This week in the War on Voting: Blocking the electoral vote

The Brennan Center for Justice has identified 189 electoral votes in 2012 coming from states with new restrictive voting laws.

Since the beginning of 2011, 13 states passed, or are on the verge of passing, restrictive voting laws that will impact the 2012 election. The states — Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and West Virginia — make up 189 electoral votes, or 70 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
An additional three states — Alabama, Ohio, and Rhode Island — passed restrictive laws that will not be in effect in 2012. Ohioans will vote in November on a referendum to repeal their state’s law.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee delves a little deeper into those numbers, and highlights the critical votes: those in the swing states, where as much as 80 electoral votes could be allocated.

Last year, Florida passed sweeping voter suppression legislation that raised barriers to everything from registering people to vote to actually casting a ballot. ][...]

The Department of Justice has objected to these provisions of the Florida law, placing its ultimate effect on the 2012 election in question.

Ohio was on track to become another swing state with a suppressive voting law in place for the 2012 election. House Bill 194, passed by the GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Gov. John Kasich, made receiving absentee ballots more difficult while shortening the time for early voting. The measure is now subject to a SB5-style “people’s veto,” as citizens collected sufficient signatures to place the measure on the ballot this November. Consequently, implementation of the law has been suspended pending the outcome of that vote. [...]

Pennsylvania is another quintessential swing state with newly-passed suppressive voting legislation. The state’s GOP-controlled legislature approved HB 934 last week, and Republican Gov. John Corbett signed the voter ID bill into law. Opponents have pledged to fight the law in court, an effort that may be bolstered by recent decisions barring the enforcement ofWisconsin’s voter ID law.

Virginia Republicans took full advantage of their GOP tie-breaking vote in an evenly-divided state Senate to ram through a strict voter ID bill earlier this month. Gov. Bob McDonnell is expected to sign it into law any day now. Since the measure must face Justice Department scrutiny under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, it may yet see the resistance faced by voter suppression bills in Texas and South Carolina.

That's 80 electoral votes in total, coming from states where the voting rights picture is still a little murky just seven months from the election.

It's also precisely the end game Republicans have been for in this all out effort to block the vote.

For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.