trust the opposition party," Mumpower said. "We believe there are a lot of people out there today who care more about power than the sanctity of the voting booth."

Lopez said legislators would do better to attack actual problems that affect confidence in the electoral system by improving election equipment, making it less vulnerable to hackers and ending partisan gerrymandering.

Mumpower said, "It's very hard to catch people" impersonating a registered voter to cast a ballot. "The laws are very constraining. They protect law-breaking people."

Even if the problem is small, that is not a reason to ignore it, he said.

"It's like saying, 'We've only had nine murders this year,' " Mumpower said. "Even nine are too many."

Tilting the playing field?

Some opponents say the photo ID amendment is simply an attempt to give Republicans a small advantage by making it harder for some of Democrats' most reliable supporters to vote.

Critics also worry about how restrictive the law the General Assembly passes to implement the law will be, noting moves by the legislature to restrict the power of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper just after the 2016 election.

"There's a bad track record in lame duck (legislative) sessions in North Carolina, so that gives us some concern," Lopez said.

Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett, disavowed any intent to suppress the vote when he introduced the law setting up the referendum.

"We are fighting for the gold standard of election laws to ensure everyone who is eligible to vote is able to cast a secure ballot," he wrote.

Mumpower objects to the idea that minorities make up a disproportionate share of those who are registered to vote but don't have a photo ID.

"I think that’s a terribly offensive, racist statement. If somebody said that about my momma I’d punch them in the nose," he said. "What a ridiculous patronizing view of black Americans and minority Americans that they're not even capable of getting a voting ID."

How many would be affected?

Figures compiled by the left-leaning N.C. Justice Center from State Board of Elections data indicate that before the 2013 law took effect, black voters were indeed less likely to have photo IDs than white voters in most North Carolina counties.

In at least 92 of the state's 100 counties, the percentage of registered voters without a license or DMV-issued ID who are African-American was higher than the black share of all registered voters.

Some of the greatest disparities were in smaller, rural counties. In Pasquotank County, for instance, blacks made up 39 percent of all registered voters, but they made up nearly two-thirds of the 1,184 people who were registered in Pasquotank but did not have a DMV photo ID.

That's a problem given challenges blacks historically had being allowed to vote in North Carolina, Lopez said.

"There are many people for whom ID requirements raise concerns about the election process," he said. "They look at it and they say, 'Well, they don't want me to vote.' "

"Once again in the state of N.C. we’re facing the specter of new African-American voter suppression," said Carmen Ramos-Kennedy, head of the Asheville-Buncombe branch of the NAACP.

Riggs said people without IDs who are registered to vote are often low-income and either young or elderly.

Middle-class people who use a photo ID to get on an airplane might not appreciate the difficulties faced by those of less means, limited mobility or who live in counties where the DMV does not have an office staffed five days a week, she said.

Riggs' organization has been putting up videos on its website in which people recount challenges related to the requirement.

Common problems are people who were born in another state and do not have a birth certificate to use to get a photo ID or who attend college in North Carolina but only have a driver's license from another state, she said. Getting those sorts of issues may mean contacting or even visiting another state or taking time off work, she said.

DeLancy doesn't believe it.

He says opponents of the amendment overstate the number of people without an ID and the difficulty of getting one.

"Can you imagine people who are working ... who do not have an ID?" he said.

"There really aren't that many people who don't have a (photo) ID. That is a straw man argument the left uses," DeLancy said. "We respectfully disagree."

Opponents of the law have in the past had trouble finding anyone who doesn't to testify in court cases, he said. "People who function in society already have an ID."

What other states do

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures:

• 16 states do not require some sort of identification for a voter to cast a ballot.

• 34 states require some sort of identification for a voter to cast a ballot. Of those, 17 accept a photo ID only and 17 also accept an ID without a photograph.

• Of the 34 states requiring an ID of some sort, 10 have what the NCSL considers a "strict" law — seven of the photo ID states and three that accept other IDs — that requires a voter to take some action after casting a provisional ballot to have his or her vote counted. That typically involves presenting a form of identification shortly after the election to county election officials.

North Carolina's previous voter ID law would have made it one of the strict law states.

• The 24 "nonstrict" states that require an ID employ some other means of verifying a voter's identity if he has no identification when casting a ballot and do not require any further action by the voter after Election Day. Verification methods include comparing signatures on a provisional ballot and the voter's original registration form, having the voter sign an affidavit or allowing a ballot to be cast if election officials recognize the voter.

• Mississippi is the only state that has made having a photo ID part of its state constitution.

Who doesn't have a photo ID?

Here are the number of registered voters in each Western North Carolina county who did not show up as having a driver's license or ID card from the state Division of Motor Vehicles in 2015, and the percentage they made up of the total number of registered voters in the county.

Avery: 465, 3.8 percent

Buncombe: 5,405, 2.9 percent

Cherokee: 984, 4.5 percent

Clay: 367, 4.1 percent

Graham: 264, 4 percent

Haywood: 812, 2 percent

Henderson: 1,446, 1.9 percent

Jackson: 1,103, 4.1 percent

Macon: 452, 1.9 percent

Madison: 550, 3.5 percent

McDowell: 681, 2.4 percent

Mitchell: 452, 3.9 percent

Polk: 517, 3.5 percent

Rutherford: 928, 2.2 percent

Swain: 326, 3.3 percent

Transylvania: 615, 2.6 percent

Yancey: 509, 3.8 percent

About the numbers: The figures come from a matching process performed by the State Board of Elections. It is unknown how many of these voters might have another type of photo ID that could be used to vote. The state legislature has not yet decided what photo IDs would be valid for voting if the constitutional amendment requiring one passes.