Easy to identify hypocrisy in voter ID law

Wisconsin is far from the only state where Republicans are trying to impose strict voter identification laws intended to give the GOP an electoral edge.

In Georgia, which has accepted 17 different kinds of ID, the push is on for a state-issued photo ID card.

This from Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

When Mamie Fields (left) voted last year, it was easy. She rode the elevator down to the lobby of Lakewood Christian Manor, a high-rise for the elderly. The voting booths were right there, so all she had to do was show her Social Security card and cast her ballot.

But Gov. Sonny Perdue and the GOP-dominated Legislature have gotten tough on people like Fields, who is 93, so she won't be able to get away with that again. Claiming they were on the lookout for fraudulent voters, GOP legislators pushed through a stringent voter ID law that would force Georgians to show a state-sponsored photo ID. But Mamie Fields doesn't have one. She hasn't driven in many years, she said.

She has been ailing lately — troubled with shingles — and she's not sure she'd be up to voting in next year's elections for congressional and state offices anyway. "I wish I could vote lots of times. I want to throw all those rascals in Washington out," she said, noting that she supports Democrats, and "I don't care who knows it."

Actually, Perdue and his Republican colleagues had probably guessed that already. If voters like Fields were reliable GOP voters, it's unlikely that a newly empowered Republican majority in the Legislature would have pushed through the controversial voter ID law, the most restrictive in the country. They are simply taking a page from the GOP handbook — throwing up barriers to intimidate or inconvenience voters who tend to vote for Democrats. Elderly voters and black voters are among the Democrats' most reliable constituencies.

Across the country, GOP strategists have used dirty tricks against Native Americans, blacks and Latinos, ranging from false reports of invalid registration to threatening legitimate voters with arrest. They've been doing it for years. In 1993, Republican operative Ed Rollins, who managed Christine Whitman's run for governor of New Jersey, made headlines when he attributed her success, in part, to his tactic of paying black preachers to keep their congregants away from the polls. Though he later retracted the claim, it had the unfortunate ring of truth.

Since then, the tactics have only become more open and more aggressive. In 2003, South Dakota's GOP-dominated state Legislature passed a law requiring photo IDs, and it kept many of that state's Native Americans, reliable Democratic voters, from the polls last year. Perhaps it's no coincidence, then, that Tom Daschle, who had been Senate minority leader, lost his race for re-election.

Of course, Perdue and GOP legislators swear nothing of the sort is going on. They insist — insist — that they are just trying to ferret out fraud. But their claims don't wear so much as a stitch of credibility. To start, the new law makes it easier to use absentee ballots; no longer do voters have to give a legitimate reason for filing by mail, as they did before. Nor is any sort of ID required to vote absentee.

But, as Secretary of State Cathy Cox points out, "In contrast to the lack of voter fraud relating to impersonating voters at the polls, the State Election Board has reviewed scores of cases of alleged voter fraud relating to the use of absentee ballots." (For Republicans, however, absentee ballots do have an advantage: They are filed more often by GOP voters.)

Furthermore, the Legislature passed its new law while doing precious little to fix the backlog for driver's licenses. The newly created Department of Driver Services, where voters will have to go for their new state-sponsored IDs, is still short-staffed. As it stands, only 56 motor vehicle safety licensing branches serve Georgia's 159 counties.

Angeline Harden, 56, (above, right) who also lives in Lakeview Christian Manor, will have to travel outside the city of Atlanta and endure an hours-long wait to renew her driver's license, which has expired.

While black legislators have labeled the voter ID bill a racist ploy, it will also ensnare some white voters, like Fields. But it will affect black voters like Harden disproportionately. Cox's office estimates that white Georgians are five times more likely to have a car or truck than black Georgians. According to Kilpatrick Stockton attorney Seth Cohen, about 4 percent of white adults in Georgia lack a driver's license, but more than four times as many black adults — about 18 percent — lack one.

Apparently, Perdue and his GOP colleagues have ruled out trying to appeal to black voters and win their support. Instead, they've decided to block them from the ballot box. That's un-American, and it ought to be stopped.