an elegant conclusion to Adam Cohen's essay in which he smartly likens the requirement to have an official government ID card to a poll tax:

American Elections and the Grand Old Tradition of Disenfranchisement - New York Times: "Abraham Lincoln understood this. In 1859, after Massachusetts Republicans pushed through a requirement that immigrants wait two years after becoming citizens to vote, a group of German-Americans asked Lincoln what he thought of the law — which mere partisanship should have led him to support. “I am against its adoption in Illinois, or in any other place, where I have a right to oppose it,” he responded. “Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.”"