BALLOT

Obama Campaign Fights Voter ID Laws

Advisers say voter-access laws threaten re-election.

New Republican laws are trying to block the vote, say Obama advisers. The president’s reelection campaign has launched a massive, months-long effort to help voters ensure their votes are counted come November. Republican-led legislatures across the country have passed a series of law that make it more difficult to organize registration drives, as well as imposing stringent requirements on the forms of identification allowed. Obama’s campaign was able to energize young voters and minorities in 2008, and hopes to do so again—but these are precisely the groups that the GOP-backed laws are designed to target, Democratic strategists have said. A dozen states passed stricter voter-ID laws in 2011, four of which were struck down by Democratic governors.