Across the country, voters in a number of states will face obstacles to casting ballots in the 2012 elections, in large part because of model legislation drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the organization backed by, among others, billionaires
Charles and David Koch
. It was ALEC’s draft legislation that inspired a spate of recently passed voter ID laws that, if allowed to stand, are expected to marginalize the impact of students and people of color at the polls in Texas, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Kansas. (Under the Texas law, for example, a college ID is not an acceptable form of identification for voting, but a military ID is.)