why is asking for ID racism?

Voter suppression -- also known as caging -- is any action or behavior intended to deter an individual or group from voting.

In the history of American politics, a wide range of dirty tactics have been used by both major political parties to intimidate or disqualify voters traditionally aligned with the opposition.

During the "Jim Crow" era in the southern U.S., state and county governments evaded the 15th Amendment -- prohibiting voter discrimination based on race or color -- -- by imposing a series of literacy tests, poll taxes and even thuggish "poll workers" to block African-American voters from casting a ballot.

Modern methods of voter suppression are more subtle, but the intention is the same: to employ legal and illegal means to affect voter turnout in an election.

Critics of the new voter ID laws are crying foul, accusing the states of imposing a solution in search of a problem, citing Justice Department statistics that voter fraud is extremely rare: 86 convictions out of 300 million votes cast in recent elections [source: Berman].

The real reason for the rash of new voter ID laws, critics argue, is that certain Democratic-leaning voters -- African- and Hispanic-Americans, students, the elderly and the disabled -- are less likely to possess a valid government-issued ID [source:American Civil Liberties Union]. Strict voter identification laws, they say, have the intended effect of discouraging or disqualifying traditionally Democratic voters.

Disinformation is another hugely popular tactic for suppressing votes in a target population. In the 2008 elections, Democrats in Nevada received robo-calls informing them that they could vote on November 5 -- a day after the election -- to avoid long lines.

Hispanic voters in Nevada received similar messages saying that they could vote by phone [source: Freeman].

Voters in Lake County, Ohio, received official-looking mail stating that voters who had registered to vote through Democratic-leaning organizations would barred from the 2008 election. And Michigan's Secretary of State had to fight a phone-based disinformation campaign telling absentee voters to mail their ballots to the wrong address [source: Zernike].

While intimidation and disinformation are recognized examples of voter suppression, other methods are much more controversial. A strict voter ID law in Indiana, for example, has the blessing of the Supreme Court, yet the Justice Department has moved to block similar laws in Texas and South Carolina under accusations that the laws "[deny] or [abridge] the right to vote on account of race, color or membership in a language minority group" [source: Chebium].

Similarly, a number of Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed laws barring convicted felons ? even those who have served their time ? from ever voting again. Other states have tightened the window for absentee, overseas and early voting, and banned same-day voter registration.

Some states want to require voters to provide a proof of citizenship. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) claim these laws have one purpose: to restrict and suppress the ability of minority, disabled and elderly voters from casting their vote [source:American Civil Liberties Union]. Supporters of these laws argue that increased restrictions only result in fairer, cleaner elections.

One key question in the battle over the legality of voter identification laws is whether such laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud and whether they suppress a lot of votes from eligible voters.

Though the answer to the second question remains in considerable dispute, after Tuesday?s federal court decision striking down Wisconsin?s voter ID law, it is time for voter ID supporters to throw in the towel and admit state voter ID laws don?t prevent the kind of fraud they are supposedly targeted for.

Federal Judge Lynn Adelman looked at the evidence from Wisconsin and reached a conclusion unsurprising to those of us who study how elections are run. ?Virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin,? Adelman wrote, ?and it is exceedingly unlikely that voter impersonation will become a problem in Wisconsin in the foreseeable future.?

Wisconsin is not alone in lacking such evidence.

When the United States Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of Indiana?s voter ID law in 2008, the state conceded there was no evidence, ever, of impersonation fraud in the entire state.

This is not surprising. Voter impersonation fraud is an exceedingly dumb way to try to steal an election. Someone would have to send people into polling places claiming to be others ? either dead voters who have not been removed from the rolls, or people who have not yet shown up to vote, or fictitious people pre-registered and getting by any identification requirements when registering. Then the fraudster would have to hope that these imposters vote the way they were paid to. The fraudster would have to do this in large enough numbers to affect the outcome of an election, while avoiding detection of this conspiracy.

A far smarter way to steal an election is through the sale of absentee ballots. That transaction can be done in private. The person buying the ballots can buy blank ones from cheating voters, then cast the votes herself. These ballots can be cast simply by mailing them.

In researching my book The Voting Wars, I could not find one case since at least 1980 in which voter impersonation fraud was used to arguably steal an election.

True, Hans von Spakovsky made allegations about such events happening in the 1970s in Brooklyn. But his claims this is emblematic of a current problem have been debunked. Nor have other members of the ?fraudulent fraud squad? produced credible evidence of any recent problem with such fraud tricking election officials.

In contrast, it is easy to find cases throughout the country every year of fraud or attempted fraud with absentee ballots. Voter ID laws do nothing to prevent absentee ballot fraud.

President Barack Obama recently gave a speech saying voter fraud is rare. He discussed a News21 study that found only 10 reported prosecutions for impersonation fraud across the country from 2000 to 2012. Robert Popper, a Judicial Watch attorney, argued this week in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article that the News21 report was unreliable because, among other reasons, the data were incomplete.

Popper misses the forest for the trees, however. No doubt, 10 cases of impersonation undercounts the total number of instances of such fraud. But what?s crucial are the comparative statistics. In the same 2000 to 2012 period, the News21 study found 491 absentee ballot prosecutions. And though the 10 cases of impersonation fraud all appeared unrelated and not part of any larger plot to steal an election, some of the absentee prosecutions indeed involved attempts to alter election outcomes.

Relative to absentee ballot fraud, impersonation fraud is a blip on the radar. In the Supreme Court?s case about Indiana?s law, Justice John Paul Stevens had to reach back to Boss Tweed in 1868 New York and a one possible case of impersonation fraud in 2004 in Washington state to bolster the argument that there is still potential for such fraud that could justify state ID laws.

At some point, honest observers just have to admit that impersonation fraud is not a serious problem in the United States. Many suspect (as do I) that these laws ? passed almost exclusively by Republican state legislatures ? are part of an attempt to make it harder to cast a ballot for voters who skew Democratic.

Judge Richard Posner, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, recently conceded he may have erred when he wrote an opinion upholding Indiana?s voter ID law. ?I plead guilty,? Posner wrote, ?to having written the majority opinion (affirmed by the Supreme Court) upholding Indiana?s requirement that prospective voters prove their identity with a photo ID ? a law now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than fraud prevention.?

For this reason, many supporters of state voter identification laws have now shifted tactics to argue that the laws are necessary to promote voter confidence in the electoral process. If voters are worried their votes will be stolen, their argument goes, maybe they won?t vote.

Adelman, who wrote the Wisconsin case, did not think much of that argument either. He noted academic studies show no relationship between voter confidence and the presence or absence of an ID law. In addition, the judge noted it is the fear-mongering over such laws that might matter the most: ?Perhaps the reason why photo ID requirements have no effect on confidence or trust in the electoral process is that such laws undermine the public?s confidence in the electoral process as much as they promote it.?

Now it is another question whether voter ID laws actually suppress as many votes as Democrats claim. I have been skeptical of such claims in the past, because in many instances challengers to voter identification laws have not been able to produce eligible voters who lack the necessary identification and could not easily get it.

But as states have further restricted the types of identification required to cast a ballot, these voters have been far easier to find.

In the Wisconsin case, the judge looked closely at the evidence and determined that up to 300,000 people lacked the identification demanded ? and many of them would have trouble getting it.

Similarly, a state court judge in Pennsylvania recently determined that 320,000 to 400,000 people in that state lacked the requisite ID and the state was not well prepared to get ?free? IDs into the hands of everyone who wanted it.