"Are we now going to witness a subtle return of Jim Crow voting laws?"

WaPo's E.J. Dionne Jr. is getting histrionic about voter ID laws in his piece called "How States Are Rigging the 2012 Election." Making it as racial as he possibly can...

In the bad old days, poll taxes, now outlawed by the 24th Amendment, were used to keep African Americans from voting.... This is the civil rights issue of our moment.

... he himself propagates racism in the form of an assumption that black people have trouble performing the simplest task. 

Voter ID passes in the Wisconsin Senate and protesters chant "Shame!"

"Those in the Senate gallery sang 'We Shall Overcome' after a speech about voting rights."

State Sen. Spencer Coggs, D-Milwaukee, [said] "There is some racism in this bill"....

"This is a shameful day," Sen. Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, said. "It is the day that democracy died."

"Have you ever had a thought on the topic of race that isn't set generations into the past? Have you ever thought about the future?"

A commenter questions Matt Yglesias's questioning of Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich talked about having "a voting standard that says to vote, as a native born American, you should have to learn American history." Yglesias liken this to "the kind of techniques that were used to prevent African-Americans (and many poor whites as well) from voting in the Jim Crow South."

Well, you can expect to hear the Jim-Crow-South meme from Democrats whenever there's any talk about about restrictions on voting. We're hearing it in Wisconsin over the voter ID law. Republicans who want to pursue these issues need to have some good responses ready.

The most conventional response is: The Jim Crow South was the work of the Democratic Party. But Republicans shouldn't be too smug about that. Obviously, Democrats think all those Democrats would be Republican today.

The question I've used as the title of this post suggests the beginning of one response, but it needs to be filled out with some substantive, believable vision of a better future. Gingrich had some substance: He wants schools to do a much better job of teaching American history. But he could have stayed with that, not brought up the notion of "a voting standard." If that was an idle rhetorical flourish, it was incompetent, because he handed a chunk of red meat to his enemies.

How misspelled can a write-in vote for Murkowski be before it shouldn't be counted at all?

Joe Miller is arguing for 100% correct spelling.

Lt. Gov. Craig Campbell, who oversees Alaska elections, has indicated that he will accept minor misspellings of Murkowski's name as long as the "voter intent" is clear.

Intent of the voter. Ah! That brings back delightful memories of the Bush v. Gore recount.

Miller is overdoing it. Clearly, they've got to count stuff like "Murakowski" and "Murkowsky" and "Murcowski" and even "Mercowsky." But where's the line? What about "Merssky"? Or "Murk."? What about "Lisa"? That's dimpled chad territory, no?

ADDED: A poll:

How strictly would you judge the write-ins?
	Miller's right. The spelling must be perfect.
	It must be phonetically accurate or only 1 or 2 letters off.
	If you can tell it was meant as a vote for Murkowski, it should count.
pollcode.com free polls

After the break, a second poll:

Now, be honest:
	My preference for Miller influenced my choice on the first poll.
	My preference for Murkowski influenced my choice on the first poll.
	I gave a neutral, principled response to the first poll.
	Honestly, I can't vouch for how my mind worked.
pollcode.com free polls

Justice Breyer does the math.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard argument in Bartlett v. Strickland, an important voting rights case:

Christopher G. Browning Jr., North Carolina’s solicitor general, defended the decision of officials there to violate a state law in order to create a district that included about 39 percent of the black voting-age population, saying the Voting Rights Act required the creation of the district to prevent the dilution of the minority group’s ability to elect a representative of its choice.

The fact that the district did not include a majority of black voters was a virtue, Mr. Browning said. True, he said, minority voters would be able to elect a representative of their choice only with the aid of voters from other groups. “Coalition districts help us in reaching the point where race will no longer matter,” Mr. Browning said....

Several justices seemed [say or suggest] that a 50 percent requirement had the usual costs and benefits of what lawyers call “bright line rules.” They are easy to apply, but they can be arbitrary and inflexible....

Justice Stephen G. Breyer proposed [a] number, one tied to the amount of crossover voting from whites needed to elect the minority group’s preferred candidate. “There’s a kind of natural stopping place,” he said. “When I worked out the numbers, it seemed that natural stopping place fell around 42-43 percent.”