"Voting Under Attack" blares the teaser headline for a new Zachary Roth piece at MSNBC.com looking at efforts in five states to pass new voter ID laws.
"Five more GOP-controlled states could add voter ID laws," the subheader adds, even though in two of the states, Iowa and New Mexico, Democrats control the upper chamber of the state legislature.
After lamenting the "false dawn" of what appeared to be a lull in state-level pursuit of voter ID laws, Roth groused that the Republican Party seems buoyed by the midterm elections and is freshly gunning for "new photo ID requirements for voters."
Of course at no point did Roth concede that polling data repeatedly have shown majorities of black voters and Democrats supporting voter ID laws.
Despite all his spin, Roth himself had to admit that in at least one state, voter ID laws were an election issue in the minds of voters:
New Mexico could follow close on Nevada’s heels. There too, Republicans have long tried to pass voter ID, only to be blocked by Democrats. And there too, the GOP made gains last fall, winning control of the state House of Representatives. Democrats still hold the Senate, but the popularity of Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican and voter ID supporter who was easily re-elected last fall, could be enough to get voter ID over the finish line. Secretary of State Dianna Duran, who made support for voter ID a key plank of her re-election campaign, thinks so. “This is going to be a different year,” she said recently.
And let's not forget about Ohio which is (emphasis mine):
still the most pivotal presidential swing state in the country, would represent the biggest victory for ID supporters. Republicans have controlled state government since 2011, but efforts to pass an ID law have fizzled in recent years amid fears of a backlash. But some GOP lawmakers tried to force a vote on an ID measure as recently as November, and they’re getting help from a conservative Christian group that’s mobilizing grassroots supporters. Still, Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican who has spearheaded other high-profile voting restrictions, has opposed past voter ID bills, and that could be enough to put the kibosh on the effort.
Roth conveniently omitted how Husted absolutely blew out his Democratic challenger Nina Turner with a 25 percentage point margin of victory. Turner, you may recall is a vigorous voter ID opponent who repeatedly appeared on MSNBC over the past few years to rail against voter ID laws both in the Buckeye State and elsewhere in the United States.
