Voter ID

By Meg Cox

When I went through the quadrennial ritual of renewing my driver’s license in October, the most painful part of the process was admitting I’d put on a few pounds.

Good thing I’m a self-employed licensed driver in Illinois, I thought, because if I lived in Atlanta, didn’t drive, and had an hourly job with nonnegotiable hours, I’d be in a fix. If I wanted to vote in 2008, I’d need to dig up my birth certificate, order and wait for a copy of my marriage license, make plans to ditch work, and arrange transportation outside the county to get an ID.

John Tanner, head of the Voting Rights Section at the Justice Department, apparently wouldn’t have any problem with that. In fact, if I were elderly as well as white, he might use me as Exhibit A. “It’s true that she could have a hard time getting an ID,” he might say, “but black voters wouldn’t be as affected because they die first.”

The Exhibit A story is just hypothetical. But “they die first” is a direct quote.

Back in 2005, Georgia closed the Department of Motor Vehicles offices in many of its counties (including Atlanta’s Fulton County), then passed a law requiring state ID to vote. The law needed to pass muster with the Justice Department, and career staffers said it was racially discriminatory. Tanner overruled them. Why? Though it might affect elderly people disproportionately, he recently told the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles, it wouldn’t affect black people so much because “they die first.”

Tanner was called on the carpet for these remarks in hearings before a House Judiciary subcommittee in October. He apologized for his “tone” but stood by his position.

As the voter ID issue is heating up in the news (what with these congressional hearings and the Supreme Court’s agreement to hear a voter ID case), Tanner’s remarks aren’t the only bizarre aspect of the debate. If you’d like to bone up on the subject, I recommend the Washington Post article Justice Dept. Voting Chief Apologizes but Persists, by Dan Eggen; the New York Times article Supreme Court to Hear Case on Voter ID Law, by David Stout; and two related Century articles that I authored, Access Denied: The Problem with Voter ID Laws and Hypothetical Fraud: Behind the Firing of David Iglesias.

Meanwhile, I’d like to ask Tanner why he doesn’t seem bothered by a law that makes it harder for elderly people to vote—whatever their race.

Comments

[Beth Johnstton]

Sounds like racism to me. then again I am Canadian and we dont need id to vote - we can even be sworn in at the poll if we discover that our name is not on the list. Though we have lots of opportunies to get it on the list before election day. That's how it has been in the past anyway!

[Meg E. Cox]

Names not being on the list is another problem here, Beth. States have been conducting massive purges of registration lists lately. This is necessary to some degree--to remove the names of people who have died or moved, for example--but many legitimate voters have been improperly removed.

The purge process can be constructed in such a way as to disproportionately affect groups more likely to vote for a certain party. Caging, alleged in Ohio 2004, is one strategy; the Florida 2000 felon dragnet, which caught many nonfelons, was another.

If you find you're not on the list, you can complete a provisional ballot, which voting rights activists call a placebo ballot for good reason.

Meg E. Cox

[Meg E. Cox]

The latest on the Voter ID case before the Supreme Court:

"Justices Indicate They May Uphold Voter ID Rules," by Linda Greenhouse in the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/washington/10scotus.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

In a nutshell, 5 justices seem to be siding with the argument that the case against Indiana's Voter ID law was brought improperly. They say you have to present specific cases of people who were unable to vote because of the Voter ID law.

The other side argues that by that time the election will be over. You need to be able assess the legality of election laws before the election.

If the Supreme Court votes as this article suggests, I believe it would put enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in grave jeopardy because it would destroy the preclearance process that election laws have to go through in affected jurisdictions.

Scary.

Meg