So far, It's been a brilliant bit of political marketing because it blends lofty aspirations -- with our technology, why shouldn't our elections be more accurate? -- with low currents of racism and prejudice. It's a mix of misplaced good intentions and alarming paranoia. The noble can endorse the measures by saying they will prevent fraud. The ignoble can see them for the votes they may prevent. No one, however, seems able or willing to step forward and identify, with any degree of reliable evidence, any measurable in-person voter fraud anywhere in America. No one. At least not yet.

"AN UNSPOKEN TRUTH"

Today, in South Carolina, registered voters do not have to present a photo identification to vote. They can use their driver's license, if they have one, or a non-driver photo identification, if they have one, or a voter registration card combined with the voter's signature on the poll list. The new South Carolina law, enacted in 2011, would require voters to present one of five different kinds of photo identification -- and would require hundreds of thousands of registered voters in the Palmetto State (white and black) to get a new form of identification in order to have their votes counted this fall.

When South Carolina notified the Justice Department last June that the state's new photo identification law had been passed, when state officials began to undertake the "pre-clearance" requirement contained in the Voting Rights Act, the state's attorney general wrote: "This office is not aware that the changes in the Act affect any minority or language groups adversely." Attached to the initial Section 5 submission to Washington was an extraordinary, one-page letter by GOP state representative Alan D. Clemmons. To the state's attorney general, in support of the legislation, Rep. Clemmons had written:

First let me say that it is an unspoken truth in South Carolina that election fraud exists. Though no one likes to speak about it, it is well known in politics that elections can be won and lost, based not on who votes but who votes for whom. Opponents of this bill often claimed that, based on their research, there were no instances of voter impersonation prosecuted in South Carolina, claiming that [the law] was a solution in search of a problem. In my years in South Carolina politics I know quite the opposite is true, as do opponents of this or other Voter I.D. legislation.

Just imagine what a different country America would be if our courts of law accepted as admissible evidence "unspoken truth" that "no one likes to speak about." Just imagine how easy it would be for lawmakers to enact and then justify their measures if all they had to do was rely upon "all their years" in local politics. What a slender reed upon which to justify significant new burdens on registered citizens who have accurately voted for decades. Ari Berman offers up a great quote and comeback in his recent work on this topic for The Nation:

Find me those people that think that this is invading their rights," said South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, "and I will go take them to the DMV myself and help them get that picture ID." Yet given the number of registered voters in South Carolina who lack the new voter ID, transporting each one to the DMV would take Haley quite some time--seven years, four months, three weeks and five days, Think Progress calculated.

Whenever I write about this topic, the reader reaction is always: "I have to show my identification every day. What's the big deal?" But that's not what these laws are about. No one, in South Carolina or elsewhere, votes without first establishing their ID. The central question instead is how far these states may go to force registered voters, who have voted without incident for years, to obtain new forms of identification. Why don't poor people have driver's licenses? Because they can't afford cars. There is a constitutional right to vote -- men and women have died over it. There is no such right to drive.