The Georgia Democratic Party late Thursday asked the courts for a temporary order to stop the state from requiring photo identification of potential voters in the July 15 primary.

The secretary of state blasted the move as a legal maneuver intended to disrupt voting, and noted that advance voting will get under way Monday — and a photo ID will be required.

The state Democratic Party had filed a new lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Georgia's voter ID law more than a month ago. With its latest request, the party is asking the court to step in now, before the suit has had its first hearing or any depositions taken, because an election is little more than a week off. Attorney Emmet Bondurant said people who are refused a ballot because they do not have the required identification would suffer "irreparable harm."

"The idea is to get an injunction that will prevent the state from enforcing the voter ID act," said Bondurant, one of the attorneys representing the Democratic Party in the suit.

"I am truly dismayed by this latest legal maneuver on the part of those opposed to Georgia's common-sense photo ID law," said Secretary of State Karen Handel, a Republican. "Given the timing of the Democratic Party's motion, this is clearly nothing more than an attempt to create confusion and disrupt the July 15 primary and the November general election. The Democratic Party seems to be more concerned with disrupting the elections process than with the security of the process."

Handel vowed her office will continue to fight attempts to dismantle the law.

Bondurant said because Fulton judges had ruled in 2006 in the party's favor in a previous case, so the party expects this request also might be granted. But the Georgia Supreme Court later reversed that Fulton decision because the person filing that case did not have standing to bring it.

Since then, the U.S. Supreme Court has said political parties could bring such lawsuits, Bondurant said.

Voter ID laws nationwide have been partisan since they were first proposed. Republicans say requiring certain types of photo identification prevents voter fraud. Democrats argue those programs are little more than tools to weed out Democratic-leaning low-income and elderly voters.

Georgia's law already has survived previous court challenges — one filed in 2006 in Fulton County Superior Court and another decided last year in U.S. District Court. Both cases were brought by individuals filing on behalf of the Democratic party and in both cases the judges said the people bringing the cases were not eligible to bring them.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Indiana's voter ID law but the justices also said in that decision that political parties have standing to challenge those state laws. The state Democratic Party brought the third lawsuit in late May, several weeks after the Supreme Court decision.