A bill in the N.C. legislature that would require residents to show a photo ID when voting would be especially harmful to black, Latinos, college students and the elderly, a group of Democratic lawmakers said earlier this week.

Flanked by students on the campus of Johnson C. Smith University, state Sen. Malcolm Graham accused the bill’s Republican sponsors of playing politics with the voting rights of minorities and others.

Voter fraud is “extremely rare” in North Carolina, he said, noting a recent Charlotte Observer article that said only two people in the state had been prosecuted for voter fraud since 2006. That same year, Graham said, two people in the state also were stuck by lightening.

“Searching for ways to prevent citizens from voting is backwards,” the Mecklenburg Democrat said. “The bill might as well be called the voter ID intimidation and disenfranchisement act, because that’s what it does; it prevents people from voting.”

Graham was joined as he spoke by two other Mecklenburg lawmakers -- Democratic Reps. Beverly Earle and Rodney Moore.

With Republicans in control of the N.C. legislature for the first time in more than a century, they have introduced several bills that have riled Democrats, including a measure that would block the new federal health care law. (Gov. Bev Purdue vetoed the bill but GOP lawmakers, unable to override her veto, are looking for a second vote.)

GOP backers of the voter ID bill say it’s about restoring confidence in the election process, not suppressing votes.

But Graham, who also works as special assistant to the JCSU president for government and community affairs, called the bill a “solution in search of a problem.”

Lawmakers estimate that a new voter-ID law would cost the state at least $500,000 to implement. To avoid running afoul of federal voting rights laws, some say the state would have to provide free photo IDs to anyone who requests one. Critics of the bill say at least 1 million potential voters in North Carolina currently are without a government-issued photo ID – many of them racial minorities and the elderly.

Graham said money spent on the ID program could be better used creating jobs.

“At a time when critical education needs, social service, economic development initiatives are under the budgetary knife, it seems absurd to spend money on something that… is a nonissue,” he said. “This is a bad bill. It’s bad for students, it’s bad for the elderly, it’s bad for minorities, and it’s bad for the citizens of North Carolina. It’s a bad, bad bill.”

Graham noted that many Democratic voters, after flooding the polls in 2008 to elect President Barack Obama, stayed at home for the 2010 midterm election.

“Elections have consequences,” he said. “We are learning that right now. We can ill afford to go backwards.”

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