What often is lost in the political debate over these new restrictive laws -- what's lost in the faux outrage over voting integrity -- is the central fact that registered voters in these states (and everywhere) don't just walk up today to the ballot box and cast their votes. Even without the restrictive new laws, registered voters have to prove who they are, either by providing identification or by matching their signatures on voting cards or by other means. These new laws are all about rejecting these forms of identification in favor of new ones that require, in some cases, a great deal of effort to obtain.

3. The new voter laws do not create substantial burdens on registered voters. This is the most common response to challenges to the new breed of voting laws. If someone can't find the time to get a new ID, then why should they be able to vote? If I have to show identification to buy a bottle of whiskey (or Sudafed) why shouldn't someone have to show a photo identification to cast a ballot? If I can get a photo ID to drive a car why can't someone get one to vote? Here we see clear evidence of the great financial divide in American life -- the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots.

There are some registered voters for whom the new requirements probably aren't an unreasonable burden. But there are many more for whom it is. In Texas, for example, there was testimony at the voter ID trial in July that some residents -- registered voters, who have voted accurately without incident for years -- would have to travel 200 or 250 miles to get the new form of identification. In the South Carolina case, there was testimony last week that some registered voters would have to make a 70-mile, round-trip journey to get the new forms of identification. Are these not unconstitutional burdens?

4. The new Republican voter laws are the results of reasonable compromises between and among state legislators. This is false. In South Carolina, for example, we learned just last week that a compromise voter ID law, which had bipartisan and biracial support, was rejected by conservative radicals in favor of the current law that is about to be struck down by another panel of federal judges. The same thing occurred in Texas, where state lawmakers refused to keep state offices open longer to accommodate the working-class people who couldn't get their new IDs between 9 and 5.

The same is true, incidentally, in the fight over early voting laws. Early voting hours are a national success -- allowing voters who have to work regular hours on the first Tuesday in November to cast their ballots at a more convenient time. Yet in Ohio and in Florida, Republican officials sought to restrict those hours without offering a legitimate reason to do so. In Ohio, the official reason offered by the Republican Secretary of State -- that his election officials couldn't manage the extra work -- was immediately challenged by nonpartisan election officials there who said that they could, in fact, "make it work."