Vot­er fraud is vir­tu­al­ly nonex­is­tent in Amer­i­ca, but this imag­i­nary crime still serves to jus­ti­fy a wave of oner­ous new vot­er reg­is­tra­tion laws – often requir­ing a state-issued pho­to ID – that Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors have rapid­ly spread across the nation. The impli­ca­tions for the 2012 elec­tions are huge.

“The over­all idea is pret­ty obvi­ous,” says Frances Fox Piv­en, author of three books out­lin­ing America’s unusu­al­ly harsh and restric­tive vot­ing laws. ​“Both par­ties expect close elec­tions in 2012, and if you peel off just a cou­ple per­cent­age points, you can deter­mine the outcome.”

Piv­en points to Wis­con­sin, where protests over a law passed ear­li­er this year ren­der­ing pub­lic-employ­ee unions tooth­less were fol­lowed by the impo­si­tion of a restric­tive vot­er ID law by Gov. Scott Walk­er and Repub­li­can majori­ties in the state leg­is­la­ture. ​“We saw labor protests of unprece­dent­ed size and inten­si­ty over lim­it­ing their voice as work­ers,” Piv­en says. ​“And then [pro­test­ers] were greet­ed with a law to lim­it their pow­er elec­toral­ly, too.”

With the cor­po­rate-fund­ed Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC) pro­mot­ing vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, eight oth­er states also passed restric­tive new laws this year, bring­ing the total num­ber of states with such laws to 30. Anoth­er 16 states have seen sim­i­lar ID laws intro­duced in 2011. Only a veto in June by New Hampshire’s Gov. John Lynch (D) pre­vent­ed the pas­sage of a law using res­i­den­cy require­ments to dimin­ish the vot­ing of, as the state’s House Speak­er William O’Brien ® described them, ​“lib­er­al” students.

On its web­site, ALEC – whose fun­ders include bil­lion­aires David and Charles Koch (Scott Walker’s sec­ond-largest source of direct con­tri­bu­tions) – describes how a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion makes it easy to impose new restric­tions on vot­ing rights: There ​“was no require­ment that Indi­ana show pri­or evi­dence of imper­son­ation fraud in Indi­ana to jus­ti­fy a vot­er ID law.”

Indeed, such evi­dence is nonex­is­tent. Fed­er­al records ​“show that only 24 peo­ple were con­vict­ed of or plead­ed guilty to ille­gal vot­ing between 2002 and 2005,” accord­ing to ​“The Pol­i­tics of Fraud,” a Project Vote report writ­ten by polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Lor­raine Min­nite. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice con­clud­ed, ​“It’s more like­ly that an indi­vid­ual will be struck by light­ning than that he will imper­son­ate anoth­er vot­er at the polls.”

But Repub­li­cans have dis­missed the absence of evi­dence and instead are strik­ing with light­ning-like speed to ram through strin­gent new require­ments for vot­ing. The Wis­con­sin law, which requires state-issued vot­er IDs, vot­er sig­na­tures, longer res­i­den­cy require­ments and oth­er pro­ce­dur­al bar­ri­ers to vot­ing, was described by Com­mon Cause State Direc­tor Jay Heck as ​“the most restric­tive, bla­tant­ly par­ti­san and ill-con­ceived vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion leg­is­la­tion in the nation.” The new law will make it much hard­er for those who lack driver’s licens­es, which includes 23 per­cent of elder­ly Wis­con­sinites, 59 per­cent of Lati­na women and 78 per­cent of African-Amer­i­can men ages 18 to 24. These peo­ple will need to acquire state-issued pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to vote. Exist­ing pho­to IDs for stu­dents fail to meet the new standard.

Wis­con­sin State Sen. Tim­o­thy Car­pen­ter (D‑3rd Dis­trict) has already heard from senior cit­i­zens who have encoun­tered dif­fi­cul­ty while pre­sent­ing the prop­er doc­u­ments to the Depart­ment of Motor Vehi­cles (DMV), which is sup­posed to issue free vot­er IDs. ​“It’s a pas­sion for senior cit­i­zens to vote, but a lot of peo­ple are being slapped back,” he said.

Genevieve Winslow, an 83-year-old wid­ow in frail health liv­ing with her son Jef­frey in Mil­wau­kee, Wis., spent 90 min­utes at a DMV office in July and came away exas­per­at­ed. ​“She came with her Social Secu­ri­ty card in the name of Genevieve, her Medicare card in the name of Genevieve, a cer­ti­fied copy of her mar­riage cer­tifi­cate from 1948 in the name of Genevieve … and per­haps most impor­tant, an expired pass­port issued in 1987 in the name of Genevieve,” recounts her son. But because her birth cer­tifi­cate fea­tured the Pol­ish ver­sion of her name, she walked away with­out a new ID.

“The eas­i­est thing for mom would be to get a new pass­port, which would be quite expen­sive [$135]. But we live on her Social Secu­ri­ty pay­ment,” Jef­frey Winslow says. ​“It’s not a hap­py sit­u­a­tion, but she’s deter­mined for them not to take away her vote.”