NY Times: New State Rules Raising Hurdles at Voting Booth

Since Republicans won control of many statehouses last November, more than a dozen states have passed laws requiring voters to show photo identification at polls, cutting back early voting periods or imposing new restrictions on voter registration drives.

With a presidential campaign swinging into high gear, the question being asked is how much of an impact all of these new laws will have on the 2012 race.

State officials, political parties and voting experts have all said that the impact could be sizable. Now, a new study to be released Monday by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law has tried to tally just how many voters stand to be affected.

(...)

The Justice Department must review the new laws in several states to make sure that they do not run afoul of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter identification law in 2008, saying that while it found no evidence of the fraud the law was intended to combat, it also found no evidence that the new requirements were a burden on voters.

(...)

South Carolina and Texas estimate that between them they have more than 800,000 registered voters who may not have acceptable forms of photo identification. While both states will offer free identification cards that would be acceptable at the polls, critics of the new laws worry that the added barrier to voting could discourage people from going to the polls. South Carolina estimates that 8 percent of its voters — 216,596 people — do not currently have the proper identification.

Texas calculated that at least 95 percent of its registered voters have a driver’s license or valid identification card, but could not say for sure whether the 605,576 names on its voter list that do not appear on its lists of people with driver’s licenses or state-issued identification cards have them or not. The Department of Justice, which must approve the changes in Texas and South Carolina, recently asked both states for more information to make sure the changes do not violate the Voting Rights Act.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/us/new-state-laws-are-limiting-access-for-voters.html?pagewanted=all

this is an in depth analysis article to be on the front page of Monday's NYT.

any other state. Here's some of her in-depth work, together with a national map of it all.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/03/8119336-map-making-voting-harder