Which brings us to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who alone among his colleagues has expressed interest in striking down section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. In 2009, in a case styled Northwest Austin v. Holder, Justice Thomas memorably proclaimed "victory" in the federal war against state laws designed to disenfranchise black voters. "The constitutionality of section 5 has always depended," he wrote, "on the proven existence of intentional discrimination so extensive that elimination of it through case-by-case enforcement would be impossible ... 'There can be no remedy without a wrong.'" (citations omitted by me)

And then Justice Thomas wrote this:

The lack of sufficient evidence that the covered jurisdictions currently engage in the type of discrimination that underlay the enactment of §5 undermines any basis for retaining it. Punishment for long past sins is not a legitimate basis for imposing a forward-looking preventative measure that has already served its purpose. Admitting that a prophylactic law as broad as §5 is no longer constitutionally justified based on current evidence of discrimination is not a sign of defeat. It is an acknowledgment of victory.

So if section 5 doesn't apply to "long past sins" against black voters, what about current sins against Hispanic voters? If the Voting Rights Act was originally designed to protect the rights of black Americans to vote, do we now need a new Voting Rights Act that would protect the rights of Hispanic Americans to vote? If so, why aren't federal lawmakers tripping over themselves to get on the good side of a voting bloc that is going to increase in power over the next generation? Oh, that's right. As Chait reminds us, we are not quite yet at the point at which the benefit of shilling for Hispanic votes outweighs the burden of angering white voters.

It's unlikely new legislation is needed -- we can still use the old reliable 1965 statute and apply it to new circumstances like the ones presented now. But does the discriminatory effect of state ID laws have to be so bad -- "violence, terror and subterfuge" is how Justice Thomas put it -- before the federal government may step in against a state? Or is it enough to establish that there is a national effort by conservative groups to press for these types of laws? (Ironic, isn't it, in a dispute conservatives argue is states' rights, that so many of these state voter ID laws would be conceived within the Beltway.)

Several commentators over the past week or so have called the current generation of voter ID laws "a solution in search of a problem." But that doesn't give enough respect to the argument that we should as a nation strive to be as accurate as possible with our voting. If voting fraud is the third oldest profession, and if it is somehow rampant in all these states that have Republican leaders at their helm, then there should be reasonable ways to combat it. No responsible lawmaker ought to be against that. But no one seems able to find good evidence that a crisis is at hand. All Texas Attorney General Abbott could muster this week was this:

Since 2002, the U.S. Department of Justice has prosecuted more than 100 defendants for election fraud. During the same period, election fraud investigations by the Texas Attorney General's Office have resulted in 50 convictions. Those cases include a woman who submitted her dead mother's ballot, a paid operative who cast two elderly voters' ballots after transporting them to the polling place, a city council member who unlawfully registered ineligible foreign nationals to vote in an election that was decided by a 19-vote margin, a Starr County defendant who voted twice on Election Day, a Harris County man who used his deceased father's voter registration card to vote in an election, a worker who pled guilty after attempting to vote for two of her family members, and a Brooks County man who presented another voter's registration card and illegally cast that voter's ballot on Election Day.

In 10 years, just 100 federal prosecutions and 50 state convictions -- in a colossal state with a population of more than 25 million people. You can do the math. You can be stupid and vote in America. You can be drunk and vote in America. You can be mentally insane and vote in America. You could vote in America for Snooki or Rod Blagojevich. Or, like tens of millions of your fellow citizens, you can choose not to vote at all. But if you don't have the means to get a driver's license, or if you cannot afford the time and money it takes to get certain other forms of government ID, you are out of luck? What a great country this is.