Institute of Southern Studies posted:

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In a letter sent last week from Civil Rights Division Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King to Georgia state officials, the DOJ said that Georgia's voter verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a "discriminatory effect" on minority voters, subjecting a "disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote." The letter went on to say that the system "does not produce accurate and reliable information and that thousands of citizens who are in fact eligible to vote under Georgia law have been flagged." The ruling bars Georgia from continuing the citizenship verification, although the state can appeal to the DOJ to reconsider.

Handel and her aides created the verification system in 2007, extending the state's requirement to verify a voter's identity at the time of registration to include the verification of citizenship as well. The citizenship verification program matches information a potential voter has submitted with information maintained by the state Department of Driver Services and the federal Social Security Administration. Voters are "flagged" when they have non-matching information.

According to the DOJ analysis, Georgia's program "flagged a large number of persons who have subsequently demonstrated that they are in fact citizens, Indeed, of the 7,007 individuals who have been flagged...as potential non-citizens, more than half were in fact citizens."

The DOJ also calculated that although blacks and whites made up equal numbers of the newly registered, blacks were flagged 60 percent more than whites. The DOJ similarly found that "Hispanic and Asian individuals are more than twice as likely to appear on the (flagged) list as are white applicants." In essence the program puts an undue burden on blacks, Hispanics and Asians to prove their citizenship when trying to vote.

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Remnant_OBrien posted:

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So we've got Paul and IMHO demanding that someone prove something doesn't exist.

meanwhile in the most scrutinized election in modern America (Washington Governor election of 2004), which was ultimately decided by less than 130 votes out of 2.7 million votes cast. Found 0 cases of fraud.

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Groucho48 posted:

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I don't know what your argument is.

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Groucho48 posted:

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No, I don't think non-citizens should be allowed to vote...

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Groucho48 posted:

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Do you have any examples of significant numbers of illegal immigrants trying to vote by pretending they are someone else?

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Groucho48 posted:

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Your argument seems to be...I KNOW there is voter fraud, therefore, the fact we haven't been able to find any only goes to show that it is going on.

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Groucho48 posted:

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Having scores or hundreds or thousands of voters showing up in polling places claiming to be some one else is stupid, risky, expensive, inefficient and incredibly, incredibly rare.

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Remnant_OBrien posted:

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meanwhile in the most scrutinized election in modern America (Washington Governor election of 2004), which was ultimately decided by less than 130 votes out of 2.7 million votes cast. Found 0 cases of fraud.

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paulg_68 posted:

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That's not my argument at all. My argument is that it took me 2 seconds to come up with a way to commit voter fraud and you haven't denied that it would be successful.

Picture ID's would be a simple, cheap, and would stop most of that sort of fraud. I bet 99.9% of voters have them already.




For a thing to be rare it must exist.

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