Protecting the Vote or Disenfranchising Voters

Think Progress has an article describing a raft of state proposals requiring IDs for voter registration and/or voting.  The chief knock on all of these bills are that voter fraud, in the form of impersonation, is non-existent and the real aim of all of these bills is to disenfranchise voters, especially the poor.

Assuming that the claim about voter impersonation is true, is that the only form of fraud we should be concerned about?  There was a lot of noise in 2007 about folks showing up at the polls and claiming to reside at long-vacant buildings.  The rules are fairly clear about where you should be voting, even if you have moved.  How much of the concerns about fraud are really about flawed process and procedures?  If we are committed to ensuring that all voters get to exercise their rights, how then do we ensure that opportunities for fraud are appropriately blocked?  I suspect these bills are indeed efforts at disenfranchising groups of voters, but how then do we strike the right balance?

By the way, you all do know that the Constitution does not specify a right to vote?