FORTY years ago, the Voting Rights Act was passed to secure the voting rights of all Americans by preventing disenfranchisement by local, state and federal governments. However, three weeks ago, the U.S. Justice Department upheld a Georgia law which constitutes the most unabashed civil rights violation since the poll taxes and literacy tests of the Jim Crow era.
The Georgia law, passed along an almost strict party-line vote in the state legislature, requires all citizens to present a valid state-issued photo identification at the polls.
According to Georgia's governor, Sonny Perdue, acquiring an ID "will not be a hardship on any voter." His statement couldn't be further from the truth. The law blatantly discriminates against low-income residents, the elderly, members of racial minorities and the disabled.
Currently, Georgia voters are required to present a form of ID that proves name and address, allowing utility bills, bank statements, Social Security cards and birth certificates as valid ID. If voters fail to present proof of name and address, they can still cast a ballot after signing an affidavit of identity.
While other states, such as Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and South Dakota require some form of photo ID, citizens can sign an affidavit of identity and voters may still cast provisional ballots. The photo ID does not have to be state-issued and employment or student ID usually suffices. According to the ACLU, the Georgia law is by far the most stringent and restrictive voting law in the nation.
Of Georgia's 159 counties, there are only 65 offices where one can obtain state-issued photo ID. The Washingon Post reports that there is not a single office within the Atlanta city limits or within any of the six counties with the highest percentages of African- Americans.
For the 8.3 percent of Georgia households without any access to a vehicle, a group that is disproportionately black, poor and elderly, driving to one of the 65 offices is likely impossible. According to the NAACP Web site, African-Americans in Georgia are five times less likely than whites to have access to a vehicle.
The AARP reports over 150,000 Georgians age 65 and over voted in the 2004 election without a driver's license and one out of three Georgians over 75 does not have a driver's license at all.
For Georgia residents living paycheck to paycheck, the required $20 fee for ID is likely to be prohibitively expensive, not to mention in violation of the Voting Rights Act that abolished poll taxes forty years ago. The new law does provide an option for residents who identify as indigent to sign a sworn statement and receive a free ID, supporters have failed to come up with an even remotely realistic plan of how to distribute free photo IDs to the 1.1 million Georgia residents living below the poverty line.
While supporters argue that the purpose of the law is to prevent voter fraud, Cathy Cox, Georgia's secretary of state and chief election official, stated that she is unaware of a single documented case of fraud through voter impersonation in her tenure. Cox told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the only documented cases involved absentee ballots, which are entirely unaffected by the new laws.
Supporters also argue that the new law will not create any burden to voters. However, in 1994, the Justice Department rejected a less restrictive Louisiana voting law when it found the law in violation of the Voting Rights Act. An investigation by the department found African-Americans in Louisiana four to five times less likely than whites to have valid state-issued photo ID.
With federal approval for Georgia's disenfranchising of minorities, the disabled and the elderly, other states are already following suit. Indiana, which does not need to seek the Justice Department's approval to change voting laws, has a law similar to Georgia's that went into effect earlier this year. States such as Arizona, New Hampshire and Oklahoma have similar legislation rapidly gaining momentum.
Forty years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the right to vote is once again under attack for millions of Americans.
Sophia Brumby's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at sbrumby@cavalierdaily.com.
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