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AJC.com > Legislature > Georgia Beat > Archives > 2005 > March > 15 > Entry
Senate bill requiring photo ID at polls fires up Democrats
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lawmakers continued to spar in the Senate today over a bill that would require voters to show photo identification at the polls.
African-American lawmakers walked out of both the House and the Senate Friday to protest passage of Senate Bill 84 and House Bill 244, both of which call for reducing the number of acceptable forms of voter identification from 17 to five. Black lawmakers in both chambers brought shackles to the well when railing against the bill. Some compared the passage of the ID bills to the return of Jim Crow laws in the South.
House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s threat to seek some form of censure against Rep. Alisha Thomas Morgan (D-Austell) for refusing to end a speech Saturday after her allotted time expired angered some senators. Morgan was speaking against the ID bill, and used part of her time to sing a civil rights song while Richardson tried to gavel her down.
Today, Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) urged senators to remain civil to one another and chastised Democrats for their behavior.
“Nobody is claiming that senators don’t have the right to speak to their constituents,” Johnson said. “But when the language turns to calling people racists, returning to the white hoods of the KKK, wearing shackles on the floor of the Senate, we crossed the line, we violated the decorum of this chamber and … disrespected every citizen of this state.”
Johnson angered many black lawmakers and Democrats by saying “emotions ran high” and saying they only returned to the chamber to eat pizza that had been provided for them.
“Now I spent 10 years in the minority, and I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of the iron fist of the majority,” Johnson said. “But in 130 years as a minority, I don’t believe the Republicans ever, ever walked out on their duties.”
He also berated Democrats for offering an amendment on Friday to a piece of legislation that would’ve called for a moratorium on the death penalty in Georgia while a commission is appointed to look into the fairness of its application.
After Johnson’s comments, 10 Democratic senators — most of them African-American — took turns blasting Johnson’s remarks and the provisions of the photo ID bill.
Minority Leader Robert Brown (D-Macon) said Johnson’s use of the word “emotion” to describe minority dissent “trivializes the level of debate.”
“Voting rights is a very fundamental part of the process,” said Brown. “When you talk about abridging those rights on a people who have fought tooth and nail to obtain those rights, it’s not just emotion. That’s beyond emotion.”
Black lawmakers warned that Republicans are underestimating the impact of requiring photo identification for voting. They say it has the potential to disenfranchise poor, elderly and minority people who do not drive, can’t work or who otherwise have no means to get proper photo ID. They also warned that punishing Rep. Morgan or any other legislators for speaking their mind is dangerous.
“We should not let the focus of what happened shift from the evil that was done to those who spoke out against that evil,” said Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta). “When we come to this body, we have only two things — our vote and our voice. Let me say this, you can vote us down but you can never take our voice.”
Some Democrats reminded Republican leaders that they have flirted with a lack of decorum when they were in the minority party. Sen. Michael Meyer Von Bremen (D-Albany) recalled when a Republican lawmaker called Gov. Roy Barnes “an S.O.B.” from the well of the Senate. He also recalled that Republican senators once strung yellow crime scene tape across the back of the chamber to protest a bill.
Later, Sen. Don Balfour (R-Duluth) said he had, indeed, called Barnes a “supreme omnipotent being,” and said he was wrong when he did that and apologized for it. But Balfour said it was incorrect to imply that he had used an obscenity to describe Barnes.
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