Mother Jones: GOP, ALEC Could Make It Harder For 5 Million To Cast Ballots

[highplainsdem]

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/gop-alec-could-make-it-harder-5-million-cast-ballots

More than five million Americans could find it harder to vote in 2012 than they did in 2008, according to a new report released on Monday by the Brennan Center for Justice. The change is largely due to empowered Republican majorities in states around the country—and Lawrence Norden, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center, argues the 5 million number could be an underestimate.

"This number that we came up with, five million, is pretty conservative," Norden says. "The whole issue of access to the polls has become politicized in a way we haven't seen in the past."

Since the 2010 mid-terms, states have introduced and passed laws requiring proof of citizenship, ending election day voter registration, restricting voter registration efforts, limiting early voting, and making it harder for the formerly incarcerated to regain their voting rights post-release. The most common of the new restrictions, however, are photo ID laws that require voters to show particular forms of government ID in order to cast a ballot. According to the Brennan Center report, nearly 11 percent of Americans, or 21 million people, lack a government issued photo ID.

Many of the voter ID laws have been based on model legislation written by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Out of the thirty-four states have seen such laws introduced in 2011, seven states—Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin—have passed them and had them signed into law. (Alabama, Texas, and South Carolina's laws are subject to the approval of the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act.)

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Click here for the Brennan Center report, "Voting Law Changes in 2012."

More on this and other harm being done by ALEC can be found in the long compilation topic on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).