This week in the War on Voting: The War on Women happens here, too

We've come a long way? Faye Anderson, voting rights evangelist, is sounding the alarm on a huge segment of the voting population that hasn't been focused on by voting rights advocates: women. She's very representative of the women in question:

A middle-aged New York transplant living in Philadelphia, who commutes up and down the East Coast, traveling without a driver's license. Like many New Yorkers, Anderson doesn't drive so she doesn't need one. She has a non-driver's photo identification from New York, and other than that she has a passport. It wasn't easy getting a New York ID, Anderson told me, and she's concerned chiefly with women like her who might also have troubles getting the ID they need to vote, especially if they've been recently married, divorced or if they've moved, all of which could lead to name and address mismatches on Election Day.

That's middle class, working women who don't need to drive, or who've had a name change or have moved for a job. In her case, where she now lives in Pennsylvania, the new voter ID law requires that all voters have photo identification. The name must be an exact match to what's on the voting rolls. The ID must have issued by state or federal government, a state university or a nursing home. No other photo ID, such as a passport, is acceptable.

Anderson correctly says, "It's unreasonable that women, with all that's going on in their lives, will then have time to sit down and Google 'where do I get my birth certificate,' 'where do I find my marriage certificate,' 'where to find the closest social security office,' the hours they're open, how to get there, and once there do they have all the documents they need."

This is how Republicans intend, in part, to blunt the massive gender gap. Voting rights advocates have, rightly, bemoaned the targeting of African Americans, Latinos, college-aged people, and the elderly'all disproportionately Democratic voters'but keeping women out of the polls would certainly give the Republicans the most bang for their voter suppression buck. Particularly in a year when women have been targeted economically by Republicans.

The women who have the most at stake could have the hardest time fulfilling voter ID requirements. And they have been directly targeted as undeserving of the right to vote by conservative activists like the deplorable John Derbyshire'who has actually written a chapter of a book titled "The Case Against Female Suffrage"'and Matthew Vadum, who regularly rights about voter fraud and welfare as intertwining issues, arguing that low-income Americans (disproportinately female) shouldn't be voting. It's a perception that has to be fought in more than just conservative thinking, unfortunately.

Anderson, an African-American woman, has seen this kind of contempt for low-income citizens not only from conservative white men like Derbyshire and Vadum, but also from otherwise privileged women.

"The subtext is that people without ID are irresponsible," said Anderson. "For some of these middle-class moms, they are thinking 'This voter ID issue is not about me, it's about those low-income minorities, those irresponsible women.'"

Anderson tells me she's even heard this from some black well-off women. But according to the Brennan Center, she reminds me, only 48% of voting-age women have ready access to a birth certificates that reflects their current legal name, and only 66% of voting-age women have proof of citizenship documents reflecting their current name.

Women could easily decide this election. That is, if they can and do vote. To make it easier for women and for all would-be voters to navigate the new voter ID requirements in dozens of states, Anderson is developing the Cost of Freedom Voter ID app. It will help voters in any state navigate the process of getting everything necessary in order to register and vote. The app will make it easier for civil rights organizations, churches and community groups to assist voters.

For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.