GA judge throws out ID voting law
The fate of Georgia's law requiring that citizens have a photo ID to vote -- pushed hard by Gov. Sonny Perdue and the state legislature to go into effect before the fall elections -- suffered its latest setback yesterday, reports the New York Times:
A state judge ruled Tuesday that a Georgia law requiring voters to present government-issued photo identification violates the State Constitution and could not be enforced.The times quotes a voting expert who echoes what many feel the bill is about:
In issuing a permanent injunction against the latest version of the Voter ID Act, the judge, T. Jackson Bedford Jr. of Fulton County Superior Court, said legislators overstepped their authority when they imposed a condition on the right to vote by requiring a photo ID.
“Nowhere in the Constitution is the legislature authorized to deny a registered voter the right to vote on any other ground, including a possession of a photo ID,” he wrote.
Judge Bedford wrote he was particularly troubled by a provision in the law that allows a registered voter without an approved photo ID to cast a ballot on Election Day but says that vote would not be counted unless the voter returned with an ID within two days.
“The result of this provisional-ballot scheme,” he wrote, “is to disenfranchise an otherwise qualified voter who does not comply with the additional conditions imposed by the legislature.”
“This is really a vote-suppression measure,” said Daniel Tokaji, an assistant professor at Ohio State University and an expert on election law.
“There’s very little evidence for the proposition that people are going to the polling place and pretending to be someone else.” Mr. Tokaji said
1 Comments:
The primary problem I have with this voter ID legislation is the fact that it purports to be intended to prevent voter fraud, yet it completely ignores the voter paper trail issue. Unfortunately, that leads me to conclude that those supporting this voter ID bill are simply pushing legislation that they feel would be beneficial to Republican candidates on two fronts. One, it may suppress Democratic voter turnout and it is also being spun as a means to "strengthen border security and crack down on illegal immigration"...a position the GOP feels will benefit them in November.
Here's my problem. There is little doubt that the GOP has not been motivated to provide effective border security or the means to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants. The failure to enact and enforce measures and methods to combat illegal immigration has been a concession to the business community, which has been the beneficiary of hard working, low wage employees. The system in place for employers to verify employee eligibility to work in the U.S. is a virtual joke and it is so by choice...which makes the current voter ID legislation all the more disingenuous and wholly political.
Sadly, it appears that the GOP doesn't see any advantage to including these paper trail provisions. It is situations of this nature that lead to voter cynicism in their elected officials as well as the entire political process. Ironically, while we are in the process of exporting democracy to other regions of the world, we have U.S. politicians that prefer to manipulate our democracy for partisan advantage. This and other inconsistencies in the application of democracy simply undermine the potential for other nations to believe that the United States is actually an agent for democratic principles.
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