Last week, Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D) vetoed a bill to require all Arkansans to show photo ID before voting, calling it an “unnecessary measure that would negatively impact one of our most precious rights as citizens.” Nevertheless, the newly Republican-dominated House completed an override of Beebe’s veto on Monday, finally passing their coveted strict voter ID law after years of being stymied by Democratic majorities.

The law also requires the state to provide free photo ID to voters who don’t have one, to the tune of $300,000 in taxpayer money. Beebe blasted the bill as “an expensive solution in search of a problem.” He’s right: voter ID laws’ stated purpose is to combat in-person voter fraud, an exceedingly rare phenomenon. An individual is more likely to be struck by lightning than commit in-person voter fraud, and one Wisconsin study found an overall fraud rate of .00023 percent.

Meanwhile, these laws disenfranchise between 2 and 9 percent of voters, hitting minorities, seniors, and young people who do not or cannot get the required ID especially hard. A recent study found that young minorities were the most severely impacted by these laws; huge majorities of black and Latino youths reported being asked to show ID at the polls — even in states without voter ID laws.

In the past few years, voter ID laws have surged in popularity among Republican-dominated state legislatures. Though many were struck down in court before the 2012 election, five states — Virginia, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, and Tennessee — will have strict voter ID requirements in effect for the 2014 midterm elections. Nor does the fad seem to be dying down; a new report from ProjectVote finds that 30 states have introduced vote-suppressing laws in 2013. Of these, 20 introduced voter ID bills.

Voter ID is just one element in a phalanx of vote-suppressing laws that includes voter registration restrictions, voter purges, and limits on early voting. The model state for such efforts in the last election, Florida, experienced marathon lines and chaos at the polls. Shortly after, prominent state Republicans admitted they had pursued these measures to keep Democratic voters from casting their ballots.

In the late 19th Century, Southern states began to enact literacy tests to prevent African-Americans from casting a ballot. At the time, black voters were up to seven and a half times as likely to be unable to read as white voters, so requiring voters to prove their reading skills was an effective way of making the electorate more white. Many states also enacted laws effectively exempting whites from the test, such as by allowing a white voting official to subjectively determine that certain people should be allowed to vote even if they could not pass the literacy test. Indeed, the phrase “grandfather clause” refers to Jim Crow era laws that exempted white voters from voting restrictions so long as their grandfathers enjoyed the right to vote prior to the South’s defeat in the Civil War.

Literacy tests were eventually rendered illegal under the Voting Rights Act, but North Carolina’s state constitution still calls for one. Now, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to fix that:

Earlier this month, two African-American Democrats, Reps. Kelly Alexander of Charlotte and Mickey Michaux of Durham, joined with two white Republicans, Reps. Charles Jeter of Huntersville and Harry Warren of Salisbury, to introduce House Bill 311, which would put before voters an amendment to eliminate Article VI, Section 4 of the state constitution that says, “Every person presenting himself for registration shall be able to read and write any section of the Constitution in the English language.”

An earlier effort to repeal the provision failed in 1970 — the only one of six proposed constitutional changes that North Carolina voters did not approve that year. The clause remains unenforceable under Section 201 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits state and local governments from requiring voters to read and write.

Although this repeal effort is largely symbolic so long as the Voting Right Act prevents North Carolina’s literacy test requirement from being enforced, repealing it is nonetheless important because there is no guarantee that the Roberts Court won’t someday strip away the federal government’s power to protect against literacy tests and similar devices intended to disenfranchise voters, just as they appear poised to cut back another part of the landmark voting law this term.

Monday morning, the Republican National Committee released a lengthy “autopsy” of their 2012 electoral loss, much of which was devoted to the GOP’s weak standing among people of color. “It is imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our Party” the autopsy proclaims, and “the Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round, based on mutual respect and with a spirit of caring.”

One day later, Arkansas Republicans showed their mutual respect and spirit of caring for people of color by passing a law that will keep many of them from casting a vote.

Yesterday, the Arkansas Senate passed — on an entirely party-line vote — a so-called voter ID law requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast a ballot. The same voter suppression measure already passed the state House with all but one of the votes for the bill coming from Republicans. These laws, which are popular among Republican lawmakers, accomplish little more than disenfranchisement. Even conservative estimates suggest that these laws will prevent 2 to 3 percent of registered voters from casting a ballot. And this impact is felt hardest by low-income voters, students and people of color — all of who tend to prefer Democrats to Republicans.

The most common argument raised in favor of voter ID laws is that they prevent in-person voter fraud, but this claim cannot be squared with reality. A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls. A Wisconsin study found that only 0.00023 percent of votes are the product of such fraud. So voter ID laws disenfranchise a large chunk of voters — between 2 and 9 percent, according to different reports on their effect — in order to prevent a virtually non-existent form of voter fraud.

The bill will now go to Gov. Mike Beebe (D-AR), who should veto it.

A new study by professors at the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis shows that the strict voter ID laws being pushed by Republican state legislators around the country most impact young people, especially young minorities. And given that the people pushing those measures admitted they were intended to help GOP candidates win, the analysis would suggest that the efforts are having their intended effect.

Politico reported Tuesday that the study, co-authored by Cathy J. Cohen of the University of Chicago and Jon C. Rogowski of Washington University in St. Louis, found that even in states without photo ID laws, “65.5 percent of black youth were asked to show ID at the polls, compared with 55.3 percent of Latino youth and 42.8 percent of white youth.”

Worse, the study finds, many minority young voters — including 17.3 percent of young African Americans — did not even try to vote because they lacked the required identification.
The authors noted that their findings show the problem with these suppression laws — and show the continued need for the Voting Rights Act:

“The effort to protect the vote doesn’t make sense and it’s largely discriminatory, impacting we know, young people in particular, young people of color, the poor and the elderly,” Cohen said. … Rogowski said the study will help underscore the importance of keeping Section 5 fully in place. “It’s important that we still have the ability to keep a watchful eye on these kinds of states,” Rogowski said.

Last June, Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Mike Turzai boasted that the voter ID law he helped pass would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” In December, Republican strategist Scott Tranter acknowledged that “a lot of us are campaign professionals and we want to do everything we can to help our sides. Sometimes we think that’s voter ID, sometimes we think that’s longer lines, whatever it may be.”

Hans von Spakovsky may be America’s top expert on voter disenfranchisement. How to foster voter disenfranchisement, that is. As an official in the Bush Justice Department, Spakovsky pushed through gerrymandered maps benefiting Republicans, and was a driving force behind the effort to approve voter ID laws — a common voter suppression law targeting student, minority and low-income voters. Since leaving the Bush Administration, Spakovsky’s remained a leading advocate of voter suppression, often making odd claims such as arguing that a common method of disenfranchising voters actually does those voters a favor, or claiming that Attorney General Eric Holder sides with big scary black men who tamper with elections.

For the rest of this month, Spakovsky is also an elections official in Fairfax County, Virginia. In Virginia political parties control individual seats on county election boards. Both the Democratic and Republican party get to nominate three people to each of their controlled seats, but the judges in charge of selecting from among these nominees almost always take each party’s first choice. In Fairfax, the top choice of each party was selected every time a seat needed to be filled for the last 50 years.

That changed late last week, however, when judges in Fairfax Country refused to reappoint Spakovsky to the county election board he currently serves on. Although the judges who effectively removed Spakovsky did not comment on their motivation, their decision likely was informed by a letter from the Fairfax County Democratic Committee arguing that Spakovsky used his seat on the board to continue his crusade against voting rights, such as refusing to allow voter materials to be distributed in languages other than English. Spakovsky’s term expires at the end of this month.

When Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) announced he would no longer support his own plan to do away with same day voter registration in Wisconsin, he struck a blow to voter suppression and may have saved millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.

A new report from the Government Accountability Board suggests that ending the state’s same day voter registration program, which allows eligible voters to register to vote at the polling station on election day, would cost several state agencies a combined $14.5 million:

The staff of the GAB, which oversees the state’s elections, studied the idea and in a preliminary report in December estimated its costs for the first two years after a change would increase by $5.2 million.

The estimate increased dramatically Monday for two reasons.

Since December, four affected state departments — transportation, workforce development, health services and children and families — have submitted their own cost estimates totaling between $9.9 million and $10.5 million, said GAB spokesman Reid Magney.

After the GAB’s initial report in December, when the projected cost of ending ending same day registration was a third of the latest estimates, Gov. Walker told reporters that he would stop his pursuit to end the program, citing the cost. But other Republican legislators in the state may still opt to pursue a bill to strip away same day registration, and Walker has not signaled that he would veto a potential bill. Nationwide, Republicans have waged war on voter rights in the last several years, supporting discriminatory voter ID laws while simultaneously seeking to end early voting and same day registration with little regard for the costs, both financial and otherwise.

For Tuesday’s State of the Union address, First Lady Michelle Obama will host 102-year-old Desiline Victor, one of the thousands of Floridians who experienced chaos at the polls and waited in marathon lines to vote in November’s presidential election. Victor, a Haitian immigrant who resides in Miami, stood in line for three hours on the first day of early voting, but had to make a second trip to the precinct in order to finally cast her vote:

Victor voted for the president, but it was not easy. On her first visit to the polls on the morning of Oct. 28, the first day of early voting, she waited in line for three hours. Poll workers eventually advised her to come back later, and she did.

She finally cast her vote that evening. Her story spread around the polling place and inspired some would-be voters to stay in line, too, instead of being deterred by the delays.

Victor will now attend the State of the Union as a representative of all the voters who endured multiple obstacles to vote. These obstacles were man-made; Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) cut early voting days, added lengthy and unnecessary amendments to the ballot, and enacted several election law changes which other Florida Republicans later admitted were intended to suppress votes. Their efforts largely paid off — one study determined that at least 201,000 Florida residents gave up on voting in 2012 because of the long lines. Black and Hispanic voters waited almost twice as long as white voters to cast their ballot.

According to the Washington Post, the White House chose Victor after specifically searching for someone who could be the face of voting rights during President Obama’s speech. Though this last election is over, several state legislatures are awaiting the fate of the Voting Rights Act, which will be challenged at the Supreme Court on February 27. If the Court invalidates key provisions, minority voters like Victor are likely to face even more difficulties at the polls.

In a National Review article Friday, voter fraud conspiracy theorist John Fund again attempted to mislead readers into thinking strict photo ID laws are necessary to prevent election stealing. But, in so doing, he inadvertently shows why these voter suppression laws are not needed.

Fund mocks voting rights advocates for correctly noting that Americans are more likely to be struck by lighting than to commit voter fraud:

Well, lightning is suddenly all over Cincinnati, Ohio. The Hamilton County Board of Elections is investigating 19 possible cases of alleged voter fraud that occurred when Ohio was a focal point of the 2012 presidential election. A total of 19 voters and nine witnesses are part of the probe.

Democrat Melowese Richardson has been an official poll worker for the last quarter century and registered thousands of people to vote last year. She candidly admitted to Cincinnati’s Channel 9 this week that she voted twice in the last election.

According to the Hamilton County Board of Elections, 564,429 voters are registered in jurisdiction. Even if every single one of those 19 alleged cases proved true, that would represent less than 0.0034 percent of the county’s voters.

In Richardson’s case, she told the television station that she had not intended to commit vote fraud and merely showed up to vote in-person as she was unsure her absentee ballot would arrive in time to be counted. The story notes that the elections board’s report “states poll workers should have updated the signature poll book by flagging ‘absentee voter’ next to the names of those who appeared on the list.”

Regardless of Richardson’s intent, however, the National Review’s bait and switch is obvious. Requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls would do absolutely nothing to prevent double voting like this — intentional or inadvertent. Richardson truthfully identified herself at the polls and voted in her own name. Fund attempts to lump all types of voter fraud in together, but does not identify a single one of the 19 alleged cases in which a voter committed in-person impersonation of another voter.

Furthermore, these cases show that the existing laws successfully catch those who vote twice. While she could not comment on the ongoing investigation, Hamilton County Deputy Director of Elections Sally J. Krisel told ThinkProgress that “Ohio has very clear laws about checking,” so if a voter is found to have cast an absentee ballot and attempts to vote in person, only one vote is counted. And, based on the Channel 9 report, the 19 questioned voters have been subpoenaed — meaning they will be prosecuted if they indeed committed voter fraud.

Fund snidely concludes: “But, of course, as you know there is no voter fraud. Pay no attention to that lightning coming out of Ohio.” While voter fraud does rarely exist, fighting these sorts of “lightning” with strict photo ID laws that disenfranchise legitimate voters is like banning orange juice to prevent jaywalking.

Because Gov. Rick Scott (R) and his legislative allies spent much of 2011-2012 filling up the November ballot with complicated and unnecessary ballot questions and pushing through measures aimed at suppressing voter turnout, Florida voters had to wait in lines for up to six hours. Now, Scott’s handpicked Secretary of State has released a report recommending that Florida expand early voting and limit the length of future ballot questions.

Secretary of State Rick Detzner, who in the days after the November elections said he had no regrets about the Scott administration’s handling of the election, acknowledged in the report that there was widespread frustration with “the length of lines at polling places, which were believed to have been caused by the record number of voters, a shortened early voting schedule, inadequate voting locations and a long ballot.” He makes no mention of the reasons for those factors — Scott’s unwillingness to extend early voting hours, a Scott-signed law shortening early voting, and an effort by the Republican legislature to load the ballot up with complicated ballot measures sure to slow down voters at the polls.

But, he encourages Scott and his fellow Republicans not to repeat the same mistakes in future elections, recommending Florida:

• Extend the early voting schedule from a minimum of 8 days to a maximum of 14 days, while also allowing supervisors of elections the flexibility to offer early voting on the Sunday immediately prior to Election Day.
• Expand the allowable locations of early voting sites at government owned, managed or occupied facilities to include the main or branch office of a supervisor of elections, a city
  hall, courthouse, county commission building, public library, civic center, convention center, fairgrounds or stadium.
• Set a word limit for proposed legislative amendments.
• Repeal statutes allowing the full text (stricken or underlined) of a constitutional amendment or revision to be placed on a ballot.
• Allow mail ballot elections for candidates in certain elections.

While the 14-day period would be an improvement over the eight days currently provided by Florida law, it would represent a return to where things were before Scott took office.

It remains to be seen whether Florida acts on these recommendations. In November, Gov. Scott defended his suppression tactics as having done “the right thing” and a month later blamed the legislature for the early voting limits he himself signed into law. But last month, he endorsed re-expanding the early voting he limited.

As the Virginia Senate’s Privileges and Elections Committee prepares to take up a bill to rig bill the state’s electoral college vote, Democrats and even Republicans are distancing themselves from the effort, calling it “a bad idea,” “skewing,” and a “partisan bill aimed at defying the will of the voters.” A ThinkProgress analysis of Virginia voter demographics reveals another major flaw with the proposal: it would significantly dilute the influence of minority voters.

The 2012 Virginia Congressional maps, authored by Delegate Robert Bell (R) based on the 2010 U.S. Census, divided the state’s estimated 8,001,024 people into 11 Congressional districts. Though the state population is more than 20 percent African American — and more than 31 percent non-white — just one Congressional district contains a majority of non-white voters (the Third District, which is majority African American). Though white non-Hispanic Virginians makeup just 68.6 percent of the population, they comprise at least 58 percent of the population in all of the other 10 districts.

While many of the electoral college-rigging schemes being pushed by Republicans nationally would still allocate two electors based on the popular winner in the state — the Virginia plan would not even do that. State Sen. Charles “Bill” Carrico Sr.’s Senate Bill 723 would allocate 11 electors based on the popular winner in each of the House districts and two to whichever candidate won the majority of those gerrymandered House districts.

So, with more than one-fifth of the population, African American Virginians would go from having about 20 percent of the say to just controlling one-thirteenth of the state’s electoral votes under the Carrico plan. And racial minority voters overall would go from having about 31 percent of the say, to also controlling just 7.7 percent of the state’s electors.

And while African American voters would of course have some say in districts where they do not make up a majority, more than a quarter of them them are packed into the 3rd district, meaning the remaining 73 percent would be in districts where they comprised, on average, just about 16 percent of the population. This would be a significant retrogression of influence for minority voters. Given Virginia’s history of racial discrimination and the fact that much of the state remains a Voting Rights Act covered jurisdiction, this maneuver might well be not just anti-democratic, but also illegal.