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I will be on MSNBC for a few minutes between 2 pm and 3 pm Eastern today, talking about the new voter ID requirements that are passing state legislatures. By my count, 11 states require or will soon require voters to show photo identification at the polls (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin). Eight of those states (Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin) added or tightened their requirements this year. Similar requirements are pending in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Governors in five states vetoed ID requirements recently (North Carolina, Montana, Missouri, Minnesota and New Hampshire).

Our election process is already cumbersome and difficult: the very opposite of “customer-friendly.” What business would require you to register for a service months before you were able to receive it–without contacting you before the deadline–and then allow you to get the service only if you showed up in person during specified hours during one particular weekday? A business might handle an extreme shortage that way, but voting is supposed to be for everyone.

A photo ID requirement doesn’t create an extra hurdle for people who already carry driver’s licenses, but at least 10 percent of American citizens do not. Most suburbanites get their licenses when they are sixteen, but most young urban residents do not. Only about one in four young African American adults in the city of Milwaukee hold driver’s licenses (PDF). Whole categories of people, such as individuals who can’t afford to drive or whose disabilities prevent them from driving, do not typically carry state photo ID. They can obtain state ID even if they cannot drive, but that costs money in most states and always adds a third chore to the voting process (getting ID, registering, and then voting).

We have reviewed the empirical studies of existing voter ID laws and found small estimates of the actual effect on turnout: from statistically insignificant to 2.9%. (Alvarez, Bailey, & Katz, 2007; Vercellotti & Anderson, 2006; Eagleton Institute of Politics and Moritz College of Law, 2006; Pastor et al., 2008; Ansolabhere, 2007; Mycoff et al., 2009). Americans should hope that the effects of the new laws will, in fact, be small. On the other hand, the published studies are correlational and based on relatively rare and idiosyncratic laws. The effects of widespread, very tight laws may be worse. Also, if whole subpopulations lack photo ID and yet voter ID requirements do not statistically reduce their turnout, that’s because their turnout is very low already. It is unconscionable to put a legal ceiling on their participation.

There is no need for these new laws. People hardly ever commit voter fraud by showing up at the polls to cast ineligible ballots. You would risk a felony conviction for trying that, and for what? To add one vote to your favorite candidate’s total? Most people vote out of civic duty or group solidarity, not for direct personal benefit. There were four documented instances of ineligible voters trying to vote in Ohio in 2002 and 2004–out of 9 million votes cast (PDF).

As a matter of principle, I do not attribute motives to people without lots of evidence. So I do not know why these voter ID laws are so popular among state legislators–especially Republicans, although in Rhode Island, Democrats enacted the new rules. Perhaps legislators genuinely fear voter fraud or are responding to public pressure for new rules. (There is grassroots pressure, as you can tell from listening to conservative talk radio.) The worst motive, of course, would be to disenfranchise your political opponents, and at least one legislator is on the record with that goal: “New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien, a Republican, told a tea party group that allowing people to register and vote on Election Day led to ‘the kids coming out of the schools and basically doing what I did when I was a kid, which is voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do — they don’t have life experience, and they just vote their feelings.'”