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"Per million voters—1 white DOES NOT have the photo ID. (See where this is headed?) Yet, per million voters—2 blacks DO NOT have the photo ID. Conclusion: BLACKS ARE TWICE AS LIKELY AS WHITES TO LACK A PHOTO ID."

This is baloney. The total number must be included to make any sense, legally. No court would accept this interpretation. In fact, when such a percentage as 99.9998% of voters have photo I.D., the term "likely" cannot be applied at all unless it's talking about those who have I.D.'s. One could say that weather conditions prohibit voter participation to a much higher percentage than this sample does yet no one is challenging it and demanding that elections only be allowed when 100 percent of the nation is perfect, weather-wise.

As I said in my earlier post, I simplified the numbers to make the example more readily understandable, and I won't argue with you that I probably oversimplified it.

Here is a recent ACLU offering regarding voters in Milwaukee that demonstrates the actual methodology, including some more realistic numbers. Scroll down to Page 18 and you will see that their survey indicated that 7.26% of Whites lack a photo i.d., while the number for Blacks is 13.18%, and 14.94% for Hispanics.

They then do some quick division--13.18/7.26, and 14.94/7.26 to conclude that Blacks are 182% more likely than Whites to lack a photo i.d. , and Hispanics are 206% more likely.

These percentage differentials are very large, but, if looked at in the opposite direction, we see some very different results. That is, insofar as those who already have the photo i.d., the numbers are 92.74% for Whites, 86.82% for Blacks, and 85.06% for Hispanics. While clearly there are some disparities, doing the division here shows that Blacks are 86.82/92.74 = 93.6% as likely to have a photo i.d. as Whites. That sounds an awful lot different than stating that Blacks are 182% more likely to LACK a photo id than Whites. Similarly, Hispanics are 85.06/92.74 = 91.7% as likely as Whites to possess the required i.d., which sounds a great deal more equal than the 206% figure of Hispanics lacking the id relative to Whites.

That is not to say that if one group is only about 90% as likely to have an i.d. than another that a judge would rule that the difference is relatively minor. But, when compared to one group being approximately twice as likely to be impacted due to the lack of said i.d., the significance is greatly magnified.