Reply #102: 3/13/11 National Journal article on ALEC's role in a "concerted national effort" to suppress voting

[highplainsdem]

http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/rules-of-the-game/voting-the-rising-degree-of-difficulty-20110313

Voting: The Rising Degree of Difficulty
There are new efforts across the country, led mostly by conservative activists, aimed at making it more difficult for people to vote.
Sunday, March 13, 2011 | 12:05 p.m.

-snip-

“We seem to be drifting backward,” said Robert Brandon, president of the Fair Elections Legal Network. Photo ID provisions seem like a simple fix, said Brandon, but overlook that a disproportionate percentage of elderly, minority, student, and disabled voters lack photo IDs.

Many GOP-controlled legislatures are working from model legislation produced by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that has received funding from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the progressive group Campus Progress recently disclosed. That link points to “a concerted national effort” that is less about fraud than “about stopping people from voting,” charged Brandon.

-snip-

The other problem with photo ID laws is that, on closer inspection, they turn out to be just the kind of big-government boondoggle that Republicans profess to hate. In order to withstand a constitutional challenge, such IDs would have to be distributed for free—something that could ramp up election administration costs by millions, according to the Brennan Center.

-snip-

The biggest danger for Republicans, however, might be political. Students, in particular, “are fired up” over recent ID and other proposals, said Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote. She recently posted this message to the group’s 2.5 million members: “We cannot wait until November of 2012 to express our shock and frustration with a broken system.”

The last paragraph is good news. This overreach by the right is starting to provoke a backlash.