When this country was founded, only white men owning property could vote. Since then, the franchise has gradually expanded to include blacks and women, the poor and the young. Poll taxes and literacy tests have been abolished. A firm national principle has been established: Every vote should count, and count equally. Until now.

Over the last year, Republicans on the state level have been conducting a cynical campaign to restrict, not enlarge, the right to vote. And a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University documents their success. Legal changes in 14 states “may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election,” the center says. “These new laws could make it significantly harder for more than 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots” this year.

This is a national disgrace. Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. a generation ago, told the House last summer that voting rights are “under attack ... (by) a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of elderly voters, young voters, students (and) minority and low-income voters from exercising their constitutional right to engage in the democratic process.”