As of this writing some 30 US states require some form of identification, beyond the voter registration card, in order to vote. The first of these voter indentification laws were passed in 2003, but the majority have come into affect since the election of President Barack Obama. The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School conducted a recent study which shows ten of these state's laws are so repressive that they will have a dramatic chilling effect on the 2012 election: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
This is nothing short of a full-throated attempt to re-impose Jim Crow-style laws that inhibit the rights of the poor, African Americans, Hispanics, and even senior citizens to cast their vote.
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