State Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Loyalsock Township, is looking ahead instead of looking back. And he’s right to.

Yaw emphasized that a voter ID requirement would improve confidence in future elections. He believes — and we agree — that the state has the resources to ensure that anyone who fears being disenfranchised by a voter ID requirement can get an appropriate ID.

Yaw believes that a voter ID requirement is a practical step the state could take to reinvigorate trust in the election process.

We agree that requiring voters to show ID when voting or applying for a mail-in ballot is a reasonable step. We are skeptical of claims that acquiring an ID is too burdensome. We appreciate that our state senator is looking at a contentious issue and finding ways to improve elections in the future.

In an article in Wednesday’s Sun-Gazette, he reflected on his time as both a lawmaker and county solicitor and acknowledged that elections always encounter hiccups and road bumps. But in the past few years, he bemoaned the unwillingness to move beyond a fixation on what could’ve gone wrong.

“Now, we are not moving on,” he said. “We are continuing to pick at the same thing and I think that is not the way to go.”

As we’ve editorialized in the past several weeks, the fixation on endlessly rehashing the 2020 election is an unacceptable waste of money — no matter the final sum — and a hindrance to modern conservatism regroup and learning how to persuade voters of the need to rein in government spending and overregulation.

Yaw is right. It’s not the way to go. The better path is to address the future rather than the past, and one practical, concrete step is to improve faith in elections by requiring voters to show ID, to help voters without IDs obtain them and to fairly enforce the requirement.