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Federal suit to overturn Ga. voter ID law reaches dead end
by Nigel Roberts
One week after the U.S. Department of Justice rejected Georgia’s citizenship verification system, advocates of tighter voter scrutiny won a major victory. On June 8, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would not hear an appeal to Georgia’s stringent voter ID law. Consequently, an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in January to uphold Georgia’s photo ID requirement stands.
Gov. Sonny Perdue applauded the high court’s announcement: “The Supreme Court’s decision is a victory for ensuring fair elections. It properly defers to Georgia’s policy makers, and it recognizes that the Voter ID Act we passed in 2006 does not impede the right to vote.”
DeKalb’s House delegation chair, Rep. Howard Mosby (D – Atlanta), has been one of the strongest opponents of the voter ID law. Mosby, disappointed by the court’s decision, said the ID requirement creates an obstacle to voting for elderly, minority and low-income voters who don’t have the requisite photo ID.
Before passage of the Voter ID Act, voters could present one of 17 forms of ID, including utility bills or bank statements. The law reduced that number to six types of government-issued photo IDs. Opponents like Mosby point out that advocates have never presented evidence of widespread voter fraud in Georgia, so there was no need to restrict the acceptable forms of identification.
Notwithstanding the high turnout in the 2008 general election, Mosby said the long-term effect of the photo ID requirement will be to discourage traditional Democratic voters from registering and going to the polls.
Proponents of the voter ID law point to record turnout among African-American and Hispanic voters as evidence that the photo ID requirement does not discourage turnout among minorities. According to figures from Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel’s office, 1.2 million African-Americans cast a ballot in the 2008 general election (compared to 834,000 in 2004), and 43,000 Hispanics voted in 2008 (18,000 in 2004). Those significant increases occurred with the voter ID law in effect.
Handel described the state’s photo ID requirement as a “common sense” law to protect the integrity of Georgia’s elections. “After four years of litigation by special interest groups, plaintiffs are still unable to find one Georgia voter who was unable to cast a ballot due to our photo ID law,” she said.
The high court’s decision does not mark the final victory in the three-year legal battle over implementation of the state’s voter ID law. But final victory is in sight, the governor noted.
Georgia’s Democratic Party continues to pursue a state suit against the law. However, Perdue said the Supreme Court’s decision rejected the main argument in the ongoing state suit. Perdue stated that he’s “optimistic that the state court will agree with the Supreme Court” and rule in favor of the photo ID requirement.
The Supreme Court’s decision was welcome news for those who support strict identification procedures. On May 29, the Justice Department notified Georgia that its method of identifying noncitizens in its pool of registered voters is both inaccurate and discriminatory.
A Justice Department analysis found that more than half of the 7,007 voters flagged as suspected noncitizens were in fact Americans–either U.S.-born or naturalized. Furthermore, that analysis found that a disproportionate number of suspected noncitizens and fraudulent voters in the state’s identification system were African-American, Hispanic or Asian.
Because of its history of racial discrimination at the polls, Georgia is one of a few mostly Southern states that must obtain federal approval to enact major changes to its voter requirements.
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