Voter ID: Another Bad Idea From the GOP
by TChris
The Republican-controlled Georgia legislature made its intent clear when it enacted a law that required voters to have a driver's license or to buy a state-issued photo ID. Requiring payment for an ID amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax, so a federal judge struck the law down. Poll taxes don't prevent fraud; they suppress voting. That's the transparent purpose of Georgia's Voter ID law.
Undaunted, the legislature reenacted the law, this time offering the ID for free. In response, both a state judge and a federal judge have issued restraining orders against the law's implementation, concluding that the revised law is still likely to be found unconstitutional.
Judge Murphy decided the law still ran afoul of the federal Constitution. He said it violated the First and 14th Amendments because the severe burden on the right to vote discriminates against disadvantaged groups, those least likely to have a photo ID.
Burdening voting is exactly what the Georgia legislature intends.
Emil Steiner echoes the improbable Republican claim that Georgia elections will become "an exercise in ballot stuffing," making it "easier to commit election fraud in the Peach State than to purchase alcohol." Putting aside that the right to vote (unlike the desire to buy beer) is constitutionally protected, Republican worries that voters will cast multiple ballots in the absence of a photo ID requirement are overblown. The evidence that multiple voting is a widespread problem just doesn't exist.
Republicans screamed about "rampant" voter fraud in Wisconsin after the 2004 election. Their proof quickly evaporated, and a subsequent investigation found no evidence of a conspiracy to influence the election by illegal voting. Some isolated cases of ineligible voting were found, generally by felons who were on probation. Federal prosecutors charged four people with multiple voting; at least three were convicted. (Some of the charges against felons who allegedly voted illegally were so dubious that they led to acquittals.)
Republicans can nonetheless be counted on to ignore evidence that the system can be made to wors well without imposing new burdens on voters. That's because the prevention of voting fraud is unrelated to their desire for voter ID. Republicans want these laws because they have the collateral consequence of reducing voting by poor and minority voters.
Wisconsin's 2004 election was flawed, but those flaws could be remedied by providing more voting machines where they're needed and by improving the training of poll workers. The real risk of fraud, of course, comes from voting machines that can be hacked or manipulated to produce results that are friendly to the tampering party, and from election workers who assure that voters from their party will have ready access to voting machines while opposition voters stand in long lines. We rarely hear Republicans squawking about these issues. Do you wonder why?
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