Via TPM, the state of Indiana now has a voter ID law, so the Brennan Center for Justice did a survey to see what type of people would be affected. Amazingly it turns out that the poor, minorities, and the elderly (and young) are most affected and even more amazingly that Democrats are affected more.
Here’s one graph (as usual, Kevin Drum has more):
So, we now know that voter ID can disenfranchise a fairly large group of people. We might be able to fix this, but before we try maybe we should ask if voter ID is necessary. It’s only necessary if there is a fairly large amount of voter fraud that would be eliminated by voter ID and there’s no evidence of this. And yet Republicans are pushing for voter ID laws. The evidence (or lack of evidence for voter fraud) then seems to imply that Republicans are more interested in disenfranchising people who are more likely to vote Democratic.
Filed under: civil liberties, nation, politics
