Women at a greater risk of voter suppression

>>> so by now, we should all be familiar with the list of voters who are the target of disenfranchisement from restricted voting laws, elderly, people of color , disabled, students. all of these groups are the least likely to have government issued voter i.d. and bear the heaviest burden of the laws. but there is another group of voters miss prosecuting that list. and they are the ones that are the most likely to be without the proof of citizenship showing their current name. women . laws requiring a voter 's legal name to match the maim on their photo i.d. could pause a problem at the polls for women who have changed their names or addresses in marriage or divorce and women face considerable barriers to even getting a valid i.d. 34% of voting age women with access to proof of citizenship have no documents with their current legal name . that means as many as 32 million voting-age women without these documents will not be able to vote in these states. back to my panel. all right. pennsylvania , all right, we are looking at from the governor and the secretary of the commonwealth some frequently asked questions about a substantially conforming voter i.d. there's a bunch of different ways your name can show up, it can be joe, j., earl. this if you are a woman, if n this example about margaret smith voter , a voter who recently changed her name by reason of marriage present as valid pennsylvania driver's license or pennsylvania i.d. card , accompanied by a penndot update card which is sufficient to satisfactory the requirements of the voter i.d. law. you need not one but would forms of i.d. if you are -- officially a tax on being a woman in pennsylvania if up want to vote.

>> it is issue of substantial conformity if our -- are you who you say you are, could be the hanging chad of 2012 . because there's going to be a lot of confusion. in pennsylvania , will's 9, 3shgs 00 different pog -- 9,300 different polling places. we are talking about at the very least a lot of chaos on election day . according to the aclu study of people that don't have voter i.d.s, 11% of registered vote of men don't have i.d.s but 17% of women don't have i.d.s and women are more likely than men not to have voter i.d.s in a place like pennsylvania , elderly women , african-american.

>> elderly, may not --

>> their name may have changed because they were married and divorced. there is a whole number of reasons why women could have problems conforming to this law. i have to say that the good aspect of it is that women have really been at the forefront in fighting the laws. i was they have been doing this work. jumped through all these new hurdles for no reason. but they are out there mobilizing their constituents and educating people about the law. there are a lot of difficulties inherent in the law it self this feels like the one exciting or good piece of news in this crazy town madness of this -- this voter i.d. is once you have women organized and they feel like that -- a cross race shall cross-class, women are being tax order this. when you see pink ribbons and as you were saying fired up battleground stuff. is this the moment when the coalition gets big enough?

>> this is absolutely that moment. one thing that's important is that for this year, it is the first time that we are networked online using new communication in ways we have never used before. 90% of people are now online. 90%. 36 million women are active either writing or reading blogs. this means that our communication networks about how to vote and about how to make a plan to vote, about how to make your friends and family assure they can vote are advanced beyond comparison to the last presidential election . and we are seeing people fired up and ready to go on that. i want to add will's also a phone number if you are watching in pennsylvania , you are worried about whether you can vote or not, there is a number 1-866-our-vote. it is pulled together bay coalition of 160 organizations from the lexapro text coalition led by the lawyers commit i don't civil rights under law.

>> you end up then with these sort of old-fashioned forms of voter registration like the league of women voters . these new forms that enter in lieu technology. i just -- there's something about sort of talking about the voter suppression and needing to point out to so many folks at home who say, well why don't you just go get an i.d. like -- why is this hard? why would this be a burden? i have one. and, you know, it -- every time i see one of these pieces like if you are elderly, you may not have the birth certificate if you are a woman and may have gotten married since your registration or divorced and your name may have changed or your address may have changed, if you are a transgender individual and you self-present as something different than what your i.d. is and people are using their discretion to decide whether or not you are joe versus jane voter , i mean, in each of these cases, it is not the likelihood of fraud. it is simply your identity, simply who you are, that is then taxed and you are unable to vote. can we, can we finally get bipartisan determination from the folks at the top who are implementing this? you know what, we are -- there's too much cost to our democracy for doing this.

>> there have been decades of work to make voting easier. i'm thinking of francis piven and richard. you know, then will is the idea that reverend jesse jackson had which is high school students should graduate with a diploma in one hand and voting card in the other. will are ways. this is both -- a great country. we have -- innovative, creative people. what we are witnessing, though, is that that innovation is moving in a different direction. but i don't know the full details of it. will are people at brennan, you, too, followed this more closely, there are people that know the ten steps to making our democracy more perfect union and the steps one needs to take universal registration. it should be opt-in. i'm sorry, opt-out at the dmv or any of these institution.

>> up next, stay on exactly this topic. also, the big voter suppression effort that comes from the pocketbook. bob... oh,