and Republican after the civil rights era was so widely accepted as status quo that no one dared question it.

That was, of course, until November 2008, when then-Sen. Barack Obama swept Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. He narrowed margins in states like South Carolina -- and garnered more of the military vote than had been anticipated, given John McCain's record as a war hero.

The GOP quickly regrouped, perhaps realizing that in order to beat Obama in 2012, they would have to move their "Southern strategy" further north.

First they set their sights on ACORN, a national community organization group responsible for registering 1.3 million new voters in 2008. African Americans, Hispanics, the urban poor and the elderly were ACORN's key constituencies. After being plagued by largely unfounded accusations ofmedia allow Republican claims of voter fraud to appear legitimate, and this amounts to journalistic malpractice. Froomkin writes, "Failing to call out the voter ID push is like covering the civil rights movement and treating 'separate but equal' as if it was said with sincerity."

The U.S. Justice Department is charged -- under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- with reviewing changes to voter laws in states with a history of discrimination. This process, known as preclearance, oversees much of the American South. Attorney General Eric Holder has used this authority to halt new laws in Texas and Florida, but Northern states like Pennsylvania and Ohio do not fall under the provision. Instead, a case must be made in court and empirical evidence presented.

Enter Viviette Applewhite, a 93-year-old