Justice, Georgia, and Mr. Gonzales

[Frank]

Georgia is getting carried away. Colorado accepts the following as I.D. for voting purposes:

A valid Colorado driver’s license
[ul]
[li]A valid Colorado Department of Revenue identification card[/li][li]A valid U.S. passport[/li][li]A valid pilot’s license issued by the Federal Aviation Administration[/li][li]A valid employee identification with a photograph issued by the U.S. government, Colorado state government, or any county, municipality, board, authority, or other political subdivision of the state[/li][li]A valid U.S. Military identification card with photograph[/li][li]A copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the elector’s name and address (a cable bill; a telephone bill; documentation from a public institution of higher education in Colorado containing at least the name, date of birth, and residence address of the student elector; or a paycheck from a government institution or private company are sufficient forms of ID)[/li][li]A valid Medicare or Medicaid card[/li][li]A certification copy of a U.S. birth certificate[/li][li]Certified document of naturalization[/li][/ul]
If you have none of the above, you may still vote by provisional ballot.

No DMV office in the state capital? The largest city in the state? What the hell?

[Cervaise]

For what it’s worth, the county GOP here in Seattle is also engaged in shenanigans centering on so-called voter fraud. In short, a “Republican activist” submitted just under 2000 challenges to various voter registrations, claiming “under penalty of perjury” that she had “personal knowledge” that the registrations were fraudulent in some way or other. The research was done by the Republican organization; she submitted their work as an individual. They have now been forced to withdraw several hundred of their challenges because the research has been revealed as, let’s say, lacking. And the voters whose completely legitimate registrations were falsely challenged are, understandably, hopping mad.

Any minute now, the activist will march herself into a police station, admit that her sworn statements were crap, and surrender to face perjury charges. Because perjury is such a big deal for these people.

Any minute now.

Yep. Any minute.

Not that this is immediately relevant to the original topic, but it’s interesting that the GOP’s tactics should be so similar in so widely divergent locales.

[John_Mace]

@elucidator

And it is your impression that this is the core issue, here? That this was a sincere and unblemished effort to curtail the dreadful threat of voter fraud in Georgia? And certainly not, by any stretch of your imagination, could you see any hint of an attempt to trim the voting rolls of undesirable persons, ie, poor, black, and, very likely, of an unfortunate political persuasion?

Only if you define people unable or unwilling to show ID when they vote to be “undesireably”. If that’s how we define it, then yes, I do see this as a way of triming voter rolls of undesireable persons.

[Doctor_Who]

@John Mace

Only if you define people unable or unwilling to show ID when they vote to be “undesireably”. If that’s how we define it, then yes, I do see this as a way of triming voter rolls of undesireable persons.

I really hope you didn’t mean this, and that you are just sounding off at elucidator. I don’t really care about the unwilling part, but it’s the “unable” part that stands out to me.

If you are UNABLE to get photo identification then you are an undesireable voter?

So … if you are unable to get an ID card because you’re poor and you don’t have the money to get transportation two counties over … then you’re an undesirable voter? You’re more undesirable than the poor people located two counties over who have decent access to an office that can provide you with an identification?

Or if you’re poor and you have no way to take time off from work to schlep two counties over to get an ID card? Undesireable?

Not to mention that this law (as new evidence shows) was designed to stop African-American voters from voting under the theory that they don’t vote unless they are paid.

There’s a lot wrong with this law as written, John Mace, I hope you can see that.

[RickJay]

1. Is there evidence that Georgia is actually experiencing substantial voter fraud?

2. Why a new ID card? What’s wrong with a bill, or a birth certificate, or some such thing? Lots of forms of ID show your name, and many show both name and address.

I, too, am suspicious of the motives behind this, unless someone can show me where all this voter fraud is. I thought the current problem was that so many people don’t vote at all.

[Frank]

@John Mace

Only if you define people unable or unwilling to show ID when they vote to be “undesireably”. If that’s how we define it, then yes, I do see this as a way of triming voter rolls of undesireable persons.

Do you consider those who are unwilling or unable to pay to procure a government ID, or those unwilling or unable to travel some distance to procure the same undesireable voters?

[Frostillicus]

@RickJay

1. Is there evidence that Georgia is actually experiencing substantial voter fraud?

Of course not. This is just a smokescreen used to justify kicking “undesirable” voters of the rolls. It is the same trick used by the “assault on Christmas” folks or the flag-burning opponents. Take a non-existent problem and create a solution to it.

[furt]

So … IF you had an office in every precinct where one could get the required ID card. Then I could support this law.

BUT there is not an office in every precinct. And there probably will not ever be as that would require opening approximately 100 more offices. Which is highly unlikely.

Then say two or three per congressional district. Or one per every hundred thousand people. My point was not in regards this particular case, but that it isn’t inherently unfair to require ID.

@PeterWiggen

I really hope you didn’t mean this, and that you are just sounding off at elucidator. I don’t really care about the unwilling part, but it’s the “unable” part that stands out to me.

I’m pretty sure he means “unable because they don’t want their identity revealed,” not a perfectly legal voter who sincerely makes every possible effort but cannot get a card.

[Evil_Captor]

Georgia gets a Republican governor and a Republican legislator and suddenly there’s this new barrier to voting. Coincidence? Or conspiracy? I vote business as usual for the Republican Party. It used to be business as usual for the Democratic Party back in the first half of the previoius century. It was shameful then, it’s shameful now.

[Doctor_Who]

@furt

I’m pretty sure he means “unable because they don’t want their identity revealed,” not a perfectly legal voter who sincerely makes every possible effort but cannot get a card.

Ah. If that’s the case then: :smack:

[John_Mace]

@This Year's Model

Do you consider those who are unwilling or unable to pay to procure a government ID, or those unwilling or unable to travel some distance to procure the same undesireable voters?

I already said I thought there should be no fee.

But, anyone who wants to vote and who doesn’t have ID on voting day, or who can’t meet any voting req’t, can cast a provisional ballot. That’s the law.

[Frank]

@John Mace

But, anyone who wants to vote and who doesn’t have ID on voting day, or who can’t meet any voting req’t, can cast a provisional ballot. That’s the law.

But why limit the ID to such a short list? Quite frankly, if someone has bothered to go to the trouble of registering to vote, and has enough brains to remember to bring their cable bill in to the polls on election day, that’s good enough for me.

[Bricker]

@elucidator

And it is your impression that this is the core issue, here? That this was a sincere and unblemished effort to curtail the dreadful threat of voter fraud in Georgia? And certainly not, by any stretch of your imagination, could you see any hint of an attempt to trim the voting rolls of undesirable persons, ie, poor, black, and, very likely, of an unfortunate political persuasion?

Hell, Bricker, Pollyanna ain’t that damned naive. I’m not, and I’m pretty sure you’re not either.

What’s the distance between “not naive” and “paranoid?”

Sorry. I take statements at face value until there is evidence to disprove them. On the face of it, the requirement for voters to provide ID is a valid one. That ends my analysis. Even if your dark hints of conspiracy have some merit, the fact is that voter ID is a good thing.

[Polycarp]

@furt

I’m pretty sure he means “unable because they don’t want their identity revealed,” not a perfectly legal voter who sincerely makes every possible effort but cannot get a card.

Why is it necessary to make someone make a “every possible” effort to prove that they are indeed entitled to exercise their constitutional rights?

Understand that nobody is complaining about whether or not it’s a good idea to have an identification card. Just like it’s a good idea to wear seat belts, or bicycle helmets.

It’s the idea that an entrenched governmental machine can mandate that citizens, in order to exercise their franchise, must make an effort out of the ordinary in order simply to prove that they are who they are and entitled to cast their votes.

The excuse given for the state mandate, as noted in the OP, is disingenuous in the extreme. There have been no stories about voter fraud or people being paid to vote coming out of Georgia, and with some of the dirty-politics stories that have come out, I guarantee that such stories would be hot issues played up by an aggrieved politician.

It sounds very much like dirty politics being used to disenfranchise by erecting artificially high hurdles, a trick done in the past.

[Spavined_Gelding]

The point, of course, is not that the Georgia statute can be tweaked and fixed to work in a more equitable way. The point is that the United States Department of Justice in all its power and majesty, in the face of its own internal examination, in the face of the less than rational statements by the Georgia statute’s sponsors, in the face of flaws that even we can see, pronounced the Georgia voter ID scheme to be just dandy and throughly benign.

Might we reasonably question the depth of the D of J’s commitment to the protection of voting rights? Especially when the unobstructed exercise of those rights might strengthen the present Administrations political opponents?

[swampbear]

The list of valid IDs in Colorado that This Year’s Model posted has been pretty much the list of valid ID’s for voting purposes in Georgia in the past. Even the part where someone could vote with a provisional ballot. Sonny Boy and his cronies in the [del]Georgia State Zoo[/del] General Assembly are afraid, so they’re trying all they can to disenfranchise those who are ready to kick em out of office. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. The list of valid IDs that’s always been used seems perfectly acceptable to me.

I have a feeling the folks at the [del]Zoo[/del] General Assembly will be trying to do some back tracking on this when they meet in January. Should be interesting to see.

[elucidator]

Yes, Bricker, I know that’s what you want the argument to be about. Sillly, silly 'luc, railing against voters providing ID at the polling place. But it isn’t, it wasn’t, and it won’t be.

The Legal Fiction blog has this succinctly phrased, and I willl borrow:
http://lawandpolitics.blogspot.com/

…For those who don’t know, most southern states remain governed by a particularly restrictive provision of the Voting Rights Act (Section 5) because of their history…Under Section 5, Georgia therefore has to get changes to its voting laws “pre-cleared” by the DOJ. The state has the burden of showing that any new measure will not have a negative effect on minority voting. The new measure doesn’t have to be intentionally discriminatory – it’s an “effects” test. A negative impact on minorities is enough to make it illegal…

Recently, the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature passed a new photo-ID requirement for voters and, pursuant to Section 5, it had to be pre-cleared by DOJ. The Post explains the new measure pretty well:

“…The program requires voters to obtain one of six forms of photo identification before going to the polls, as opposed to 17 types of identification currently allowed. Those without a driver’s license or other photo identification are required to obtain a special digital identification card, which would cost $20 for five years and could be obtained from motor vehicle offices in only 59 of the state’s 159 counties…”
I suspect that Republican legislators were more interested in disenfranchising poor people than black people per se. But in the South, poverty and race are so intertwined that policies that hurt the poor necessarily have a disproportionate effect on blacks as well. (Though I will say it’s naive to think that all Georgia Republicans simply had a deep commitment to ending voter fraud on their minds. Some of them supported this law for bad reasons and everyone – deep down – knows it.)

Anyway, the bottom line is that the career attorneys at Civil Rights (who are fleeing the division) recommended rejecting the new law because Georgia failed to show it would not negatively impact minority voting.

The staff memo noted that the records [submitted by the State] were riddled with errors, including the unexpired licenses of dead people, and were "of a quality far below what we are accustomed to using in the Voting Section." And other sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, showed that Georgia blacks were much less likely than whites to own vehicles and also less likely to have photo IDs, the memo said.

The higher-ups at DOJ (the political appointees) overruled them and the law has now been pre-cleared…

I am suggesting (I amongst others) that the Georgia Republicans crafted a law that they knew, or should have known, was discriminatory. A law that would have the effect of decreasing the voter strength of thier political opposition.

This isn’t nice.

As noted above, the lower level lawyers at DOJ rejected it out of hand, since it was blatantly obnoxious to our standards. I have little doubt that, given your own standards of public empowerment and civic discourse, you would agree with their actions.

Mr. Gonzales et. al. reversed these findings. Perhaps he finds the Bill of Rights “quaint”? No doubt there is a perfectly innocent explanation, and no doubt you have it at your fingertips.

Bring it.

[DMC]

Georgia does have major voting problems, but not with fraud. In the recent major elections, I, who live in part of town with a fairly low concentration of blacks (Vinings), was able to waltz into my voting place, wait 5 minutes, give my name, vote, then leave. This was during a fairly busy time of day at the polls. In the parts of town where there is a higher concentration of blacks, the standard wait time was measured in hours, sometimes many. If you throw in an additional method of slowing down black voters (Hey, are you sure this is you? Can you show some other form of identification? Well, go get that and come back and get in line again.), it will be used. Just in case, someone wants to throw out some excuse about the intelligence of the voters having an affect on the time it takes, I live in that county that is famous for putting little notes in textbooks telling people that evolution is “just” a theory. This county doesn’t have much of a monopoly on brainpower.

As PeterWiggens noted, DMVs are few and far between in Atlanta, but what he didn’t tell you is that even without having the burden of processing “free” ID cards, many of our DMVs have insane waiting times themselves. I have shown up 30 minutes before they opened and left 7 hours later. Getting to them is not any easier. I’m guessing that getting from downtown to the Marietta office, for example, would probably take an hour on a good day, if you relied on MARTA.

If Republicans are serious about cleaning up voting issues, there are a lot more important ones than worrying about a black person voting twice. They’re a lot more likely to not vote at all, even if they show up to do so.

Every person who wants to vote should be able to do so, nearby, free, quickly, confidentially, hassle-free, and once. I’m fine with Republicans resolving the latter, as long as they also fix the rest of the problems at the same time. They don’t seem to give a shit about fixing those, so you have to ask yourself why (Well, I don’t, because I know why).

[elucidator]

I see that B’rer Spav has stated the case with the economy and brevity so characteristic of the Flatlander tribe. I am torn by ambivalence: the happiness that the case is so well stated, and the grumpy envy that it is not me.

Well done, sir. In your honor, I shall immediatly amend my shopping list to include popcorn.

[Bricker]

@Spavined Gelding

The point, of course, is not that the Georgia statute can be tweaked and fixed to work in a more equitable way. The point is that the United States Department of Justice in all its power and majesty, in the face of its own internal examination, in the face of the less than rational statements by the Georgia statute’s sponsors, in the face of flaws that even we can see, pronounced the Georgia voter ID scheme to be just dandy and throughly benign.

Might we reasonably question the depth of the D of J’s commitment to the protection of voting rights? Especially when the unobstructed exercise of those rights might strengthen the present Administrations political opponents?

Ah, now we have another question, which is not quite as you phrase it. You suggest that the correct level of review is “just dandy and throughly benign,” or some measure below “just dandy and throughly benign.” I disagree. I think the pertinent question is: does Georgia’s voter ID scheme, as is, violate federal law?