Benjamin Jealous and Ryan Haygood:

While the Court’s failure to block the law may have left over a million people unable to vote, the Texas Governor’s race was decided by 954,306 votes.

Similarly, this recent surge in voter suppression could have affected the Senate races in Virginia and North Carolina, and the governor’s race in Alabama. In Virginia, where the Senate race was decided by 16,727 voters, 198,902 registered voters may have lacked the identification needed to vote under a new voter ID law. In North Carolina, 200,000 people voted early in 2010 and, thus, were potentially impacted by severe cuts to early voting that the state passed mere months after the Shelby County decision. The Senate race there was decided by 48,511 votes. In Alabama, 250,000 to 500,000 voters were impacted by a new voter ID law and the governor’s race was decided by 320,139 votes.

I remain deeply skeptical and think this kind of suggestive argumentation detracts from the major problem with state voter id laws: they disenfranchise people (especially poor people and people of color) without adequte justification.