A proposed voter ID bill in Missouri could disenfranchise 220,000 registered voters, according to an impact report released on Tuesday by Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander. The report notes that passing House Bill 1073, which introduces new limitations on acceptable types of voter identification, would make Missouri’s voter laws some of the strictest in the country, alongside Indiana and Texas. To pass the bill, the state would first have to change their constitution. “Our state has one of the strongest voting rights provisions in the constitution anywhere in the country,” Kander explained on Sunday’s Melissa Harris-Perry. “The Republican strategy here is to amend our state constitution to weaken the voting rights provision and then pass the most extreme version of this kind of law in the country.”
The proposed amendment would add language to the state constitution specifying that residency qualifications for voting “may include valid government-issued photo identification.”
The state enacted a voter photo identification statue back in 2006 that was quickly struck down by the Missouri Supreme Court as a violation of the state constitution. In that decision, the Court wrote that the photo identification requirement “creates a heavy burden on the fundamental right to vote and is not narrowly tailored to meet a compelling state interest.”
Full Article: Report: Missouri voter-ID bill could disenfranchise 220,000 | MSNBC.