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Gattigap
From today's WaPo:

• Any day now the Justice Department will render judgment on one of the single most discriminatory pieces of voting legislation of recent years: a Georgia state law requiring voters to present one of only six forms of photo identification before they can exercise their right to vote. Before enforcing this statute, Georgia must get Justice Department approval by proving that the law will not put minority voters in a worse position than they were in before the requirement was instituted.
  
  The facts surrounding Georgia's voter identification requirement cannot be disputed. Virtually every black legislator opposes the legislation, and most black lawmakers staged a walkout to protest its passage. Every major civil rights and minority advocacy group, including the NAACP, and many legal scholars, oppose the restriction; several have submitted comments to the Justice Department for consideration.
  
  Additionally, it is surprisingly difficult to obtain a photo ID in Georgia. Though the state has 159 counties, there are only 56 places in which residents can obtain a driver's license, and not one is within the city limits of Atlanta or within the six counties that have the highest percentage of blacks.
  
  There is also considerable evidence that photo ID requirements have a disproportionately negative impact on blacks and other minorities. The Justice Department found as recently as a decade ago that blacks in Louisiana were four to five times less likely than whites to have photo IDs.
  
  Studies in other states indicate similar disparities. Consequently, the Michigan attorney general deemed a less restrictive voter identification bill unconstitutional, and the Federal Election Commission reported that photo identification requirements impose an undue and potentially discriminatory burden on citizens exercising their right to vote. Indeed, the Justice Department rejected a less restrictive Louisiana law in 1994 and 1995.
  
  The law's proponents claim that it will help protect against voter fraud, but there appears to be no evidence to support this claim. Georgians already have to show one of 17 forms of ID to prove that they are who they say they are when they vote. Georgia's chief elections official, Secretary of State Cathy Cox, has said that not one instance of voter fraud relating to impersonation at the polls has been documented during her tenure.
  
  Furthermore, while purporting to combat fraud, the Georgia law expressly excludes absentee ballots from the ID requirement. While all the evidence indicates that minorities are far less likely to vote absentee than whites, absentee balloting is the only form of voting in which there is documented fraud in Georgia. The exclusion of absentee ballots from the identification requirement raises serious questions about whether the anti-fraud justification for the law is purely pretextual.

Personally I am unfamiliar with both the vagaries of voting law and this particular GA statute, but am troubled by the above recitation. If there's not been an instance of voter fraud during the SecState's tenure (whatever that was), then what in the world inspired GA legislators to try to "improve" on something that ain't broke? Is anyone else more familiar with what's going on here?

Gattigap

John Fund in today's WSJ:

Resurrecting Jim Crow for Political Gain: Voter fraud is also a threat to minority voters.

The Voting Rights Act, whose 40th anniversary we celebrate this month, has helped minorities elect 81 sitting members of Congress and thousands of local officials. But the rally civil rights groups held in Atlanta earlier this month to push for extension of the act's key temporary provisions downplayed those gains and instead pushed wild claims that some state laws requiring an ID to vote are the functional equivalent of Jim Crow poll taxes.

Both Judge Greg Mathis, the star of a syndicated courtroom TV show, and California Rep. Barbara Lee claimed that the last two presidential elections had been "stolen." Judge Mathis told the rally Republican leaders "need to be locked up because they're all criminals and thieves." Other speakers claimed Georgia's new photo ID law would suppress poor and elderly minority voters who might lack such a document. When the bill passed the Georgia House in March, black legislators sang slave songs and one even slammed a prisoner's shackles on the desk of the sponsor.

Juan Williams, a National Public Radio correspondent and author of "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years," is "stunned" by such vituperation. He told Fox News that it is "reacting to devils that have been slain 40 years ago." He says that "in service to having no fraud elections, I think you could say to people, go and get a legitimate ID. I don't think that's too much to ask."

Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who spoke at the rally, believes that in an era when people have to show ID to rent a video or cash a check "requiring ID can help poor people." He noted that Georgia is deploying a mobile bus to issue voter IDs and allowing groups like the NAACP to arrange for it to go to specific sites.

Mr. Young says rehashing arguments about the 2000 and 2004 elections doesn't solve much--"I accept the recounts that show George Bush won"--and says it's time for fresh thinking. "[Let's] ask what we do about low voter turnout and whether it's the result of racial discrimination or not," he told me. "I don't think it is, since everyone is equally inconvenienced by how we vote." He suggests moving Election Day to a weekend and expanding the hours polls are open.

But many liberals can't be bothered with a positive agenda. A new 300-page report by the American Center for Voting Rights, a group with Republican ties, documents both examples of voter fraud as well as the flimsy nature of many charges of voter suppression. David Porter, the deputy editorial page editor of the Orlando Sentinel and an African American, says he was "bewildered" last year by reports of voter intimidation in his city that didn't pan out. John Kerry routinely accused Republicans in the 2000 election of "disenfranchising a million African Americans and stealing their votes" but provided no evidence. In that vein, a Kerry election manual advised workers that if they hadn't seen signs of intimidation they should "launch a 'pre-emptive strike'" and cry wolf anyway.

Such cynicism exasperates some Democrats. Last year, Joe Andrew, who served as Bill Clinton's chairman of the Democratic National Committee, blasted conspiracy theories that electronic voting machines, or DREs, would be used to steal votes and said "most liberals are just plain old-fashioned nuts" on the subject. He lamented that prominent Democrats "are rallying behind the anti-DRE bandwagon in a big election year because they think that this movement is good for Democrats."

Nor has the truth stretching stopped with the election. Barbara Arnwine of The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights claims photo ID laws "could disenfranchise 10% of the electorate." In June, DNC Chairman Howard Dean issued a report on last year's election in Ohio. He claimed it backed up charges of widespread "voter suppression." But after a scholar involved in writing the report told journalists that wasn't so, Mr. Dean had to return to the microphones to revise his remarks: "While we certainly couldn't draw a proven conclusion that this was willful, it certainly has the appearance of impropriety."

But William Anthony, Democratic chairman in Ohio's capital of Columbus, scoffs at such suggestions. Mr. Anthony, who is also chair of the county elections board, said the high turnout and a ballot that involved more than 100 choices for some voters did create lines, but told the Columbus Dispatch he was offended by "a band of conspiracy theorists" alleging suppression. "I am a black man. Why would I sit there and disenfranchise voters in my own community?"

This isn't to say dirty tricks aren't pulled to lower minority turnout. Mr. Dean has pointed to anonymous flyers that publicized Election Day as being on a Wednesday or informed voters they had to clear up parking tickets to vote. But the only documented case of serious deception involving more than fliers was committed by the Kerry campaign. On Election Day, a Marion, Ohio, judge enjoined Democrats from calling GOP voters and giving them incorrect polling locations while claiming they had to bring four separate forms of ID to vote.

Cathy Chaffin, the county Democratic chair, has signed an affidavit on the incident that reads like a plea from a hostage. In late October, she learned that Kerry workers who had taken over her office space were making the calls and ordered them to stop. Days later she learned the calls were still being made and repeated her command. On the morning of Election Day she learned "the activity had not in fact stopped" and told Kerry staffer Jim Secreto "he could not operate out of the headquarters if he continued to violate my directive."

The Voting Rights Act ensures the right to vote for all Americans. But as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says it's "just as important to preserve the value of that vote from those who would corrupt the election process." His office is currently pursuing 120 election fraud investigations and since early 2003 has charged 89 people with fraud.

Those cases don't get as much play as the conspiracy theories, but they have the advantage of having facts behind them. It's time media outlets that analyze the accuracy of campaign ads vigorously apply the same truth detector to all charges of election chicanery.