In 2005, Indiana passed a law that required all voters to show a form of photo ID before casting their ballots. This was one of the United States’ first voter ID laws, and it is one of the nation’s strictest. Though the law is relatively new, its intent is familiar to anyone who has heard of poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests.

Although requiring identification as part of the voting registration process may seem harmless, many Americans are unlikely to have a form of identification that state governments will accept. North Carolina’s recently passed law prohibits the use of student IDs, which alienates college students who tend to vote for Democratic candidates. It also disallows the use of IDs issued to public employees, despite the fact that these IDs are issued by the government.

 Minorities are especially at risk of lacking required identification. An Indiana survey from 2007 found that 26.6% of black voters did not have a government-issued form of ID, which was twice the amount of the percentage of white voters with the same problem.

“Voter identification laws could immediately disenfranchise many Latino, Asian and African American citizens,” reported a 2007 study conducted through the Universities of Washington, California, Irvine and New Mexico. Free, election-specific IDs are only available to applicants who can prove their identity, so the study asked voters if they could produce forms of identification such as birth certificates, recent bank statements, or drivers’ licenses which are the most common form of ID used for elections. Only 5% of white voters lacked a driver’s license, compared to 10% of black voters and 11% of Hispanic voters.

“Minority voters are significantly less likely to be able to provide multiple forms of identification,” concluded the study. These voters do not qualify for the free IDs issued by States. Voter identification laws directly discriminate against minority citizens who are unlikely meet the laws’ requirements.

Voter ID laws are supposedly created to combat voter fraud, but fraud is almost nonexistent in U.S. elections. When Indiana’s voter ID law was taken to the Supreme Court in Crawford vs. Marion County, Indiana couldn’t provide a single example of voter fraud within the state, according to the official court transcript.

A study by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism, examined all cases of voter fraud between 2000 and 2012 and found that voter impersonation cases only counted for about one in 15 million prospective votes. That percentage is so small that it has to be represented in scientific notation: 6.66e-10%.

It is irresponsible for any state to disenfranchise so many voters for so ridiculous a cause. I would gladly see ten false votes in an election than a single American citizen deprived of their right to cast a ballot.

“A man without a vote is a man without protection,” said President Lyndon B. Johnson, signer of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. All Americans deserve protection from their government, regardless of their ability to produce identification.