By Leonard Pitts Jr. | McClatchy Newspapers

This one is for Mike.

Mike is a Houston reader who shot me an email after my recent column equating the GOP push for voter ID laws with voter suppression. I agreed with Attorney General Eric Holder who called that a modern-day poll tax. Mike did not.

It should be called what it is:GOP Voter Suppression.
[Cartoon: liberalsarecool.com] 

"You have to have an ID to write a check," he wrote, "use a credit card and most other things in life. Saying poor blacks cannot easily get IDs is ridiculous. .?.?. 

Comparing this to the poll tax? C'mon, be serious."

Actually, I am. Not that I don't get why Mike's argument sounds reasonable to Mike - and to many others who made it. But let us consider it more closely.

First off, I've never made the claim Mike attributes to me, i.e., that poor blacks cannot get IDs. No, my point is that when you don't have a checking account, a credit card or a car, it is less likely you will already have ID.

The name of the game, remember, is not voter prevention, but voter suppression, i.e., bringing down the numbers. In the last presidential election, only 63 percent of eligible voters voted - and that was the best showing in 48 years.

Clearly, Americans are not overly enthusiastic about performing this civic duty as it is.

So, if you can add a layer of difficulty to it that requires some voters to catch a bus down to some office, fill out forms and wait in line to get a card for which they will otherwise have zero use, is it so hard to imagine that some won't bother - and that there will be enough of them to make a difference in a close race?
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