Today, a civil rights group called Advancement Project will publish a report on the new voting laws passed in 23 Republican-led states. The report (not named in Patricia Zengerle’s Reuters article and not yet up on the Advancement Project site) claims that 10,000,000 Hispanic voters will be disenfranchised by the new laws, which place hurdles between voters and the ballot box, such as presenting certain types of ID. The rubric for these laws has been that “everyone” has the types of ID specified in the statutes, and the common refrain in response to critics is “Who doesn’t have a [driver’s license|passport|non-driver ID|etc]?” The Advancement Project’s point appears to be that these specific 10 million citizens, who are otherwise legally entitled to vote, don’t have the necessary papers or can’t meet the qualifiers imposed by the state governments.
According to Reuters, national polls show 70 percent or more support for Obama among Hispanic voters.
The new laws include purges of people suspected of not being citizens in 16 states that unfairly target Latinos, the civil rights group Advancement Project said in the study to be formally released on Monday.
Laws in effect in one state and pending in two others require proof of citizenship for voter registration. That imposes onerous and sometimes expensive documentation requirements on voters, especially targeting naturalized American citizens, many of whom are Latino, the liberal group said.
Nine states have passed restrictive photo identification laws that impose costs in time and money for millions of Latinos who are citizens but do not yet have the required identification, it said.
Voting laws may disenfranchise 10 million Hispanic U.S. citizens: study
(Thanks, Deborah!)