This past year, Americans witnessed with admiration and hope as people in countries across the Middle East and North Africa courageously risked their lives, calling for free and fair elections and the right to have a meaningful voice in their governments. Imagine the irony, then, if that fundamental right were being chiseled away here at home, as we watched in amazement and respect at the emerging freedoms abroad.

And yet, that is precisely what is happening. An all-out assault on voting rights, the likes of which we have not seen for 100 years, is being brought in state legislatures across the country, blow by blow, bill by bill.

Legislation suppressing voting rights has been introduced in at least 40 states, including the battleground state of Missouri. Two bills requiring a government-issued photo identification to be shown at the polls were pre-filed in December to be taken up in the legislative session that began this month. This comes after Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed a similar measure just last June.

The assaults are relentless. In 2006, Republicans pushed through a photo ID bill that was later struck down by the Missouri Supreme Court. The court ruled that the law amounted to a "heavy and substantial burden on Missourians' free exercise of the right of suffrage." A 2009 study by the secretary of state's office estimated that 230,000 Missourians are registered to vote but lack a government-issued photo ID.

A 2007 study by Washington University found that among black, young and low-income residents, historically among the most loyal Democratic voters, only 80 percent of registered voters had access to a government-issued photo ID compared to some 90 percent of the white, middle-class and middle-age voters. 

If laws were to be enacted to require a photo ID, it could mean hours of waiting in line or dealing with bureaucracy to obtain new identification cards — and in the process asks those working multiple jobs while raising families to spend time they probably don't have to spare. It also means fees for identification cards, which constitute a new and restrictive poll tax for those unable to afford them. This is, by definition, would resurrect Jim Crow laws.

We can't turn back the hands of time to an age where voting was extended to a privileged class, and yet this is the exact goal of a conservative, Republican political agenda that seeks to dramatically alter and severely restrict the rights of some voters, purely for partisan gain.

All of these proposed measures have been concocted in the name of preventing voter fraud and abuse. However, exhaustive research, conducted by diverse groups, from bipartisan think tanks to the Bush administration, determined that voter fraud is very rare. Recently, Adam Skaggs of the New York University Brennan Center for Justice testified before a Texas legislative hearing that "those who are screaming about fraud are crying wolf," adding that the occurrence of death by lightning is more common than the number of possible occurrences of voter fraud.

As a nation, the oldest democracy in the world, we can't be complacent about the clear and present danger of reversing the progress in voters' rights that generations of Americans have fought and some have even died for. The landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 was invoked by the Justice Department just days ago in rejecting a South Carolina law that would require voters to show a government-issued photo ID before casting a ballot. They stated the new rule could deny the right to vote for tens of thousands of black people and other minorities.

This is why I will continue to work with my fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives, shoulder to shoulder with the Obama administration, the Justice Department and voting rights groups across the country to make certain that all who have the right to vote can do so and have their votes counted. It's the commitment borne in historic civil rights legislation, continued when we passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002 and remains our firm commitment today.

The right to vote is the basic instrument of our equality. Voting is the method by which we hold our leaders accountable and preserve trust in our representative government. It is a right worth fighting for. In defending that right, we find ourselves in unexpected solidarity with those who are struggling to achieve it for the first time and so doing, we join the ranks of a global force that cannot be deterred.

U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, a Democrat, represents St. Louis.