Lawyer: Georgia’s voter photo ID law discriminates

A federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s voter photo ID law should be revived because the law is discriminatory and there is no evidence that justifies its burden, a lawyer argued Wednesday.

“It is not reasonable to require those people who are the least mobile to go get an ID, especially when there was no voter fraud in the first place,” Emmet Bondurant told a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Bondurant is appealing a ruling in 2007 by U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy in Rome that dismissed a lawsuit filed by two elderly voters and civil rights groups. Murphy found the law did not impose a significant burden on the right to vote.

In 2005, Murphy halted the state’s implementation of the law, on grounds it imposed an unconstitutional poll tax and did not effectively combat voter fraud. But Murphy later dismissed the case after legislators amended the law and the Secretary of State’s office educated the public about it.

Civil rights leaders and Democratic lawmakers have denounced the photo ID law as a Republican ploy to suppress minority voting. But supporters say it is needed to prevent fraud.

Georgia’s law got a boost this past April when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a similar, Republican-backed statute in Indiana.

Mark Cohen, a lawyer representing the state, told the judges that the Indiana decision, Crawford v. Marion County Board of Elections, trumps the appeal. The high court, Cohen said, found there was a compelling reason to prevent voter fraud and that was enough to require people to get government-issued photo ID.

Cohen noted that Justice Stephen Breyer, who dissented in the case, praised Georgia’s law as being less restrictive than Indiana’s.

On Wednesday, 11th Circuit Judge Bill Pryor appeared to agree. In Crawford, Pryor said, the Supreme Court found that voter fraud problems did exist across the country and justified the need for photo IDs.

“This is a pretty light burden on the voter,” he said of Georgia’s requirement that voters present a government-issued photo ID when voting.

Bondurant disagreed. The disabled, elderly and those who cannot drive must “make a special trip that no one else has to make” to get an ID, he said. “The burden here is much greater for this class of people.”

Murphy found no evidence of in-person voter fraud and found nothing in the law that prevents the fraud that exists — absentee voting and registration fraud, Bondurant said.

Beyond that, Bondurant said, the state’s lawyers presented no evidence justifying why this new burden is necessary — an essential element in making their case. Although lawmakers have said the law was needed to deter voter fraud, there is no evidence behind in the record to support it, Bondurant said.

At the close of the hearing, Judge Stanley Birch ordered the state’s attorneys to prepare a legal brief citing to such evidence. “It’s either there or it isn’t,” he said.

Since the law’s inception in 2006, 16,724 voter ID cards have been issued, Secretary of State spokesman Matt Carrothers said.

Secretary of State Karen Handel, who strongly supports the law, attended Wednesday’s arguments.

“During the presidential election, four million Georgians cast a ballot in person with a photo ID without incident,” Handel said after the court session ended. “We also have had no complaints about it to our office.”