Voting wrongs

IT IS the morning of November 9th, the day after the election, and America is waking up to find out who is the new president. The result turns on the vote in North Carolina, where the ballot papers are being recounted. Even when the tally is in, the result will be in doubt. North Carolina’s new voting laws are subject to a legal challenge, which could take weeks for the courts to resolve. Both sides complain that the election is being stolen; the acrimony, sharpened by allegations of racial discrimination, makes Florida’s hanging chads and the Supreme Court’s ruling in favour of George W. Bush in 2000 seem like a church picnic.This is not as fanciful as it sounds. America organises its democracy differently from other rich countries. Each state writes its own voting laws, there is no national register of eligible voters and no form of ID that is both acceptable in all polling booths and held by everyone. Across the country, 17 states have new voting laws that, in November, will be tested for the first time in a presidential contest. In several states these laws face legal challenges, which allege that they have been designed in order to discourage African-Americans and Latinos from voting. It is past time to start worrying about where these challenges might lead.