This year, Wisconsin joined other GOP-led states in passing a highly restrictive voter ID law — one that not only disenfranchises low-income, minority, and senior voters, but places a serious burden on students hoping to vote by restricting the types of acceptable student IDs. Few institutions currently have IDs that comply with the law and now have to print stickers with required information for the IDs so they can be used at the polls. Even with this updated IDs, students “still have to show proof they were currently enrolled at school” to vote.

But while some students must jump these hurdles, Wisconsin election officials determined that students at technical colleges don’t even get to try — IDs issued by technical colleges are not valid for voting under any circumstance.

Recognizing its “mistake” in this prejudicial rule, the state’s Government Accountability Board “adopted an interpretation” of the law “that concluded technical college IDs qualify on election day just like any other four-year university ID.” Angry at the inclusive change, Republican lawmakers on the legislature’s rules committee voted 6-4 to force the GAB to make the new policy a formal administrative rule — a move that allows Walker to block the regulations:

The committee voted 6-4 to order the board to put all the policy in the form of administrative rules. The order would allow Walker to block the regulations. Republicans adopted a law earlier this year that requires the governor to either approve or reject all state agency rule proposals.[...]

Democrats on the committee accused Republicans of trying to disenfranchise technical college students and micromanaging elections.

“Why do you want to treat tech college students as second-class citizens?” Rep. Gary Hebl, D-Sun Prairie, said.

If Republicans succeed with this maneuver, they will make it harder for 400,000 students to participate in elections. This, naturally, is not the first attempt by Wisconsin Republicans to suppress the vote. Wisconsin government officials recently attempted to prevent the public from learning about a free version of a voter-only ID.

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed suit against the law last month as a violation of the state constitution which says only “felons and people ruled incompetent” can be prevented from voting. While the legislature may claim they can regulate elections via a voter ID law, “they can’t enact a voter ID law that creates a class of citizens that are disenfranchised.”

Last week, a federal court in Mississippi sentenced a key figure in a $3 million mortgage fraud scheme to two and a half years in federal prison. Just a few days earlier, however, a Mississippi federal judge imposed a significantly harsher sentence on a woman who lied on her benefits applications in order to receive just $4,367 in food stamps to help feed her family:

[I]n moments of desperation, a lie can seem like the only option. Anita McLemore, a Mississippi mother of two, faced one of those unfortunate moments when filling out her application for food stamps — and now she’ll pay the price, by spending three years of her life behind bars in federal prison.

Thanks to a federal ban on food stamps for people with felony drug convictions, people like McLemore are out of luck when it comes to getting assistance with putting food on their tables. Though states can opt out of the ban, those that don’t (like Mississippi) deny food stamps even to individuals who have already served their sentences or overcome previous addictions. It’s true that McLemore’s past isn’t perfect — she has four felony drug convictions and one misdemeanor, which place her firmly in the category of people the federal government has declared unfit to receive public benefits. Hence, faced with the prospect of being unable to feed her family, McLemore lied on her application.

In a compassionate nation, the penalty for drug use is not starvation. In a just nation, the penalty for drug use is not that your two children must be hungry as well. There is no excuse for a federal drug policy that punishes anyone by taking away their ability to put food on the table — and that punishes them so severely for the crime of needing to eat.

And, unlike thousands of Wall Street bankers who helped plunge America’s economy into a catastrophic recession, McLemore actually paid back the $4,367 she received.

ThinkProgress filed this report from Austin, Texas.

In May, Texas became one of a growing number of states led by Republican legislatures to pass bills requiring citizens to present photo ID in order to vote.

The legislation, which Gov. Rick Perry (R) declared an “emergency item,” could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Texans in next year’s presidential election.

ThinkProgress traveled around the state this past week to get Texans’ take on the new law. Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir noted that she’d never encountered voter impersonation fraud in her 25 years conducting elections in Austin and called the legislation a “law in search of a crime.” Luis Figueroa of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and Anita Privett of the League of Women Voters both stressed that the new law, which has the strictest photo ID requirements in the country, would disproportionately strip voting rights from the poor, minorities, those in rural areas, and senior citizens.

In addition, Jessica Cohen, a longtime Texas voter, lamented the fact that the new law will likely strip her of her right to vote. Last year, Cohen lost her job, then lost her license and other identification papers soon after during a burglary and while moving residences. Lacking proof of identity, Cohen now needs to pay a fee to officials in Missouri in order to obtain the birth certificate she needs to obtain a new voter ID. Though she had voted for the past two decades, Cohen was distraught that she might soon be disenfranchised because she couldn’t afford the papers necessary to satisfy the new law.

Watch her story:

Lest we forget, the Constitution specifically prohibits a poll tax in order to vote. For decades, barriers – from poll taxes to literacy tests to grandfather clauses – were used to disenfranchise poor voters and minorities, but we eliminated such unconstitutional abridgments on voting rights. Now, new laws in Texas and elsewhere have the potential to disenfranchise millions of voters who can’t afford to get photo IDs.

Fortunately in Texas, the election law changes are currently being reviewed by the Justice Department in order to determine whether they comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. More news is expected to come in the next few months.

Later this week, ThinkProgress will discuss another major change in Texas’ election law that makes it much more difficult for non-profit organizations like the League of Women Voters to conduct voter registration drives.

Earlier this year, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a sweeping voter suppression bill which shortens the state’s early voting period, bans in-person early voting on Sundays, and prohibits boards of election from mailing absentee ballot requests to voters. In 2008, four in 10 votes in Ohio’s capitol city were cast using methods that would be eliminated by this anti-voter law.

It is now almost certain, however, that Kasich’s war on democracy will not impact the 2012 election. According to the Ohio Democratic Party, the secretary of state just certified that Ohio voters submitted nearly all of the signatures they need to suspend this law until after it is ratified or rejected by the entire state electorate in November 2012:

Under Ohio law, if about 231,000 voters submit signatures seeking a referendum on Kasich’s anti-voter law, the law is automatically suspended until the next election and it is repealed permanently if the law fails that referendum. Indeed, that is exactly what Ohio’s voters recently did to another one of Kasich’s signature bills, his sweeping attack on workers’ rights. With more than 221,000 signatures already certified and more than 150,000 more signatures on the way, it is all but certain that Kasich’s attempt to suppress the vote in 2012 will fail.