"Voter ID laws: the Republican ruse to disenfranchise 5 million Americans"

"Civil rights groups say the restrictions amounts to an attack on voting rights on a level not seen since segregation." Photograph: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images. 

Alex Slater (GuardianUK):

Under the guise of fighting nonexistent voter fraud, the GOP is attempting the greatest election-stealing conspiracy in US history--- In Washington, conventional wisdom is everything. It's the driver of perceptions, and often of self-fulfilling political prophecies. That's why you might notice a guarded confidence amongst the Obama campaign these past few weeks: generally speaking, most realistic experts predict a victory for the president in this November's election.
This perception is reinforced by current polling, some of the most recent being published by Quinnipiac University, the New York Times and CBS News, giving President Obama an edge over Romney in key states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. Certainly, it will be a tight race, but by any realistic standard, the money is on Obama to pull out a victory, even narrowly.
But it's exactly the likely closeness of the race that may turn Washington's conventional wisdom on its head on election day. That's because, until relatively recently, political experts and journalists have been oblivious to a widespread and pernicious phenomenon occurring in many critical swing states – one that, unless checked, could erase Obama's electoral edge. MORE...