Feds suggest Ga. excessive on ID checks

Federal officials have asked Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel to investigate whether state election officials are improperly checking the identity of newly registered voters.

Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue said Georgia has asked the administration to verify the identities of nearly 2 million voters, more than any other state. He wrote on Friday to Handel and election officials in five other states that have also requested unusually high numbers of identity checks. But Handel’s deputy questioned the validity of the Social Security Administration’s numbers.

Astrue said the federal Help America Vote Act requires his agency to verify the last four digits of Social Security numbers of new voters who do not have acceptable state identification, such as a driver’s license.

Social Security has received about 7.7 million requests from around the country; 25 percent have come from Georgia, according to federal data.

“Such a volume appears to be much greater than one would expect, given that states of comparable or larger populations have a significantly lower number of verification requests,” Astrue wrote to Handel.

Some states have not asked for any verifications. Colorado made three requests. After Georgia, the next highest was Alabama with slightly more than 1 million. Alabama officials, along with those in Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio, have also received letters from Astrue.

This is the second year Georgia has participated in the agreement with the Social Security Administration to verify voters’ identity, said Mark Lassiter, spokesman for the federal agency. In 2007, the agency received 66,000 requests for verification from Georgia, according to the data.

Rob Simms, Georgia’s deputy secretary of state, said Handel’s office received Astrue’s letter on Monday.

“This is the first we’ve heard from them,” Simms said. “We’re in the process of writing them back asking them what they’re talking about. We don’t know.”

Part of the confusion stems from the fact that the Secretary of State’s office does not submit the data to be verified, Simms said. The state Department of Driver’s Services does that.

Here’s how it works: A resident who fills out a voter registration application is asked to give either a state driver’s license number or the last four digits of his Social Security number. The application is entered into the statewide voter database, which is sent each night to Driver’s Services. Registration applications with driver’s license numbers are checked against the agency’s records. Those with Social Security numbers are forwarded to Washington for verification.

“We’re having to work our way backward with (DDS) and see what’s going on,” Simms said.

A spokeswoman for Driver’s Services said the agency was trying to figure it out as well.

In Alabama, Secretary of State Beth Chapman said she will work to make sure Alabama is complying with the federal law. She wondered if her state’s “astronomical number of voter registrations” could explain the 1 million verification checks sent from Alabama to Social Security.

“I would think that would be one of the reasons for an increased number,” said Chapman, who, like Handel, is a Republican.

Chapman said she would work with registrars in Alabama’s 67 counties to improve the system.

But, as in Georgia, the number of newly registered voters falls far short of the number of verifications Social Security says it has received from the states. In Georgia, 450,000 voters have been added to the rolls since Oct. 1, 2007, the date mentioned in Astrue’s letter.

Simms asked why Social Security waited so long to ask about the requests.

“They didn’t contact us at half a million, or a million, or a million-and-a-half,” he said. “They send us this random letter Monday, 29 days before the election, saying you might have a problem.”

According to the federal agency, only new voters who cannot produce a valid state-issued identification should be submitted for verification. Simms said Georgia election officials are following that guideline. Yet a September letter from Handel’s office to county registrars says every voter registration application should be submitted to Social Security.

In his letter, Astrue says, “if your state’s election officials are requesting verifications not covered by the verification agreement, we ask that you bring your procedures into conformance with your legal obligations.”

The Georgia deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 4 general election was Monday.

Jeffrey Zaino, a national expert on the Help America Vote Act and vice president of elections for the American Arbitration Association, said the confusion before Election Day is likely to become worse when polls open Nov. 4.

“This situation is a mess, unfortunately,” he said. “These are well-intended laws, but they’re causing some confusion with voters. These are not poll-worker or voter-friendly rules.”