Voter ID Law is Dismissed

A judge in Georgia has dismissed that state's Voter Identification law as unconstitutional. The law required all voters to produce an ID in order to vote. Such "poll tax" rules were also in force during the bad old days of segregation and were meant to prevent African Americans from voting.

The new Voter ID laws are designed to reduce the number of Democrats from voting. Because the poor are much more likely not to drive or own cars many of them do not have state issued licenses or ID's. The new laws were a strategy developed by Republicans to capitalize on the situation to depress voter turnout in highly Democratic precincts. The requirement also would lengthen the time required to process voters making lines longer and slower. The longer and slower voter lines are the less likely voters are to vote.

This effort has been introduced here in Pennsylvania, by Republicans of course. Similar legislation is up for a vote in Washington:

Like the Georgia law, the federal legislation would almost certainly be challenged in court. A coalition of interest and civil rights groups, including the NAACP, AARP, and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, denounced the bill yesterday, saying it would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of minority and elderly voters.

The law is the same as a poll tax because it requires an ID that voters must pay to receive:

Last year, U.S. District Judge Harold L. Murphy issued an injunction against the law, likening it to a segregation-era poll tax because the digital picture ID would cost voters $20.

Requiring voters to pay for their right to vote is unAmerican. It's nothing more than vote suppression.