Last week, more than 100 House Democrats urged the Justice Department to investigate whether photo voter identification laws violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965, according to Natasha Lennard at Salon. This move follows the actions of 16 Democratic Senators who made the same request in June.
According to the letter to the DOJ:
Approximately 11 percent of voting-age citizens in the country — or more than 20 million individuals — lack government-issued photo identification. We urge you to protect the voting rights of Americans by using the full power of the Department of Justice to review these voter identification bills and scrutinize their implementation.
‘The Voting Rights Act vests significant authority in the Department to ensure laws are not implemented in a discriminatory manner… [T]he Department should exercise vigilance in overseeing whether these laws are implemented in a way that discriminates against protected clauses in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
This year alone, photo ID laws were enacted in seven states, including Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. Bills are still pending in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Several more states carried photo ID bills to their 2012 legislative sessions.