SPECIAL SECTION: Georgia's Photo ID Requirement
What is Georgia's new ID requirement?
Why are many opposing the new ID requirement?
What is the Department of Justice's role?
What are DOJ's findings regarding the ID requirement?

What are voter ID requirements nationally?
What states are going beyond HAVA's voter ID requirements?
Do voter ID requirements prevent fraud?
Do voter ID requirements disenfranchise voters?
Are voter ID requirements constitutional?

In March 2005, the Georgia legislature passed a series of reforms to the state's election laws, which was subsequently signed into law by Governor Sonny Perdue. The package included a new provision (Section 59) reducing the number of acceptable forms of voter identification from 17 to six forms of photo identification. Registered voters must now present one of these items when they go to the polls:

• a Georgia driver’s license;
• other forms of government issued photo identification;
• a valid United States passport;
• a valid government employee photo identification card;
• a valid military photo identification card; or
• a valid tribal photo identification card.

The cost for obtaining a drivers' license or state photo ID is $20 for 5 years or $35 for 10 years, and applicants must submit identification documents including either a birth certificate, passport, or citizenship certificate, as well as a Social Security card. Registered voter who cannot present one of these forms at the polls are allowed to vote by provisional ballot, but must return within 48 hours with acceptable photo ID.

Sources/More Information:

Full Text of House Bill 244

Since its passage, the law has come under heavy criticism from a number of sources, including other lawmakers (and all of the state legislature's minority members), Georgia's Secretary of State, election scholars, and voting rights advocates. Opponents of the photo ID requirement cite the following major arguments:

• there is little proof of the kind of voter fraud used to justify the law;
• fees for obtaining photo ID create an unfair financial burden for low-income voters;
• traveling to an ID facility places an undue burden on voters without access to a vehicle;
• a disproportionate number of minority voters are unlikely to have photo ID; and
• only one-third of the state's counties have offices where photo ID can be obtained.

In late October, a complaint filed by voting rights advocates was successful in getting a judge to temporarily suspend the law. Thus, Georgia's voters weren't subjected to the ID requirements in the November election. A lawsuit is still pending.

Sources/More Information:

Letter to Gov. Sonny Perdue from Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox
April 8, 2005

Complaint Against ID Provisions of HB 244
September 19, 2005

Complaint Against ID Provisions of HB 244
October 19, 2005

What is the Department of Justice's role?

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act requires states and localities with a history of discrimination to "preclear" changes to their voting rights laws with the federal Department of Justice. Under Section 5, the state attempting to change its voting law must establish that the change in question will not be 'retrogressive,' i.e., will not worsen the position of minority voters in comparison to the existing practice. Or, if the change will prove retrogressive, the state must prove that a non-retrogressive alternative is not available. The Department of Justice then reviews the state's case and determines whether or not it passes muster. As Georgia is one of the states that must preclear such changes, opponents of the law have repeatedly called on the Department of Justice to reverse the new ID requirements in its review.

Sources/More Information:

About Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act
(Department of Justice)

What are DOJ's findings regarding the ID requirement?

In August the Attorney General's office announced that the ID law had received preclearance under Section 5, arguing that the need to combat fraud cited by the bill's proponents was a valid concern and that the requirement did not appear to impose a burden on African Americans.

However, that finding has been called into question based on a recently publicized memo in which DOJ staff assigned to review Georgia's case, after an exhaustive analysis, recommend the law be rejected under Section 5. (See news coverage in the Washington Post and Atlanta Journal Constitution.) The memo relates how the state of Georgia failed to present a serious case for the new requirement:

• No proof of fraud presented. Beyond scattered anecdotal evidence and reference to general sources, Georgia failed to prove that fraud was a serious problem in state elections. In one much publicized comment, a sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Sue Burmeister, resorted to an unsubstantiated allegation that "when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls." (p. 6)
  
  
• No proof that the law won't impact minority voters. DOJ reports that the state failed to conduct any statistical analysis of the legislation's effect on minority voters, instead, "they relied on the statistic that more citizens had driver's licenses than were registered to vote, the John Fund book [Stealing Elections], and other anecdotal information." (p. 6-7)

The DOJ staff then offers its own analysis of available evidence, concluding that the ID requirement would likely be retrogressive. Primary arguments include:

• Racial disparities in access to facilities where ID can be obtained. DOJ reports that statewide, 17.7 percent of black households in Georgia lacked access to a vehicle compared to just 4.41 percent of white households. In the two thirds of counties without an ID facility where access to a vehicle would be especially important, the memo finds five times more black households than white households lack access to a vehicle. (p. 15-16)
  
  
• Lower rates of possession of photo ID among black voters. Since direct registration data in Georgia is highly flawed, DOJ considers the relationship between vehicle access and drivers licenses which has been shown elsewhere and estimates the disparity between black and white residents who possesses drivers licenses at 20 to 35 percent. (p. 27)
  
  
• Elimination of previously accepted identification would hurt black voters more. The new ID law would eliminate types of non-photo ID and government documents which black voters are especially likely to possess, due to higher participation rates in government benefit programs. (p. 29)
  
  
• Fee waiver for ID cards would not reduce the financial burden of IDs. DOJ finds that Georgia's offering indigent voters recourse to obtain a fee waiver would have little effect on the financial burden of the ID cards, since the supporting documents a voter would need to supply (i.e. birth certificates, naturalization documents) carry their own costs. (p. 30)
  
  
• Other forms of acceptable photo ID would not reduce the disparity in driver's licenses. The memo shows that minority voters are also less likely to have other forms of photo ID acceptable under the law, such as passports (which are extremely expensive to obtain) and employer identification (the unemployment rate for blacks is twice that of whites in Georgia). (p. 27-28)

Sources/More Information:

Section 5 Recommendation Memo
(Department of Justice) August 24, 2005

Letter from Attorney General to Senator Christopher Bond
October 7, 2005

Letter to DOJ from Voting Rights Organizations
July 8, 2005

Letter to DOJ from Law Professors
August 18, 2005

Letter to DOJ from NAACP
July 29, 2005

Letter to DOJ from Congressman Jon Conyers
April 21, 2005

Letter to DOJ from the Advancement Project
August 25, 2005

Justice Dept. OKs Georgia's Voter ID Law
(Associated Press) August 26, 2005

Justice Department approves Georgia's voter ID law
(Macon Telegraph) August 27, 2005

What are voter ID requirements nationally?

In an effort to address concerns about fraud, the 2002 Help America Vote Act included a new mandate for the states: that those voters who register for the first time in a jurisdiction through the mail and who A) fail to include a copy of their license, copy of a utility bill, bank statement, government check, or other government document that shows a voter's name and address, or B) to provide their driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, must present identification at a polling place the first time they vote.

However, as HAVA is not specific about what constitutes acceptable photo identification, states have chosen to interpret the law in very different ways. For instance, California explicitly lists a wide range of acceptable IDs, including student IDs and IDs issued by homeless shelters, while Ohio simply reprints the language in HAVA. Many elections experts have recommended that states explicitly enumerate a large number of acceptable IDs in order to avoid confusion at polling places and registered voters being forced to vote by provisional ballot.

Sources/More Information:

State-by-State Voter ID Requirements
(Electionline.org)

What states are going beyond HAVA's voter ID requirements?

The passage of HAVA, as well as the post-2000-election flurry of legislation around the country, led to a marked increase in the number of states requiring all voters to show identification. Six states—Alabama, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Tennessee—confronted with the necessity to update voter identification laws to make them HAVA compliant, went further and enacted universal voter identification. (North Dakota, which enacted voter identification in 2003, does not require voter registration.) In 2004, lawmakers in thirteen more states debated similar voter identification bills. As of 2005, twenty states now require all voters to present identification in order to vote. The voter identification requirements enacted by Georgia and Indiana this year are particularly notable. Those two states will now require all voters to present government issued photo identification at the polls. Civil rights organizations are challenging these measures.

Sources/More Information:

Voter ID Legislation Database
(Electionline.org)

Do voter ID requirements prevent fraud?

Proponents of expanding voter ID requirements—for instance, requiring that all voters show photo identification each time they vote—argue that more onerous ID requirements are necessary to prevent fraud. Otherwise, individuals may be able to register and vote under a false identity, or vote under an ineligible voter's name. Despite heated rhetoric, however, there is little reliable evidence indicating that fraud of this type is widespread or successful.

For example, after lawyers throughout the state scoured the land for fraudulent votes in Washington State because of the election litigation surrounding the gubernatorial race, only six cases of alleged double voting were found. Similarly, in perhaps the only other state to be subjected to the same level of scrutiny as Washington, Ohio, a statewide survey found that of the 9,078,728 votes cast in Ohio's 2002 and 2004 general elections, a total of four were deemed as ineligible or "fraudulent" and found by the Board of Elections and County Prosecutors to be legally actionable.

As Georgia Secretary of State Kathy Cox wrote in a letter to Governor Sonny Purdue opposing the state's new identification bill,

One of the primary justifications given by the Legislature for the passage of the photo identification provisions of House Bill 244—the elimination of voter ID fraud at the polls—is an unfounded justification. I cannot recall one documented case of voter fraud during my tenure as Secretary of State or Assistant Secretary of State that specifically related to the impersonation of a registered voter at voting polls. Our state currently has several practices and procedures in existence to ensure that such cases of voter fraud would have been detected if they in fact occurred, and at the very least, we would have complaints of voters who were unable to vote because someone had previously represented himself or herself as such person on that respective Election Day.

Sources/More Information:

Securing the Vote: An Analysis of Election Fraud
Lori Minnite and David Callahan (Demos) April 14, 2005

Balancing Access and Integrity: Chapter 4
Working Group on State Implementation of Election Reform (The Century Foundation) July 2005

Do voter ID requirements disenfranchise voters?

Many observers have cautioned that ID requirements impose an unnecessary burden on certain voters. Many voters do not have the type of identification required by these new laws.

For example, a June 2005 study by the University of Wisconsin found the following:

• An estimated 23 percent of persons aged 65 and over do not have a Wisconsin drivers license or a photo ID.
  
  
• An estimated 98,247 Wisconsin residents ages 35 through 64 also do not have either a drivers license or a photo ID.
  
  
• Less than half (47 percent) of Milwaukee County African American adults and 43 percent of Hispanic adults have a valid drivers license compared to 85 percent of white adults outside Milwaukee.
  
  
• For young adults ages 18-24 only 26 percent of African Americans and 34 percent of Hispanics in Milwaukee County have a valid license compared to 71 percent of young white adults in the Balance of State.

A study by the The National Commission on Federal Election Reform (Carter-Ford Commission) in 2001 found that 6 to 10 percent of the existing American electorate lacks any form of state ID. A 1994 Justice Department study found that blacks in Louisiana were four to five times less likely than whites to have photo IDs.

Moreover, acquiring a state ID requires time and expense on the part of the voter, which may prove a barrier especially to voters without cars, a population that is likely urban, low-income, elderly, or disabled. Many elections experts agree that any state imposing these requirements should make acceptable ID easy to obtain and available free of charge.

Besides being potentially burdensome to those without driver's licenses, voter ID requirements could turn away eligible voters with ID as well. For example, if a piece of identification does not contain the voter's current address, he or she may be turned away from the polls. Thousands of people possess drivers' licenses that do not show their current addresses. As mentioned before, confusion over what constitutes acceptable ID may also lead to eligible registered voters being given a provisional ballot.

Sources/More Information:

National Commission Task Force Report: Verification of Identity
(National Commission on Federal Election Reform) 2001

The Driver License Status of the Voting Age Population in Wisconsin
John Pawasarat (Employment and Training Institute, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) June 2005.

Are voter ID requirements constitutional?

Recent challenges to voter ID laws in the states have raised the question of whether voter ID laws are unconstitutional. Under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, ID requirements may be unconstitutional if they can be shown to place unequal burdens on different classes of voters.

Sources/More Information:

Complaint in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board
(American Civil Liberties Union) April 28, 2005

Comment on Indiana Photo ID Lawsuit
Dan Tokaji (Equal Vote Blog/Election Law @ Moritz) April 29, 2005