August 12, 2005

New ID law will cause, not solve, voting problems

By Rep. Quincy Murphy

It is interesting to see that some supporters of our state’s new voter identification law (House Bill 244) are now acknowledging it is not a perfect piece of legislation. They have seen the light, to some extent, and now realize the photo ID requirements will place a hardship on many Georgia voters – especially rural seniors – regardless of race or party affiliation.

This was evident last week when the Perdue administration announced plans for the Georgia Licensing on Wheels program, in which a bus outfitted with equipment for producing photo IDs will travel the state under the pretense that this will make it easier for registered, eligible and active voters to obtain the newly required picture card.

Out of 159 counties in our state, there are only 58 locations for obtaining an official photo ID card. Many rural voters will be forced to travel long distances (having someone else drive them, since they don’t have driver’s licenses), thus discouraging from participating in the electoral process. State officials are admitting is a serious problem by introducing the mobile unit initiative.

However, it is doubtful whether this program will be an effective remedy. The Governor’s Office has already admitted the used vehicle will need to be kept near Atlanta in the early stages of the program in case “additional repairs” are needed.

As the Athens Banner-Herald noted in an Aug. 10 editorial, “Unless the bus is going door-to-door, actively seeking out elderly and poor people who want to vote and need a photo ID, some of those people will surely be missed. If they are missed, they will, then, be disenfranchised – just as opponents of the law have argued.”

Exercising one’s right to vote should not be a burden. This is a flaw that won’t be corrected by sending one broken-down bus around the state. Worse, a provision in the new law will actually foster the so-called “voter fraud” that the bill’s supporters claim it will prevent.

State and local elections officials will tell you that the type of fraud the sponsors of HB 244 were supposedly targeting is non-existent. According to the experts, there have been no cases or even allegations of individuals using Social Security cards, birth certificates, student ID’s or other types of non-photo identification to vote illegally.

The absentee balloting process hosts the most fertile ground for voter fraud. And HB 244 actually expands the absentee voting period from 14 to 45 days – with no picture ID required. This provision in the new law has the potential to do more to promote voter fraud and promulgate the stuffing of ballot boxes than the legislation will address the imaginary problem of voter ID theft.

If the legislators and governor who gave us HB 244 were truly concerned about fraud, a more reasonable and effective solution would have been to “grandfather” current voters, with the discretion to certify proper ID in the hands of sworn elections officials, and include a photo on all future voter registration cards … rather than depriving seniors and working-class Georgians who are already registered and eligible to vote.

Of course, most thinking observers realize this bill wasn’t about fraud at all. It was about keeping traditional Democratic voters away from the polls. In many close elections around the state, the outcome could hinge on those voters being unable to participate.

We’ve been down this road before … before 1965, to be exact. It’s unbelievable that 40 years later, history is repeating itself. This was another arrogant power play by the new legislative majority, and hopefully it among the actions that will come back to bite them in the next election – once rural and elderly voters and their families realize what has been done to them.

In the meantime, it is my hope that House Bill 244 will not pass Voting Rights Act muster in our courts. It is a throwback to the Jim Crow days of poll taxes and poll tests designed to keep black voters out of the process. Those atrocities did not stand, and hopefully neither will this phony attempt to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.