In January, conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe released a video featuring individuals apparently committing voter fraud during the New Hampshire primary. Rather than attempting to document authentic cases of voter impersonation — a virtually non-existent problem — O’Keefe enlisted activists to commit the crime to demonstrate how easy it is to do so. This self-appointed sting operation, unsurprisingly, may itself have violated state laws.

ThinkProgress reported that Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas (R) and Nashua City Clerk Paul Bergeron were both calling for the arrest and prosecution of those involved with the video. Their actions, according to Bergeron, likely constituted Class B felony wiretapping and possibly election fraud. Gov. John Lynch (D) called the videos “outrageous” and endorsed an investigation of whether any crimes were committeed.

Yesterday, O’Keefe revealed that he had cancelled plans to travel to New Hampshire upon learn learning he would be hit with a grand jury subpoena if he did. Speaking, by video, to a local Republican Party fundraiser, he claimed “I’ve been advised that if I appear physically in New Hampshire, I will be hit with a grand jury subpoena,” and expressed defiance. Pledging to continue to employ these controversial — and likely illegal — tactics, O’Keefe said:

I think it’s unfortunate that we live in a country these days where public officials threaten journalists — threaten to put journalists in jail for exposing facts legally. They’ve threatened to do this to me for some time, but we’re not going to stop.

Clearly, the 27-year old has not learned any lesson from previous legal hot water: in 2010, he was sentenced to pay a fine, serve three years of probation, and do 100 hours of community service after pleading guilty to federal charges stemming from a failed stunt at the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA).

But it remains instructive that the only people actually committing voter fraud seem to be those trying to expose the problem.

Voter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise low income, minority and student voters, all of which tend to vote for Democrats. So it is no surprise they’ve become the darling of Republican state lawmakers interested in making it easier to keep their jobs and elect other Republicans to office. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), however, will not benefit from the voter suppressing law he signed — at least during his own upcoming recall election — thanks to a pair of decisions handed down by two state appeals courts:

A pair of appeals court rulings this week make clear the state’s new voter ID law will remain suspended through the May and June recall elections.

One of the opinions, released Thursday, said there was “no realistic possibility” the case would be decided before the June 5 recall election against Gov. Scott Walker and some of his fellow Republicans.

Walker and Republicans in the Legislature last year approved a new law requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls, but Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan issued an order temporarily blocking the requirement in a case brought by the Milwaukee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera.

A week later, Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess permanently blocked the photo ID law because he said it violates the state constitution. That case was brought by the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.

These decisions are good news for democracy in Wisconsin. Scott Walker has every right to remain governor if he faces the entire Wisconsin electorate and wins fair and square, but trying to rig the game by disenfranchising your opponent’s likely voters is beneath contempt.

It is also possible that Walker’s voter suppression law could even remain suspended through the November election. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin appeals courts typically take nine months or more to decide cases. Moreover, it is likely that the lower courts’ decisions striking down voter ID will be upheld by the courts of appeal. The text of the Wisconsin Constitution provides unusually strong protections against voter disenfranchisement, and Walker’s voter suppression law conflicts with at least 132 years of state supreme court precedent.

There is, of course, some risk that the increasingly partisan Wisconsin Supreme Court will ignore the state constitution, but even that is unlikely to happen until after the November election takes place. Earlier this month, the state justices turned down a request to fast-track the challenges to voter ID.

In the face of mounting pressure from progressive activists and its own corporate sponsors, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing group funded by corporations like ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, announced today that it will shut down a task force that deals with “non-economic issues,” like voter suppression efforts and “stand your ground” gun laws. ALEC came under intense scrutiny over the past few weeks after progressive groups like Color of Change began pressuring corporations that fund ALEC to drop their support. The Center for American Progress also released a report highlighting the right-wing group’s role in pushing voter suppression efforts around the country. As a result, 10 companies, including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Kraft, have pulled out from ALEC.

In response to the exodus of corporate funding, ALEC made the decision today to scale back its operations and focus on “economic” matters. The group released the following statement:

We are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy. The remaining budgetary and economic issues will be reassigned.

This is a monumental move. The now defunct ALEC task force helped usher countless reactionary laws through state legislatures. Most prominent among these are “stand your ground” gun laws that came to the forefront in Florida after Trayvon Martin’s tragic death, and new voter ID laws that could suppress millions across the country, predominantly poor people and minorities.

Yet, while today’s announcement is an important victory, it does not change the fact that ALEC will continue to push corporate-friendly conservative economic legislation. Here is a short list of ostensibly economic measures ALEC has supported in the past:

• State union-busting measures
• Repealing minimum wage laws
• Privatizing public lands
• Repealing capital gains taxes
• Repealing the estate tax
• Fighting any efforts to address manmade climate change while touting “the many benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment”
• Repealing paid sick day laws around the country
• Requiring a super-majority to raise taxes
• Pushing rules that deem that kids eating rat poison is an “acceptable risk”

In a somewhat unexpected move today, the conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court denied expedited review to a pair of trail court decisions blocking that state’s Voter ID law, despite the fact that two courts of appeals asked the justices to take the cases right away. Although this decision says nothing about how the Wisconsin justices view the voter ID law, their decision not to fast track the case increases the likelihood that the fate of the state’s voter ID law will not be decided until after Gov. Scott Walker (R) faces a recall election on June 5th.

If there is no further action on Wisconsin voter ID until after the recall election, that will be a serious blow to Walker’s efforts to save his job. Voter ID laws disproportionately disenfranchise minorities, low-income voters, students and other groups that tend to vote for Democrats, and thus Wisconsin’s law will boost Walker and other Republicans within that state if it is allowed to go into effect. In March, however, one of the judges who ruled against the voter ID law also held that the law could not be enforced while it is on appeal. Thus, unless this order is reversed by a higher court, Walker will not benefit from voter ID’s disenfranchisement of left-leaning demographics.

In March, Pennsylvania became the first state in 2012 to enact a voter ID law. It could have a disastrous impact on the 700,000 Pennsylvanians who currently lack photo ID, but it also harm those who still need an ID to vote but object to having their picture taken for religious reasons, like the Amish and Mennonite communities. They can use a nonphoto ID to vote, but only after completing an interrogation about their faith, according to the Associated Press:

The first item on PennDOT’s form asks applicants to “describe your religion.” It is followed by more questions that devout followers might struggle to answer, and some that inquire about the lives of family members.

How many members are there of your religion?

How many congregations?

What’s the process by which you came to the religion?

What religious practices do you observe?

Do other family members hold the same religious beliefs?

Submitting that form, once notarized, is not enough. Applicants must fill out another form.

If they lack proof of identification, yet another form must be completed before a nonphoto ID is issued. The ID is valid for four years, and the renewal process is simpler.

Going through this process is essential if those who hold religious objections to being photographed want to vote. Anyone who wants to vote must show identification in the November election.

Now, even state senators who supported the voter ID law are concerned about the extensive questionnaire that people who object to being photographed because of their faith must answer. State Sen. Mike Folmer (R) said it seems intrusive and questioned why that much information is needed. “They are going to be keeping them from the polls, keeping American citizens from the polls,” he said. “That’s what I’m concerned about.”

While many Amish and Mennonite people do not vote, those who do vote tend to vote for Republicans. But Republicans have led the charge across the U.S. to enact voter ID laws in an effort to disenfranchise groups of voters like groups, such as college students, low-income voters, and minorities. PennDOT reports that it has issued about 4,000 nonphoto IDs to Amish people, but there are about 61,000 Amish who live in the state. And it is doubtful more Amish will want to go through the arduous process to get a nonphoto ID simply to vote.

Ironically, this new hurdle to Amish voters was erected while many Republicans also insist that the Obama Administration is attacking religious freedom through new federal regulations that require employer-provided health insurance plans to cover contraception. It’s difficult to square the GOP’s claims about religious liberty with the impact of voter ID on specific faiths. Pennsylvania’s voter ID law requires certain people of faith to take additional steps simply to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

Prompted by a petition campaign by the progressive advocacy group Color of Change, Coca-Cola has pulled its support from ALEC, a right-wing corporate-funded front group which has been pushing voter restriction efforts around the country. The company released this statement moments ago:

The Coca-Cola Company has elected to discontinue its membership with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Our involvement with ALEC was focused on efforts to oppose discriminatory food and beverage taxes, not on issues that have no direct bearing on our business. We have a long-standing policy of only taking positions on issues that impact our Company and industry.

Impressively, Coke’s retreat came just five hours after Color of Change announced its petition, which read: “ALEC has pushed voter ID laws which disenfranchise large numbers of Black voters. Along with the NRA, ALEC also pushed a bill based on Florida’s ‘shoot first’ law – which has shielded Trayvon Martin’s killer from justice – into two dozen states across the country.”

Just this morning, the Center for American Progress released a report highlighting ALEC’s role in voter suppression:

ALEC charges corporations such as Koch Industries Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and The Coca-Cola Co. a fee and gives them access to members of state legislatures. Under ALEC’s auspices, legislators, corporate representatives, and ALEC officials work together to draft model legislation. As ALEC spokesperson Michael Bowman told NPR, this system is especially effective because “you have legislators who will ask questions much more freely at our meetings because they are not under the eyes of the press, the eyes of the voters.”

Earlier today, the Center for American Progress released Voter Suppression 101, a report documenting conservative efforts to disenfranchise voters through state restrictions on voting. At a press call accompanying the release, former Civil Rights Movement leader and current Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-SC) was asked for his personal feelings on seeing another wave of voter disenfranchisement after he fought so hard to end Jim Crow. His response was grim:

I cannot remember — even sitting in an Orangeburg County jail — when I had as much anxiety as I’m experiencing today. Back then, even when we were at the back of the bus and we were not able to sit down at lunch counters, we really felt strong that what’s happening to me here in Orangeburg, SC or Columbia, SC, ah, if I can get my plight before the United States Supreme Court, the promise of this country will be delivered for me. That’s what we felt, and I can remember our discussions in meetings — yeah, we’re going to jail now. We are going to be convicted. But we know that that conviction is going to be overturned by the United States Supreme Court.

I don’t feel that today.

Listen:

Sadly, Clyburn is right to be anxious. When the first voter ID law came before the Supreme Court four years ago, the Court completely abdicated its responsibility to strike them down — despite the fact that they were only able to find one example of in-person voter fraud in the last 140 years that would have been prevented by a voter ID law. Four years before that, the Court’s conservatives abdicated its responsibility to strike down partisan gerrymandering of Congress and state legislatures. Yet, when George W. Bush saw the presidency slipping out of his fingertips, the Court’s conservatives suddenly deemed that to be a massive constitutional violation worthy of their attention.

WASHINGTON, DC — Texas Attorney General Greb Abbott (R) dismissed concerns that his state’s new voter ID law could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Texans, predicting instead that it will lead to an increase in voter turnout.

As many as 800,000 Texans currently lack a driver’s license or personal identification card. The likelihood that a Latino voter won’t have the necessary photo ID is as much double that of a non-Latino. Because of this disproportionate effect on Hispanic voters, the Justice Department blocked the Texas’ voter ID law under the Voting RIghts Act.

In an interview with ThinkProgress last week, Abbott dismissed these concerns, arguing instead that no one will be disenfranchised because of voter ID. Abbott went further, insisting that with voter ID in place, turnout will actually increase in Texas.

KEYES: Do you think that goal will be achieved that no one will be disenfranchised with the voter ID law?

ABBOTT: I do believe that both the safeguards and the structure put in place by Texas will ensure that it achieves the same thing that was achieved by Georgia and Indiana, and that is after these laws were implemented, you actually saw an increase in voter participation as opposed to a decrease.

Watch it:

Voter ID doesn’t just discriminate against racial minorities. It also hurts poor people and those who live in rural areas. First, for people who lack an official photo ID, obtaining one in order to vote is an unconstitutional poll tax. One such individual is Jessica Cohen, whose story ThinkProgress documented in November. After she lost her identification during a robbery, the only way to get a voter ID was to pay a fee to Missouri officials in order to obtain her birth certificate.

In addition, rural folks are hit disproportionately hard by a voter ID requirement. For many people living in rural west Texas, for instance, the nearest ID office is as much as 100 miles away. That barrier is all the more difficult because people who lack ID by definition don’t have a driver’s license. Unable to obtain a photo ID, they would be stripped of their voting rights under the state’s voter ID law.

It’s not difficult to see why hundreds of thousands would likely be disenfranchised in Texas if voter ID were reinstated. What is difficult to see is precisely how a major new barrier to voting will result in more Texans being able to vote, as Abbott asserts.

To learn more about voter ID and other suppression efforts, read CAP’s new report on recent attacks on voting rights across the country.