The GOP Sees Dead People — Voting

slate.com — When Americans go to the polls this November, they better have some ID. If they don’t, millions of them won’t be casting a ballot. Over the past two years, Republican legislators from Texas to Florida to Wisconsin and beyond have enacted new restrictions making it significantly more difficult for citizens to exercise their right to vote. These laws, which could disenfranchise more voters than at any time since the 1960s, exist because of one widely held conservative belief: that our elections are plagued with fraud. A nonpartisan study on voter fraud in Wisconsin after the 2004 election found just seven ineligible votes — all of which were cast by ex-felons who were ineligible to vote despite being released from prison — out of 3 million ballots cast. Yet the notion that voter fraud is rampant appears to have become a core belief among conservatives.

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