At PolitiFact, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s multiple screeds on voter ID and Jim Crow now officially ranks as one of the 10 biggest lies of the year.  

Because of more restrictive voting laws, Republicans “want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws.” — U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., in an interview with Roland Martin on June 5, 2011.

While discussing a slew of new voting laws advocated by Republicans this year with Roland Martin, an African American political commentator, Wasserman Schultz — the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee — compared the proposed restrictions to the Jim Crow laws that impeded African Americans’ ability to vote in the early 20th century.

“You have the Republicans, who want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws and literally — and very transparently — block access to the polls to voters who are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates than Republican candidates. And it’s nothing short of that blatant,” Wasserman Schultz said, adding that the DNC considers the photo ID laws proposed by states to be “very similar to a poll tax.”

Several states — such as Kansas, Rhode Island, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee and Wisconsin — will require voters to show a photo ID before they cast their ballots for the 2012 elections. Democrats have largely opposed these requirements, mainly because some minorities do not possess a single photo ID — for instance, one 2006 report from the Brennan Center for Justice as New York University found that 25 percent of voting-age African Americans do not have a government-issued photo ID.

Republicans pounced on Wasserman Schultlz for her comparison to Jim Crow Laws and she later apologized for using that analogy. Although she retracted her statement, PolitiFact still rated it as false, concluding that while several media outlets used the same comparison, the Jim Crow laws originated from a sense of collective racism that is not similar to the voting ID law requirements.