Voting Rights Act still relevant to today’s Georgia

The Voting Rights Act lives, thanks to an 8-1 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, the written opinion made it clear that the right case, brought at the right time, could result in parts of the landmark civil rights law being declared unconstitutional.

Under the act, Georgia and other jurisdictions with histories of discrimination have to submit any change in election procedure to the U.S. Justice Department for preclearance. It’s a time-consuming and in ways humiliating process for Georgia, and it offends conservatives worried by the erosion of state powers.

In its opinion, the court questions whether preclearance is still needed, and thus still constitutional. Without fresh evidence of discrimination at the ballot box, it suggested, the court may retire that provision.

A few years ago, I too had begun to think that most of the act had outlived its usefulness and ought to be retired. But that attitude changed as state Republican leaders began to impose voter ID and other restrictions on the people of Georgia.

No one argues with the goal of voter ID, which is to prevent voter fraud. However, when the state’s first voter ID law was enacted in 2005, fighting fraud wasn’t its true intent.

Even though there had been no evidence of fraud at the ballot box, the law required official ID before someone voted in person. Fair enough, except that the very same law made it easier to vote absentee, a method that required no ID and had a long history of abuse in Georgia. It was a strange way to reduce voter fraud.

The law had another, more subtle impact. Statistically speaking, minority voters tended to vote in person and were less likely to have ID, meaning the voter ID law put more of a burden on them. More importantly, they tended to vote Democratic.

Conversely, the newly lax rules on absentee balloting made it easier for GOP voters to use the mail-in option, even if it also made it easier to commit fraud.

In other words, under the guise of fighting fraud, Republicans were actually seeking partisan advantage, and in the process they put minority voters at a disadvantage.

Thanks to the Voting Rights Act, that initial law was challenged in court. Over time, that legal fight forced improvements to the voter ID law and delayed its implementation, allowing time for voters without ID to acquire it. As a result, the state law now in effect is actually pretty fair —- considerably more fair than it would have been without the Voting Rights Act.

A similar history is playing out in Secretary of State Karen Handel’s effort to test the citizenship of those registered to vote in Georgia. Again, that’s a perfectly reasonable goal. But the computer-based system that Handel set up to detect illegal voting is so badly designed that it has raised doubts about the voting status of thousands of U.S. citizens and invalidated hundreds of ballots that were probably legally cast.

So why implement such a system?

These days, a lot of Americans have a vague sense that their country is being taken from them, a fear heightened by the election of Barack Obama. They don’t know how it’s happening, but that sense is very real.

Under such circumstances, many people want to believe that the country really isn’t changing that fast, but that certain people are simply cheating.

In effect, people who argued for years that the media aren’t reflecting reality have expanded that argument to claim that voting results also don’t reflect reality.

It doesn’t matter that the facts don’t support fraud claims. It doesn’t matter that Handel’s office can identify just one case in which a noncitizen voted in Georgia elections. In politics, an explanation that fits the facts is less powerful than an explanation that fills an emotional need.

Citing the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department has taken issue with Georgia’s voter verification system. According to Matt Carrothers, a spokesman for Handel, the secretary of state is now consulting attorneys to decide whether to challenge the Justice Department’s decision.

But in court, facts can’t be dodged so easily.

Handel would have to justify a system that according to the feds has misidentified at least 500 native-born Americans as noncitizens, forcing them to take additional steps to save their right to vote. She would also have to explain why so many of those flagged were minorities.

If she fails, she could end up demonstrating to the courts why the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act is still needed.

Blog with Jay Bookman

at ajc.com/opinion.

Jay Bookman, an Opinion columnist, writes Tuesday and Friday.