After gaining a majority in the Oklahoma Senate (which had previously been tied), Republican lawmakers were determined to pass a Voter ID bill this year.

College students are one group of people who are often particularly hard hit by these ID requirements. Legally, students are allowed to register to vote using college addresses but most who do still have drivers licenses and identification that display the addresses from their permanent residences back home.

These Voter ID laws leave them in limbo -- setting a barrier that is too high to make voting in their college communities convenient.

Democrats in Oklahoma were able to offer students some protection in the final version of the bill by introducing an amendment spearheaded by Rep. Joe Dorman that will allow them to use the identification issued by their colleges at the polls.

Rep. Dorman has a guest post up at FutureMajority where he offers his perspective about the debate and speaks to the importance of reaching out to youth generally.

The whole thing is well worth a read.

Incidentally, Rep. Dorman is practicing what he preaches. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

I'm in New Orleans for the National Conference of State Legislatures. If you're around and you'd like to chat, shoot me a line.

We'll be back with plenty of new content on Monday.

On Friday, about the same time that Megan was breaking down the National Popular Vote on this site, I was listening to a panel attempting to do the same at Netroots Nation. The guy sitting behind me was Matt Yglesias (who I read constantly and have linked to before).

He has more to say about the issue here and here.

Point being there are a ton of really good resources out there if you're interested in the NPV movement.

Bright and early tomorrow morning, I will be heading to Netroots Nation in Austin, Texas with the DLCC's Executive Director Michael Sargeant. We would love to connect with anyone who is interested in chatting (particularly those who want to talk about state legislatures). Just shoot me a line at compton [at] dlcc.org and let me know if you want meet up.

Matt Yglesias, a blogger for The Atlantic, wrote a post today that I’ve been thinking about a lot.

He attended a presentation on new media given by Rep. Steve Harrelson, the House Majority Leader in Arkansas, at the DLC National Conversation. Harrelson writes a blog called Under the Dome, which just for the record, it is pretty incredible. Matt agrees, calling it (and other blogs like it):

[A] kind of fascinating development that potentially has a lot of promise for state and local officials who don't necessarily have big staffs.

Harrelson is not alone in writing online -- in Virginia, Dels. Kris Amundson and Bob Brink write a really good blog called 7 West; in Idaho, Rep. Nicole LeFavour writes a fantastic blog, which is authentic and honest in a way that I really love; and there are many others.

But often, these leaders are the exception and not the rule.

In his post, Matt describes how the state and local officials in the room were scared about the consequences of being involved online:

All anyone wanted to talk about was fear about what might go wrong on the internet. Could one of my kids write something on their Facebook page that embarrasses me? What if I become the victim of unfair attacks from anonymous people writing online? What about journalistic standards? Wither truth? The whole litany of internet-related fears.

I’d love to say that this is the reason that we developed the DLCCWeb. But in truth, we built it to counter a second set of problems -- making the Internet simple and affordable enough that all of our legislative candidates can build and update their own websites.

Encouraging the mentality to engage in online democracy is a different proposition. But we’re trying. Blog publishing is built right into DLCCWeb, along with volunteer tools, online fundraising, and social network integration. This cycle, several hundred candidates (with a whole range of technology comfort levels) are using the Internet in a way that they haven't before because of this service.

And we're doing our best to take the lessons of the Internet to heart in house and to practice what we preach on this blog.

I’d love to hear some feedback from the people who are reading this. Are we succeeding? What can we do better? Submit a comment or send me an email -- compton[at]dlcc.org.

Insight. This is a busy election year, and across the Internet, a lot of the oxygen will be devoted to the presidential race. That’s to be expected, but we will carve out a different niche. We’ll provide you with information about state legislators, their races, and the laws that they are working to pass. We’ll also keep you updated about plans for redistricting -- highlighting the states where partisan control of the legislature will make a difference in the composition of the Congressional delegation. And we’ll do that by providing you with our own analysis as well as pointing you toward the best coverage everywhere else. We want our website to be the first place you visit on the web for information about these local races.

Voice. Each post on this blog will be written to offer some context. You’ll never see us publish a throwaway entry that consist of nothing more than a headline and a blockquote. We want to create an authentic series of voices for this organization -- with each of us offering a unique perspective on the work we do and the political situations we encounter. We will sign each of our posts, and we’ll all be available for feedback. We want to have a conversation, so we will read all of your comments and reply to them. We will also link to other blogs and work to build up a dialogue that extends beyond the walls of our site.

Content. Even if things get busy, we will always continue update this blog regularly. While we’ll still send emails, hold events, and organize conference calls, this blog will be the chief outlet for communicating with all of our constituents. News happens in our world every day, and this is where we will respond to it.