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Now, welcome to the award-winning BestOfAlef podcast with clips today from TestTube News, Intersection, the Young Turks, Making Contact, Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp, The David Pakman Show, and the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.

We recently did an episode on how some states are enacting laws to discourage and prevent US citizens from voting. And one of those laws we pointed out requires people to present a photo ID when they go to vote. In the comments section exploded.

It was mainly people just wanting to know why requiring ID was a bad thing. After all, you needed to do pretty much everything else, so why not voting?

While almost 11% of the US voting population does not have a photo ID, that's 3.2 million people. For me, that fact alone is enough to list voter ID requirements as laws that stop people from voting.

But let's take a look at who those 3.2 million people without voter ID actually are. The majority of them fall into four categories. Young adults, the elderly, minorities, and the poor. 18% of all seniors and 25% of African Americans don't have a picture ID.

If photo ID requirements were enacted in every US state, almost a fifth of the elderly population and a full quarter of the African American population would not be able to vote.

Which begs the question, why can't they just get IDs? The people without IDs are the very same people that don't have driver's licenses. So they can't just drive on down to the DMV and pick up a photo ID card.

A lot of them live in rural areas that are nowhere near the closest DMV. Others may not have driver's licenses because they can't afford a car.

They also can't afford to lose a day at work at the DMV, a place primarily known for wasting people's time.

Plus, some states require a birth certificate to get a state issued photo ID while also requiring a photo ID to obtain a birth certificate.

The law also limits absentee voting, which is how seniors who are unable to make it to the polls vote. And that is the truly alarming thing about voter ID laws.

We're not talking about stopping people who don't vote from voting. We're talking about stopping active voters from voting. The elderly are the most consistent voters of any demographic.

Minorities voted in the 2008 presidential election at virtually the same rate as non-minorities. And that same year, young people, ages 18 to 24, had the highest turnout for that age group since 1992.

So is there an argument for requiring voter ID? The number one reason given for wanting it is to stop voter fraud.

Supporters of the law want everyone to show an ID so that people can't just walk off the street, say any name they want, and vote away.

Which would be a good reason to want voters to have ID if that were happening. But it's not.

In fact, according to the Brennan Center at NYU School of Law, this type of voter fraud is less likely to happen than death by lightning.

Obviously, we want to keep our elections fair so we shouldn't completely discount voter fraud, but this new law simply isn't a good way to do that.

August 6th marked the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.

This is the measure that blocked the Jim Crow discrimination and intimidation that kept so many black citizens from using what is guaranteed by the 15th Amendment.

The right to vote. Here's LBJ introducing the bill to Congress.

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