Voting Rights: While the Department of Justice sues Texas over its Voter ID law, analysis of Georgia's 2008 statute shows turnout increased among all groups, including blacks and Hispanics. Jim Crow, call your office.
In August, DOJ's civil rights division — the same bunch that dropped the case of a group of New Black Panthers wearing military garb and carrying billy clubs as they stood outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008 — filed suit against the state of Texas. In it, the government said it would not allow the Supreme Court's decision to be interpreted as open season for states to pursue measures that suppress voting rights.
In its suit, DOJ also contends that Texas adopted a voter identification law with the purpose of denying or restricting the right to vote on account of race, color or membership in a language minority group. Under Texas law, Holder said, "Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them — and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them."
Holder called such fees "poll taxes," a mechanism once used by southern states to keep poor minorities from voting.
Holder's problem is that the Supreme Court has already ruled that requiring photo IDs to vote — as required, for example, at the 2012 Democratic National Convention — does not constitute an undue burden on minorities since the requirement and any fees are applied to all voters equally.
"There is no question about the legitimacy or importance of a state's interest in counting only eligible voters' votes," wrote liberal Justice John Paul Stevens for the 6-3 majority in the high court's 2008 decision upholding Indiana's ID law, the toughest in the nation.
"We cannot conclude that the statute imposes 'excessively burdensome requirements' on any class of voters," the justices said. Their decision cited the finding of a district judge that plaintiffs had "not introduced evidence of a single, individual Indiana resident who will be unable to vote as a result of the law."
A study by the University of Delaware and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found that "concerns about voter identification laws affecting turnout are much ado about nothing." Nothing, that is, unless you are an administration willing to play the race card to gain minority votes in the next election.
Just as in Indiana no one could find a single voter disenfranchised by Voter ID, the vote results in Georgia also expose the myth of voter disenfranchisement, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of statewide voting patterns after the law took effect in 2008.
"Elections data reviewed by the AJC show that participation among black voters rose by 44% from 2006 — before the law was implemented — to 2010. For Hispanics, the increase for the same period was 67%. Turnout among whites rose 12%," the newspaper reported.
"If you look at the numbers, they clearly show that critics of this law were wrong," said Hans von Spakovsky, former legal counsel to the Justice Department's civil rights division who now works for the conservative Heritage Foundation. "Their argument has always been it would depress turnout. But it didn't happen — quite the opposite."
As Holder messes with Texas, he must not have Georgia on his mind.
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