Will new voter ID laws swing the U.S. election?

With polls continuing to suggest a presidential election too close to call, attention has focused onwhat some critics refer to as voter suppression tacticsand whether they could have a significant effect on such atight race.

As with most election years, there have beenregular media reports of such things asdestruction of voter registration forms and allegations of voter intimidation. But more troubling for some are the suggestions thatpoliticians,through the legislative process, are creatinglaws to disenfranchise certain voting groups.

The accusations of legislative suppression are mostly targeted at Republicans, who are criticized by some civil rights groups for creating new laws, in particular voter identification laws, that affect mostly poor or minority votersa demographic more inclined to vote Democrat.

"Whenyou pass a law to prevent a crime that is not occurring or that has not occurred in decades, one wonders what the purpose of the law is," Alexander Keyssar, aprofessor of history and social policy at HarvardKennedy School, told CBC News."And when you know that in fact it is likely to have the consequence of putting an obstacle in the path of a certain percentage of voters, and very disproportionately people who are poorit makes one wonder what is going on."

It's true thatRepublican-dominated state legislatures in some stateshave passed laws thatcould makevoting more difficult. In Florida,laws were passed to limit the number of early-voting days, prohibit voting on the Sunday before the electionand impose a 48-hour time limit on third-party voter groupsto registernew voters.

These laws, critics argue, disenfranchise certain voters.For example, some black Americans, many of whomlike tocast their ballots on the Sunday before the election after attending church, would lose that opportunity to vote.

Anger over ID requirements

But the issue that has created the biggest political firestorm and accusations of voter suppression andracism by some groupsare attempts to tighten voter identification laws.

"We must overwhelm the rising tide of voting suppression with the high tide of registration and mobilization and motivation and protection," Benjamin Todd Jealous, the CEO and president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said at the NAACP's national convention earlier this year.

"Simply put, the NAACP will never stand by as any state tries to encode discrimination into law," Jealous said.

These laws,opponentssay, make it onerousfor some groups to get the ID required to vote because of their financial resources andmobility issues. They also may beless likely to have driver's licences or passports and who might find it harder to miss work or lose pay to obtain proper ID.

ID hurdle

In Pennsylvania, lawsthere would require residents to have a birth certificate, a Social Security card and proof of residency.

"Inlarge urban areas, especially among poor people, some of them don't have the kind ofID that would beacceptable. It's not just anyID, it has to beID that is acceptable to the state," Richard Hasen, law professor at University of California at Irvine, told CBC News.

Hasen, author of TheVoting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the NextElection Meltdown, saidstudies suggest voter ID fraud is hardly a problem.

"The claims that there's a major problem of voter fraud in our elections which requires voter ID is unsupported," Hasen said."Voter fraud is not a major problem, certainly not the kind of fraud that would be prevented by a voter ID law.

"When we do have fraud in our elections, it typically involves absentee ballots, and voterID laws don't do anything to stop absentee ballot fraud which tends to be vote buying."

But Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and a strongadvocate for voter ID laws, told CBC News that it's still an issue that needs attention.

"[The opponents'] attitude is that unless it's massive we shouldn't do anything about it," said von Spakovsky, who co-authored the book Who's Counting: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk.

Von Spakovskysaid, for example, there are laws against voter intimidation and that there have been onlyfour or five cases prosecuted by the Justice Department since the establishment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

"But that doesn't mean we don't take steps to prevent," he said."You take basic steps to secure any kind of process, whether it's a computer network or it's the voting process."

He denies trying to suppress voters of a certain demographic and pointed to Georgia and Indiana, which have had voter ID laws in place for five years. He said electoral results reveal that those lawshave notdepressed turnout of voters,black Americans or Democratic voters.

An issue to excite supporters on both sides

Hasenagreed thatthere's beena lotof exaggeration on how much these laws will suppress the vote.

"Although some Democrats would claim it would cause millions of voters to be disenfranchised, there's no proof of that. The effects seem to be much smaller," he said.

He said there's maybe a one per cent shift, and that you'd have to find voters who lack ID, couldn't get it in time and actually want tovote. Most voters tend to be people who have ID, he said.

As well, many of the battleground statesin this election would beunaffected by the voter ID laws, he said. The courts have pushed back on much of the legislation, putting some ID laws, like those inPennsylvania, on hold.

Hasen said he believes both the Republicans and Democrats are using the issue to their advantage.

"I think much of this on both sides is about getting the base excited and about fundraising."