The Obama administration entered the fierce national debate over voting rights Friday, rejecting a South Carolina law requiring photo identification at the polls after determining the statute discriminates against minority voters. ...This is, of course, a predictable and inevitable consequence of treating 'disparate impact' as evidence of unequal treatment. The Establishment wants to maintain that isonomy is of paramount importance, but simultaneously (and incorrectly) assumes that all people--and by extension, all groups of people--are the same, so that any unequal outcome must necessarily be the result of unequal treatment (ie, an isonomic breach has occurred) irrespective of whether or not such an occurrence can be definitively proved.
In its first ruling on the voter-ID laws, Justice's Civil Rights Division said South Carolina's statute is discriminatory because the state's registered minority voters are nearly 20 percent more likely than whites to lack a state-issued photo ID.
In the case of a discrimination settlement with a mortgage lending company, this line of reasoning may go mostly unchallenged, but when it comes to something as simple as presenting a photo ID--something that most people do on a regular basis, be it to write a check or drive a car--the assertion that certain groups are being treated unfairly in being required to do as much strikes an overwhelming majority of the public as absurd.
Putting aside the question of intentional voter fraud, the reason voter-ID requirements hurt the left more than they hurt the right is because voters at the left end of the IQ and future time orientation spectrums are mostly Democrats, not Republicans. I've seen multiple facebook posts over the last couple of days in reaction to the Justice Department's actions along the lines of "liberals are too unorganized and stupid to vote".
In fairness, it's more because the left's intelligence distribution is wider than the right's is, with more lefties at the bottom and top and more conservatives in the middle, not because liberals are less intelligent on average than conservatives are (in fact, the IQ means by political orientation are essentially equal). That distributional difference, in turn, is due primarily to the left's racial diversity. So, if the FB posters wanted to be more precise (and more crass), they'd say "NAMs are too unorganized and stupid to vote". SWPLs, who would generally be happy to accuse conservatives of believing as much, are in tough spot if they assert as much though, because based on the Justice Department's accusations, it is transparently true. Oh how political correctness makes us stupid.
To dredge up a bit of evidence to back up the assertion that the disproportionately female political left sports a more manly intelligence distribution than the mostly male right does, consider that the GSS shows that one standard deviation in wordsum score for all liberals is 2.18 points, while for all conservatives it is only 1.99.
GSS variables used: WORDSUM, POLVIEWS(1-3)(5-7), YEAR(2000-2010)