In Philadelphia, the largest city in the largest swing state among those with strict new voter ID laws, there are as many as 250,000 registered voters who don't have the required voter ID. These are people who intend to vote, and have done so in the past without a problem, but now have three months to get their expired IDs renewed, or apply for new ones. For some, this is merely a hassle -- just one more thing to get done. For others, it's nearly impossible.
We went to Philadelphia to meet two voters -- Laila Stones and Ana Gonzalez -- stuck in a real-life Catch 22: You need a birth certificate to get a government-issued ID, but you need a photo ID to get a birth certificate.
Both Stones and Gonzalez were witnesses in the ACLU's case against the new voter ID laws. An injunction blocking the rules may be their best hope for expressing their fundamental rights as citizens this November.
Their stories put a human face on these very troubling and often ignored statistics. Please watch and share this digital-only feature from BillMoyers.com.
On this weekend's Moyers & Company, Bill explored the issue of voter ID laws, voting rights, and voter suppression with Michael Waldman and Keesha Gaskins from the Brennan Center for Justice, and launched a new area on BillMoyers.com called "The Fight to Vote'