Voter ID laws

I feel compelled to write this post after seeing a facebook status update of a facebook "friend" who i knew very briefly a very long time ago.  She takes issue with the claim that laws requiring identification are racist.  She lists a number of other activities that require a person to show identification (driving, buying alcohol, flying, etc) and questions whether they are racist, too.  I didn't want to jump in on someone's post uninvited, especially when I am not close to her, but I still want to get my thoughts on the issue down somewhere. 

Voter ID laws aren't inherently racist, and I'm sure that many, of not most, of those in support of them aren't racist either.  As I'm learning during my con law review for the bar, there is a difference between discriminatory effect and discrimatory intent.  Further, there are plenty of white people who will prevented from voting because of these laws.  They're really more classist than racist.  However, that does not negate the fact that these laws are racially charged.  Voter ID laws will have a larger impact on minority voters than they will on white voters and, when put into a historical context, it is easy to see why many think these efforts are racist.  The U.S. has more than a century of experience in trying to prevent people of color from voting without explicitly denying them the vote.  From literacy tests to poll taxes, minorities' voting rights have often been threatened.  As an aside, voter ID laws actually are poll taxes, indirectly, because government identification isn't free and efforts to obtain one without paying for it due to indigence are often cumbersome and unreliable.  Given our nation's history of coming up with ways to legally deny minorities the right to vote, how can you blame someone for thinking that this law, which disproportionately prevents otherwise eligible minority voters from voting, is racist?  This is the reason, in addition to the fact that driving, buying alcohol and flying aren't fundamental rights essential to the functioning of our republican form of government, that requiring identification for other activities isn't racist. 

Another reason way to distinguish between requiring identification for activities such as driving, buying alcohol or flying is the necessity for identification for those activities and the lack there of for voting.  Underage drinking and driving without a license are big problems that requiring identification actually helps solve.  Voter fraud, on the other hand, is virtually nonexistent.  Proponents of voter ID laws have been given ample opportunity to provide evidence that rampant voter fraud is occuring and have as of yet been able to do so.  Of course, this makes sense.  The penalties for committing voter fraud are enormous and severe.  When you weigh those penalties against the potential gain, one vote that likely will not swing an election either way, it is not clear why someone would take that risk.  Additionally, preventing an eligible voter from voting diminishes the legitimacy of an election exactly as much as allowing an ineligible voter to vote.  Yet these voter ID laws will (actually, not speculatively) prevent tens of thousands of people from voting in the next election.  If you have someone willing to trade the actual disenfranchisement of thousands of people in order to prevent the possible votes of a small number of ineligible voters, people are bound to wonder why.  When the people being disenfranchised are disproportionately minorities, it's not out of the realm of possibility that racism is the reason.

However, I am more inclined to believe that the reason behind these voter ID laws is political expediency/fraud rather than racism (though undoubtedly for some the racism angle is an added bonus).  The majority of people who would be disenfranchised by these laws are likely to vote for Democrats and the vast majority of proponents of these laws are Republicans.  I've always wondered why, if a party believes in democracy and letting every citizen's voice be heard, that party would work so hard to prevent people from using that voice.