As a kid, I was driving with my father one day in rural Georgia. There was a shack off to the side of the road, and my father said, “Always remember: that person’s vote counts just as much as yours.”
I recently went through training to do voter registration in Georgia, and what I learned was simply outrageous. An obstacle course has been erected that is stunningly reflective of Jim Crow era poll taxes and literacy tests and is clearly designed to block the efforts of legitimate citizens to register to vote.
To begin, the voter registration application must be completed in black or blue ink. Use any other color, or pencil, and the application can be invalidated.
There are two address blocks on the form: one for address of residence and one for mailing address if, as with a post office box, mailing address is different from residence address. If the registrant happens to write his or her residence address in both sections because it is the same, the application can be invalidated.
The registrant must record his or her date of birth, and for this there is a row of eight boxes for capturing two digits for the month, two for the day, four for the year. If a registrant fills in only one number for the month or one number for the day, the application can be invalidated. If the registrant inserts slashes among month/day/year, the application can be invalidated.
Another section asks for a Georgia driver’s license or voter ID number, but accepts a Social Security number. For a Social Security number, there are nine boxes. The form states, however, that the applicant is required only to record the last four digits of said number. What it does not say is that the registrant must write those numbers in the last four of the nine boxes. Record these numbers elsewhere and the application can be invalidated.
If the registrant is a previously registered voter but now resides at a different address, he or she must fill in their previous address as it appears on the voter rolls or the application can be invalidated.
If there are more than three scratch-outs on an application, it can be invalidated.
Also, the registrant must complete the application in his or her own handwriting. Assistance is not allowed except under narrowly defined circumstances and can result in the application being invalidated.
When you hear someone cry “voter fraud,” what is often being cited is violations of rules such as these, rules designed to screen out voters rather than screen in voters.
Each one of these rules is absurd, but collectively they are far worse. These practices are immoral, unethical and anti-democratic. The governor and the state legislature must act to strengthen the fabric of democracy in Georgia. Our government must not be in the role of obstructing our right to vote; it must do everything in its power to protect and foster our right to vote.
