Laws In 14 States Will Affect Latino Voting Power

At last count 14 state legislatures have passed a total 19 voter restricting laws; there have been another 2 executive orders and dozens of bills pending that would in one way or another infringe on the voting rights of US citizens. But who’s counting?

Truth is that until recently, no one was. Republican led state legislatures from across the country have been approving individual voting laws at the state level and at best those of us who follow these things had only an eerie feeling that something was up; they happened so quickly that they piled on each other and didn’t leave room for deliberate scrutiny. We at News Taco have been writing about this for a few months, but it wasn’t until researchers at the Brennan Center for Justice compiled a list of the laws and the orders and the bills that a pattern came into focus.

The study, titled Voting Law Changes in 2012, went a little deeper than a simple count of the states and the laws.

Some states require voters to show government-issued photo identification, often of a type that as many as one in ten voters do not have. Other states have cut back on early voting, a hugely popular innovation used by millions of Americans. Two states reversed earlier reforms and once again disenfranchised millions who have past criminal convictions but who are now taxpaying members of the community. Still others made it much more difficult for citizens to register to vote, a prerequisite for voting.

The citizens directly affected by these laws are minorities (I despise that word, but I use it here because it’s useful), students, the disabled, low income voters and the elderly. Here’s a list of what the Brennan Center study says these laws will accomplish:

• These new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.
• The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
• Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.

Now read the list again, only this time do it with an eye on which voters are affected and which are omitted.

All of this is done in the name of combating voter fraud. The implication is that if you’re a minority, or a student, or disabled, or poor, or elderly, you’ll more than likely commit fraud at the polls. And if that’s true, who do these laws imply won’t commit fraud?

If you’re wondering if any of these laws will affect you, where you live, click HERE. The Brennan Center put together a good list of each state and the laws they enacted. If your state is not on the list, you may not be out of the woods. The study’s executive summary ends on a somber note:

This snapshot may soon be incomplete: the second halves of some state legislative sessions have begun.