NAACP officials postpone voting rights panel

IF PRESIDENT OBAMA had been on time to the NAACP Convention in Philly yesterday, you might've heard some thoughts on voting rights from a few Texas folks who helped strike down the state's voter-ID law.

A panel discussion on such laws and the group's voting-rights initiatives was cut to a short speech from Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe on the same stage where Obama appeared about an hour later.

The commander in chief was tied up with calls related to the Iran nuclear deal, announced yesterday. The NAACP switched several scheduled events after learning that yesterday's keynote would be late.

"What can I say? We were just glad to see the president," Bledsoe said outside the massive meeting hall, where he was flanked by two would-be panelists and an official from the NAACP National Voter Fund.

The Texans - Bledsoe, fellow lawyer Robert Notzon and film producer Deborah Toodle - are from the state with some of the most restrictive voter-ID laws in the nation.

An oft-cited critique of voting in Texas is that the state only accepts seven of 16 types of ID at the polls. Gun permits are accepted, but student-ID cards aren't.

At its annual convention this year, the NAACP planned to address voting rights two years after the Supreme Court struck down a key component of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required nine states to seek federal approval before changing election laws.

Since then, several states have enacted or toughened election laws, often in the name of stopping voter fraud:

* A federal trial began Monday after the U.S. Department of Justice sued North Carolina, which overhauled some election processes that had increased turnout among minorities. That includes early voting and same-day registration.

* In January 2014, a Commonwealth Court judge struck down a Pennsylvania law that would have required photo ID at the polls. Court evidence showed that of the 750,000 Pennsylvanians without a photo ID, most were black or Hispanic.

Bledsoe and company countered that this often results in disenfranchisement of minority voters. Tasks like obtaining or renewing a driver's license or updating an address are more of a stress on those in poverty, Notzon said.

"It's not fair to demand a certain type [of ID]," said Katie Wilson, president of the NAACP branch in Murfreesboro, Tenn., who would not have been a panelist. "As long as you have something that says who's coming to vote."

At the panel, Toodle would have screened a 15-minute version of "The American Vote," which she hopes to make into a feature-length film. Instead, she showed the People Paper the video on her laptop.

The clip features several young people comparing voter-ID laws to a poll tax.

"Our view is, 'the more, the merrier,' " said Peter Graham Cohn, treasurer of the NAACP National Voter Fund. "We're a little different from other entities, in that we think everyone should vote and we're not going to try to disenfranchise anyone."