McLatchy is reporting that Ohio and Florida, two swing states, have passed statutes that “could facilitate a controversial Republican tactic known as vote caging, ” which will allow Republicans to “impede Democratic-leaning minorities from voting in 2008.”

Caging, used in the past to target poor minorities in heavily Democratic precincts, entails sending mass mailings to certain voters and then using the undelivered letters to compile lists of voters for eligibility challenges. As the high-stakes ground war escalates heading into next year’s elections, Republicans have led the charge for an array of revisions to state voting rights laws, especially in key battleground states. Republican political appointees in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division have endorsed some of these measures.

UPDATE: In 2004, the Republicans prevented “more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted.”

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