RALEIGH – If you’re the captain of a football team whose opponents have just been flagged for a penalty, you usually get a choice of two outcomes: the penalty or the play.

Often, it makes sense to pick the penalty. You allow the opposing team to replay the down but it has to give up yardage. If the play was bad for you, or the penalty involves 10 or more yards, the decision is an easy one.

Sometimes, though, it makes sense to decline the penalty and let the play stand. If the play was good for you – you stopped the other team on third down or got a turnover – that decision is also an easy one.

In the North Carolina General Assembly, Republicans had a similar call to make once Democrats refused to compromise on a proposal to require voters to show photo IDs at the polls.

The original GOP measure required a driver’s license or some other government-issued photo ID. Voters who came to the polls without such proof of identification would have their ballots treated as provisional until elections officials verified their identities. Democrats and liberals claimed that the bill could potentially block tens of thousands of registered voters from participating in state elections. Republicans and conservatives said their claims were preposterous. But in an effort at compromise, GOP lawmakers decided to amend the bill to include additional documents that could be use as proof of identity, such as voter-registration cards, utility bills, or pay stubs.

Democrats didn’t budge. So Republicans have gone back to their original, “purist” requirement of a government-issued photo ID.

I think their decision is analogous to picking the penalty over the play. Unless they employ some unprecedented parliamentary maneuver, Republicans will have to send any photo ID bill they pass to Gov. Beverly Perdue. Given her past statements, she will veto it. Republicans appear to lack sufficient votes in the House to override such a veto.

So the bill won’t become law. It will remain a live issue.

Politically, this constitutes a penalty for the Democrats. The vast majority of North Carolina voters believe that photo ID requirements are entirely reasonable. To swing voters, Perdue’s veto of the bill won’t look like some kind of principled statement against voter suppression. She will simply seem unwilling to safeguard North Carolina elections against voter fraud. They’ll be suspicious – is she trying to woo support among people who aren’t supposed to be voting in the first place?

Some Republicans may be overselling the political significance of the issue. I certainly don’t see it as the equivalent of a pass-interference call, or even a 10-year holding penalty. It’s more akin to a five-yard penalty.

But Perdue is already deep in her own territory. Her game plan for reelection in 2012 will be challenging to pull off, to put it mildly. She can’t afford even a false-start flag. But that’s what she and her legislative allies have managed to produce.

It would have been better for Democrats to work out a compromise. Republicans will be happy to replay this down, again and again.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.