WASHINGTON, April 5 (UPI) -- U.S. House Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn said voter ID laws in South Carolina and elsewhere are reminiscent of post-Reconstruction Jim Crow laws.
Clyburn, D-S.C., and other voting rights advocates warn that laws requiring voters to present photo identification when they go to the polls could disenfranchise millions of Americans in the November elections. He says the laws are similar to the post-Civil War Jim Crow laws enacted in Southern states that imposed poll taxes, literacy tests and other roadblocks to prevent blacks from voting, McClatchy Newspapers reported Thursday.