Every election year the Republican party howls “voter fraud” and tries to discredit Democratic efforts to get out the vote. Sometimes it succeeds in scaring the public and Congress (see ACORN) and manages to diminish those efforts.

This year, however, with newly-elected Republican legislatures in many states, it’s gone beyond howling and is passing new Voter ID laws with a vengeance, all of them aimed at voters whose inclination is to support Democratic candidates.

An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.

The laws are being passed in the name of preventing “voter fraud.” But study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem — and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place. Some of the new laws, notably those limiting the number of days for early voting, have little plausible connection to battling fraud.

These statutes are not neutral. Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African Americans, Latinos and the young. It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 — or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments.

When you consider that the average Republican voter is old and getting older (see here) it’s no surprise they’re trying to do this. It’s undemocratic and unethical, but then, that’s what the Republican party stands for these days.