Democratic Congressmen on the conference’s Voter ID panel reiterated claims that Republican-led efforts to enact laws requiring American citizens to present a valid photo ID in order to vote are inherently racist and intended to keep minorities, specifically blacks and Hispanics, from exercising their right to vote.

“This is about them trying to snatch our power away,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn), who is a co-chair of the House progressive caucus.  Ellison predicted that Voter ID would be the most important issue in the 2012 election. . .

Maryland Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, who repeated the debunked smear that Voter ID laws are “the new Jim Crow laws of our time,” is the second Democrat in the last 10 days to reassert claims that that Voter ID laws – which aim to ensure that only American citizens vote in American elections – are similar to segregationist era laws that required African Americans to take complicated literacy tests and pay unreasonable “poll taxes” to vote.