A Stitch in Haste

A new Georgia law that requires a valid photo ID to vote has been cleared by the Department of Justice, a necesary requirement for changes to voting laws in certain states under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I previously blogged in support of the law.

The law is still subject to court challenges, which opponents are now preparing:

"The decision to clear the measure now gives Georgia the most draconian voter identification requirement in the nation," said Daniel Levitas of the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project in Atlanta.

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a veteran of the civil rights movement, said, "It is unbelievable, it is unreal the Department of Justice — an agency who is supposed to protect the American public by enforcing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — is now involved in attempts to weaken the act.

"This decision takes us back to the dark past of literacy tests and other insidious devices that were carefully devised to hamper the participation of all of our citizens in the political process," Lewis said.

Showing a drivers license or other photo ID is "draconian"?

And the analogy betwen voter ID and literacy tests is flat-out invalid. As I blogged previously:

There is a fundamental difference ... between rules that keep eligible voters away from the polls and those that keep ineligible voters away. To analogize a voter ID law to the truly disenfranchising maneuvers of the past — such as property ownership requirements, literacy tests or poll taxes — is an insult to the past victims of those now-abolished restrictions.

As with the seemingly endless debate over Florida 2000, there is an important difference between "make every vote count" and "make every valid vote count." By the same token, there is an important difference between impeding eligible voters, which this law does not, and impeding ineligble voters, which this law does.

The Justice Department was right to clear this patently reasonable and intelligent law, and there is no reason for any court to invalidate it.