“That’s sort of deep if you consider that in 2004, [Democratic presidential candidate] John Kerry won Wisconsin by [only] 14,000 votes.”
There is no doubt that if young African American and other voters are denied access to voting next year, Democrats will lose, Baker says.
“You can look at the numbers, we can cut the numbers, and we can take the young people of color for granted. But if young people of color do not vote in 2012, we will lose the White House,” he says.
The restrictions that these new state-level voting laws represent have only recently become a real issue of concern, opponents say.
'One Of Our Toughest Fights'
Further, the most common form of these new restrictions are the ones which require voters to show specific forms of ID before being allowed to vote.
“This is one of our toughest fights because it sounds innocuous enough, right? And for the 88 or 89 percent of people who have the right type of ID, it’s hard for them to recognize that there are a heck of a lot of people out there who don’t,” says Megan Donovan, with the Fair Elections Legal Network.
The problem is that these new laws were “crafted very, very, very strictly: not just to say, ‘Show some ID so that we know who you are,’ but in order to vote you need to have X, Y, or Z – and that’s all that’s going to count,” she says.
Most commonly, these laws require a voter to present a valid state driver's license or passport, and “by and large, they are very narrowly drawn to exclude a lot of common forms of ID,” such as student IDs, she adds.
These restrictions fall heavily on young people, Donovan says.
“It’s well-documented in a number of settings that when you start breaking down who doesn’t have these types of IDs, it’s falls disproportionately on minority voters, as well,” she says.
When the specifics of the voter ID laws differ, they do so “in telling ways,” Donovan says.
For instance, in Texas, an acceptable ID with which to vote is a gun license. “But if you have a student ID, that’s not going to count.”
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
Possibly the most one-sided article I've ever seen on BC. Reads like a piece of pre-packaged propaganda.
All Republicans are asking is that people be required to prove they are who they claim to be when they vote. That's not an outrage, that's basic common sense and every voter from both parties ought to support it.
Dave
2 - Scott Nance
Dave,
I'd agree with you except the very odd way the laws are drawn, particularly in your home state of Texas. A gun license but not a student ID?
That doesn't seem like common sense to me.
3 - Arch Conservative
"Possibly the most one-sided article I've ever seen on BC"
and that's no small feat!
How anyone could suggest with a straight face that it is Republicans attempting to subvert Democracy after we witnessed the Democrats in the Wisconsin state senate fleeing to IL after not being able to get their way is ridiculous, even for someone like Scott Nance, whose middle name is ridiculous.
4 - Stop the Elite
Student ID's are a joke that's why they're not accepted. This is classic leftist non-sense. If they can't print up phony id's on their home computer than they complain and claim disenfranchisement.
5 - Glenn Contrarian
Dave -
The perennial cry of the GOP: "Voter fraud! Rampant voter fraud! We MUST prevent and prosecute voter fraud!"
Never mind that voter fraud is very, VERY rare to begin with. I keep asking you for statistics, but you NEVER provide any. So here's some...and in ALL THE NATION from 2002 to 2005 (including the 2004 presidential election and the 2002 congressional election and the elections in ALL fifty states during that time), there were less than TWENTY cases of fruadulent voting!!!! Gee - TWENTY cases out of how many scores of millions of votes cast in those four years????
Just to drive home the point, there was some additional GOP voting fraud paranoia in Maine:
This year, on July 25th, the clueless ME GOP Chairman Charlie Webster asked Maine's Republican Sec. of State Charles E. Summers, Jr. to investigate 206 out-of-state college students whom he believed committed "voter fraud" because they registered and voted in the Pine Tree State.
Summers, after a two month investigation, was forced to admit that every one of the students was lawfully registered to vote in ME; that there was no evidence that any one of them committed voter fraud.
The GOP cry about voter fraud is a strawman in the very truest sense...and you know it! You and the Republicans do NOT care about real democracy...and you know it! All you are doing is following the words of Heritage Foundation founder Paul Weyrich:
"I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
That was from a speech in front of Ronald Reagan, Jerry Falwell, and thousands of Baptist preachers.
6 - Glenn Contrarian
"Stop the Elite" -
You can read my previous comment on how the GOP's voter fraud claims are a strawman on a grand scale...
...and you can read this from Slate that shows beyond question that GOP efforts at voter disenfranchisement are NOT a strawman, but are QUITE REAL.
Oh, but I forgot - even though there's close to zero voting fraud, and even though there's solid evidence of large-scale voter disenfranchisement by the GOP, it's the Republicans who are the REAL defenders of democracy, huh?
7 - John Lake
If persons with less than state standard ID’s are permitted to use these ID’s to vote, there might be instances of fraud, in which an individual may claim many addresses, or even several names, and vote each address or name. This clearly would be intentional fraud.
If the student ID system were monitored by the state to assure security, the student ID would surely be acceptable.
A citizen I am told who cannot afford a state photo ID can tell the agency, usually the same agency that supplies Drivers Licenses, that he needs the ID to vote, and the fee, in my understanding will be waived.
8 - REMF(MCH)
"All Republicans are asking is that people be required to prove they are who they claim to be when they vote."
Gordon Trenchard said the same thing....
9 - Igor
"All Republicans are asking is that people be required to prove they are who they claim to be when they vote."
Is that ALL?
Who can prove that he really is who he claims to be? Drivers license? Birth certificate? All easily forged every day by crooks and schemers and easily available through the black market. Why, even our "Witness Protection Program" does it all the time.
Even if we gave all the power over IDs to the Republican party itself they would immediately start issuing false IDs themselves for "worthy causes". And the forgers would have false IDs available the next day for illegal immigrants, crooks, etc.
10 - Arch Conservative
SPECIAL REPORT: For Left, Overcoming Moral and Ethical Compunction Regarding Integrity and Legality of Voting To Be Portrayed As Matter Of Principle, Equality But Actually Just Matter of Survival
FIXED IT FOR YA SCOTTY!
11 - Glenn Contrarian
Gee - now one must wonder just how outraged Dave and Arch and Clavos would be if it were the Dems who were committing this voter suppression and it was mostly Republicans who were affected - oh, they'd howl to the rooftops and get their guns! But since it's affecting mostly Democrats, well, THAT's okay! That's REAL democracy, when the only people who face no obstacles to voting are the ones on YOUR side, huh?
Such vast hypocrisy....
12 - Clavos
But since it's affecting mostly Democrats, well, THAT's okay! That's REAL democracy, when the only people who face no obstacles to voting are the ones on YOUR side, huh?
Such vast hypocrisy
Not one of the three of us has said anything even remotely like that, but you have the unmitigated gall to assume you know what we're thinking.
And you can't even read well.
Talk about chutzpa!
13 - roger nowosielski
I wouldn't side with Arch if I were you, it doesn't do you credit. Republican gerrymandering is an old and established practice, and the Democrats are no better.
And I don't give a rat's ass which party wins the next election, or the one after that.
14 - roger nowosielski
And BTW, Scott, isn't your proposition kind of drastic, if not lame, suggesting that the Democrats' future is more contingent on those who can or can't produce a valid ID rather than on their performance in office?
I would have thought twice before submitting this article.
15 - Dr Dreadful
Not one of the three of us has said anything even remotely like that
Not that I'm saying it was you necessarily, Clav, but I do seem to recall some outrage not too long ago on the part of a few BC conservatives over some allegations that military absentee ballots were not being counted. The Franken vs. Schmanken dead heat in Minnesota, I believe it was.
16 - Dr Dreadful
While I'm on the subject, if the current incumbent defends his seat in 2014, I strongly urge the GOP to find someone named Stein who'd be willing to run against him. Now wouldn't that be fun?
17 - Arch Conservative
"But since it's affecting mostly Democrats, well, THAT's okay! That's REAL democracy, when the only people who face no obstacles to voting are the ones on YOUR side, huh?"
Gee Glenn, are they going to let you down off the cross to watch tonight's debate?
18 - Arch Conservative
Oh and Dread..there is a big difference between not counting the votes of members of the military and not counting the votes of illegals, repeat voters and dead people who as we all know vote exclusively for the Democrat.
19 - Dr Dreadful
...and not counting the votes of illegals, repeat voters and dead people who as we all know vote exclusively for the Democrat.
Can you provide examples of this kind of electoral fraud, Arch? Real, egregious, systematic examples, I mean, rather than a handful of isolated, statistically irrelevant cases?
20 - Glenn Contrarian
Doc -
Arch will never provide the proof. Why? Because he Just Knows it happens, and because he Just Knows it happens, that's all the proof he needs.