The Indiana Voter ID law is premised on the belief that though voter fraud is not prevalent, any legitimate voter is suffering from the effect of vote dilution and that protections against such are a worthwhile goal.
So how does disenfranchisement stack up against "vote dilution"
Disenfranchisement causes to an individual the loss of his or hers total one vote, or 100% of their vote.
A single act of voter fraud resulting in so-called "voter dilution" in comparison is the loss of 1 divided by all the votes cast in that state. This very small fraction of less than 1 vote would seem to indicate that the disenfranchised voter suffers greater harm than the voter who has been "diluted"
If the SCOTUS rules anything like they did last year I expect voter suppression to become institutionalized in America.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/election2008/story/19982.htmlOhio, Florida laws could dampen Democratic voting
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Ohio and Florida, which provided the decisive electoral votes for President Bush's two razor-thin national election triumphs, have enacted laws that election experts say will help Republicans impede Democratic-leaning minorities from voting in 2008.
Backers of the new laws say they're aimed at curbing vote fraud. But the statutes also could facilitate a controversial Republican tactic known as ``vote caging,'' which the GOP attempted in Ohio and Florida in 2004 before public disclosures foiled the efforts, said Joseph Rich, a former Justice Department voting rights chief in the Bush administration who's now with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.
Caging, used in the past to target poor minorities in heavily Democratic precincts, entails sending mass mailings to certain voters and then using the undelivered letters to compile lists of voters for eligibility challenges.
As the high-stakes ground war escalates heading into next year's elections, Republicans have led the charge for an array of revisions to state voting rights laws, especially in key battleground states. Republican political appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division have endorsed some of these measures.