PHOENIX — Little noticed by voters, a nationwide melee has broken out pitting liberal and conservative groups in a duel over new laws that could determine who wins close elections in November and beyond.
The dispute, which is being fought in disparate and often half-empty courtrooms in as many as nine states, concerns new state laws and rules backed primarily by Republicans that require people to show photo identification in order to vote and, in some cases, proof of citizenship and identification when registering to vote.
One measure prompted the League of Women Voters to halt its voter registration drives in Florida out of fear of facing criminal penalties. That law, and a similar provision in Ohio that threatened voter registration drives by other groups, was blocked in recent weeks by federal courts.
The legal battle reflects a deep partisan divide, with Republicans arguing that the new requirements are needed to prevent voting fraud and boost confidence in election results, and Democrats charging that they disenfranchise seniors, minorities, students and others who tend to vote Democratic.
Hundreds of thousands of votes are potentially at stake in some of the most contested congressional races this year and the 2008 race for the White House, making the court cases the latest battle in a broader war over election policies that has been raging since the 2000 Florida recount.
One example of the skirmishing came late last month in a federal courtroom in Phoenix, where a Navajo leader, occasionally speaking in his tribal language, testified that thousands of his people would lose their right to cast ballots under a new Arizona law that requires voters to present a photo ID or other proof of identity at the polls.
The leader, Leonard Gorman, testified that many Navajo who spend their lives herding sheep in remote areas cannot fulfill the new requirements because they do not drive, nor do they have mailboxes or even the utility bills that are accepted as alternative forms of identification under the new law.
"This is very burdensome to the elders," Gorman told U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver.
The provision had been approved by Republican lawmakers and vetoed by Arizona's Democratic governor before conservative activists included it as part of a broad anti-immigration initiative passed by voters in 2004.
Gorman was describing a highly localized, narrow slice of the electorate -- about 60,000 voting-age adults living on the reservation. But Native Americans tend to vote for Democrats.
