• Listen to this segment with Vishal Agraharkar

• Listen to the entire program with Sonali Kolhatkar

In many countries, voting, and participating in the democratic process is so important that elections are usually held on the weekend or a national holiday. But in the United States we hold elections on Tuesday. When most working people are working. Not only is our system designed to discourage voting, lawmakers in some states have openly worked to turn people away from the polls.

Citing nearly non-existent voter fraud, Republicans have found an ingenious way to bar voting by those who tend Democratic. By requiring state-issued photo identification at the polls, such in the states of Texas, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, Indiana, Tennessee, and Virginia, minority, poor, disabled, and youth voters have a harder time casting a ballot. The ACLU estimates that more than 21 million Americans do not have state issued IDs. African Americans and senior citizens are the mostly likely to be among them.

Various courts have struck down or affirmed state voter ID laws, which some refer to as “vote suppression laws.” Joining us now to examine the landscape of such laws and how they may or may not impact voting in tomorrow’s midterm elections is my guest:

GUEST: Vishal Agraharkar, counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program

Visit www.brennancenter.org for more information.