“After crying foul over Republican efforts to modify election laws in key states, Democrats are launching their own wide-ranging push to change the way Americans vote, kicking off the latest battles in a fight over voting rights that’s as old as the republic itself,” the Washington Post reports.

“Legislators in at least seven other states will propose bills that would tweak election laws in other ways. In some states controlled by Democrats, the measures have a good chance to pass. In other states with divided control or that operate under Republican control, Democrats plan to use the measures as political cudgels, painting the GOP as opposed to basic voting rights.”

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) “signed into law a bill requiring voters to produce a photo ID when they go to the polls, and it was immediately met with legal challenges in federal court questioning its constitutionality,” the Raleigh News and Observer reports.

“The new law brings sweeping changes to the state’s election process by reducing the early-voting period by a week, abolishing same-day voter registration and ending straight-party voting.”

Ari Berman takes a look at the lawsuits filed against the new law.

Rick Hasen: “The bottom line is that the way to fight much of North Carolina’s strict law is not legally but politically. And that’s part of the impetus for the lawsuits as well. Even if they are not wholly successful, they will keep the issue in the news. Without a compelling anti-fraud, efficiency, or voter confidence story to tell about this set of draconian laws, and with statistics showing that some of the provisions here could well impact minority voters, defenders of this law could well see their own backlash.”

Harry Enten: “Over 20% of the black population [in Florida] are disenfranchised because of felon and ex-felon voting restrictions. That includes about half a million blacks… Over 15% of the black populations are disenfranchised because of ex-felon [i.e. those who have “paid their debt to society”] voting restrictions. In terms of electoral results, President Obama would have added 2.6pt to his 0.9pt Florida margin had felons and ex-felons been allowed to vote. Even if we just count ex-felons, it would have been 2.2pt. Al Gore would have easily won the state given this data…”

“Thus, laws prohibiting felons and ex-felons have a major impact on elections and may determine a winner in the near future. I don’t expect people to take up the banner of felon and ex-felon voting rights. They’re not are as sexy as a topic as voter identification for obvious reasons. But if you’re looking for voting restrictions that afflict minorities in the south and can have major electoral implications, then felon and ex-felon voting laws have a far greater impact than voter identification laws.”

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) “says he will sign into law a Republican-backed bill making sweeping changes to how and when citizens can vote even though he has not seen one of its key provisions,” WRAL reports.

When asked specifically about a provision ending the program encouraging high school students to register to vote in advance of their 18th birthdays, he said, “I don’t know enough, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen that part of the bill.”

Rick Hasen: “Anyone wondering about the importance of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling hobbling a key part of the Voting Rights Act needs look no further than North Carolina, whose Republican legislature is poised to enact one of the strictest voting laws in the Nation, one which will make it harder to register and vote, likely hurting minority voters most. North Carolina is making it harder to vote now because it can, but recent experience in Florida and elsewhere shows it is a decision North Carolina Republicans may come to regret.”

North Carolina lawmakers “are moving toward approving a sweeping set of changes to North Carolina’s election laws unveiled Tuesday, which would cut the number of early voting days, require voters to show government-issued photo IDs and eliminate several forms of voter registration,” the Charlotte Observer reports.

Republicans says they want to “restore integrity” to the voting process while critics says the bill “will make it harder for the elderly, poor, minorities and students to vote.”

North Carolina Republicans announced a new voter ID bill “that would further restrict the forms of photo identification accepted at the polls,” the Charlotte Observer reports.

“The new measure would require voters to show one of seven types of photo identification issued by the government, such as driver’s licenses, passports, non-driver IDs and military or veteran cards. It eliminates about half the types of photo identification allowed under the House version, including cards from UNC system colleges, state community colleges, local governments, private employers and law enforcement agencies.”

“The bill would take full effect in the 2016 elections.”

A new Gallup survey finds a majority of Americans back three political reform ideas, including 68% who favor national referenda on key issues if enough voters sign a petition to request a popular vote on the issue.

In addition, 61% favor a shortened presidential campaign lasting five weeks in the fall of an election year and 58% want a nationwide primary election to select each party’s candidates for president.

Roll Call: “House Republicans face a political dilemma as they consider how — and whether — to rewrite the Voting Rights Act after the Supreme Court neutered some of its most powerful provisions last week.”

“Failing to act would undermine the party’s efforts to reach out to minority voters and potentially prompt a backlash that drives up Democratic turnout. But passing any law that reinstates federal preclearance of voting laws in some states would face a bruising battle in Congress.”

With the Supreme Court suspending the mechanism that forced Texas to get a federal OK before it can implement any election law change, state Attorney General Greg Abbott (R) said that “nothing now can stop the state from activating its controversial voter ID law,” the Dallas Morning News reports.

Said Abbott: “With today’s decision, the State’s voter ID law will take effect immediately. Redistricting maps passed by the Legislature may also take effect without approval from the federal government.”

Meanwhile, WLTB-TV reports Miississippi will move ahead with its voter ID law too.

In a major ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act saying it was unconstitutional.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the ruling, which was divided along the court’s usual ideological lines in a 5-4 vote.

Wonk Wire has more, including a round up opinion and analysis of the decision.

The Supreme Court says states “cannot require would-be voters to prove they are U.S. citizens before using a federal registration system designed to make signing up easier,” CBS News reports.

“The justices voted 7-2 to throw out Arizona’s voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal ‘Motor Voter’ voter registration law.”

Meanwhile, the AP notes the Arizona legislature is looking at attempts to curtail early voting eligibility.

The New York Times reports that less than three years and $95 million spent to deploy new voting machines in New York City, “election officials say the counting process with the machines is too cumbersome to use them for the mayoral primary this year, and then for the runoff that seems increasingly likely to follow as soon as two weeks later.”

“In a last-ditch effort to avoid an electoral embarrassment, the city is poised to go back in time: it is seeking to redeploy lever machines, a technology first put in place in the 1890s, for use this September at polling places across the five boroughs. The city’s fleet of lever machines was acquired in 1962 and has been preserved in two warehouses in Brooklyn, shielded from dust by plastic covers.”

A new Harvard study contacted over 7,000 election administrators in 28 states and found they provided different information about voter ID requirements to voters of different ethnicities.

Dylan Matthews: “The finding holds up when you drop certain regions, when you drop small towns, and when you control for whether officials are elected or appointed. What’s more, they find that there are actually statistically significant differences in the quality of response from officials, depending on what kind of name is used.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) “vetoed a bill that would allow early voting at polling places, prompting Democrats to brand it a politically motivated effort to suppress the vote months after Hurricane Sandy exposed vulnerabilities in the state elections system,” the Newark Star Ledger reports.

“The Republican governor called a proposal to let voters cast ballots at designated polling places during a 15-day period before Election Day ‘hasty, counterproductive and less reliable’ than the current system.”

The Colorado Senate passed a bill “that would provide a ballot by mail to every state voter, allow vote centers for those who choose not to use the mail ballot and — controversially — allow people to register and vote on Election Day,” the Denver Post reports.

“The bill passed 20-15 with the full support of Democrats and no Republican votes. The bill passed the House on a party-line vote last month.”

All members of the Federal Election Commission members are now serving expired terms, Bloomberg reports.

“It’s the latest embarrassment for the Obama administration and the FEC, which for years has been stymied because its partisan split — three Democratic members and three Republicans — has paralyzed the agency on election enforcement cases and efforts to rewrite campaign-finance disclosure rules to adapt to the new groups that entered the political arena in the 2012 campaigns.”

“An attempt to illegally obtain absentee ballots in Florida last year is the first known case in the U.S. of a cyberattack against an online election system,” NBC News reports.

“The case involved more than 2,500 ‘phantom requests’ for absentee ballots, apparently sent to the Miami-Dade County elections website using a computer program, according to a grand jury report on problems in the Aug. 14 primary election. It is not clear whether the bogus requests were an attempt to influence a specific race, test the system or simply interfere with the voting.”