Georgia Republicans Fight For Legally Flawed Voter Identification Process
Following the June 1, 2009 decision by the Justice Department to reject a legally flawed system of voter identification being used in Georgia, Rep. Tom Price and Rep. Phil Gingrey expressed dismay at the "outrageous decision." The only thing outrageous about this is that two members of Congress are defending a voter identification law that severely, disproportionately, and unfairly impacted minority voters.
Reps. Price And Gingrey Can't Understand Why The DOJ Would Strike Down A Law That Disproportionately Impacted Legal Citizens Due To Their Race
Rep. Price claimed: "The straightforward and unintrusive system by which a very limited number of voters were asked to clarify their citizenship represents due diligence, not discrimination. This verification has worked to identify thousands of people who may have been improperly registered."
But in reality, the DOJ found that almost 200,000 people were tagged by the law, "Meaning when the databases were queried, any information that didn't match put the individual at risk for losing their voting privileges," according to the Macon Telegraph.
Troublingly, the DOJ found that one in seven of the individuals who were flagged as non-citizens could produce a birth certificate proving that they were born in the United States, indicating a serious problem in the new systems capability to correctly identify natural-born citizens: "Indeed, of the 7,007 individuals who were flagged on the R2 report as potential non-citizens, more than half were in fact citizens. Perhaps the most telling statistic concerns the effect of the verification process on native-born citizens. Of those persons erroneously identified as non-citizens, 14.9 percent, more than one in seven, established eligibility with a birth certificate, showing they were born in this country."
More importantly, the DOJ noted severe racial disparity in which legal citizens were incorrectly targeted by the identification system as being illegally registered to vote, saying, (emphasis mine), "applicants who are Hispanic, Asian or African American are more likely than white applicants, to statistically significant degrees, to be flagged for additional scrutiny. [...] Although African American and white voters represent approximately equal shares of the new voter registrants between May 2008 and May 2009, more than sixty percent more African Americans [sic] voters who registered during this period are currently flagged than are whites... Hispanic and Asian individuals are more than twice as likely to appear on the list as are white applicants."
According to Rep. Gingrey: "Georgians want to be assured that the person voting in the booth next to them is a legal citizen and resident of our great state - is that too much to ask? Protecting the integrity of our election process shouldn't be a partisan issue."
The priority is in making sure that every citizen is given a voice in free elections, not in fear-mongering to prevent people from voting. The right of every citizen to vote should be unassailable, and striking down a law that disproportionately punishes legal citizens for their race is a bipartisan priority.
