Justice Department approves Georgia voter verification system
Secretary of State Brian Kemp said Monday that the Justice Department has given final preclearance to a controversial state system of verifying voters’ identification and citizenship.
The voter verification system has been tied up in federal court since 2008 and the Justice Department has repeatedly refused to approve the process by which the state checks voter registration information against drivers license and Social Security databases.
But Kemp said Monday the federal government had signed off on the program, two months after he sued the Justice Department in federal court in search of approval. The Justice Department in 2008, then under Republican President George W. Bush, first questioned the system and said federal law required the state to verify a voter’s identity, but not his or her citizenship.
Kemp indicated in a statement that the Justice Department approved the project in response to the lawsuit. Both the state and the DOJ have filed paperwork with the court to dismiss the lawsuit.
“When we filed the lawsuit, I was criticized by some because they believed it would be too time-consuming and expensive,” Kemp said in the statement. “However, after waiting for nearly a year-and-a-half for a final administrative decision from the DOJ, I was certain that litigation was the only way to put Georgia in a position to obtain final approval from the federal government of our voter verification procedures. After the litigation was filed, it took less than two months for the DOJ to consent to preclearance of the verification process.”
It was not immediately clear how much the state has spent on the lawsuit and efforts to reach a Department of Justice spokesman were not immediately successful. Check back for updates.
Update 1:53 p.m.: Kemp spokesman Matt Carrothers said the full cost of the lawsuit isn’t known yet. He also would not say if Kemp was implying that the Justice Department approved the system specifically because of the lawsuit.
“Georgia waited a year-and-a-half for the DOJ to administratively preclear the voter verification process,” Carrothers said. “Secretary of State Kemp pursued litigation in federal district court to allow a third party to review our voter verification procedures, and allow us to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act. We’re glad the DOJ ultimately recognized the importance of ensuring a secure elections process in Georgia.”
The verification process became mandated in 2002 with the passage of the Help America Vote Act. It requires the state to match its voter registration database against databases maintained by the state Department of Driver Services and the Social Security Administration. The law requires states to verify a voter’s identity, but not necessarily citizenship.
Two years ago, according to court records, the secretary of state’s office, then controlled run by Secretary of State Karen Handel, questioned the citizenship of more than 4,500 prospective voters.
About a month before the 2008 presidential election, voting rights advocates sued the state on behalf of a Kennesaw State University student who had been flagged by the system even though he was a naturalized citizen and eligible to vote. The groups contended the state was using the process to systematically purge minority voters, a charge state officials vehemently denied.
A week before the 2008 election, a panel of three federal judges in Atlanta ruled that Georgians whose eligibility to vote had been questioned could vote by a “challenged ballot.” Under this procedure, a flagged voter could cast a paper ballot and have until the following Friday to provide proof of citizenship to their local registrar.
The three-judge panel also found that Georgia should have sought federal approval before implementing its verification system. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, states with a history of discrimination must get changes in voting procedures “pre-cleared” by the Justice Department or by the U.S. District Court in Washington.
The state then sought approval from the Justice Department, but it declined to sign off on Georgia’s verification system. The department called the process “seriously flawed” because it subjected minority voters to “additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register or vote.”
After the Justice Department objected, the voting rights groups asked the three-judge panel to bar the state from using the system. But last month, the same panel of judges allowed Georgia to continue asking prospective voters who have been flagged to prove their citizenship. This prevents “both eligible voters from being denied the right to vote and ineligible voters from casting votes that cannot be discounted later, ” the judges said in a June 15 order.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in July that an additional 4,200 voters were flagged by the verification process just prior to the July 20 primaries, even though some of the people being flagged are citizens and eligible to vote.
As in 2008, flagged voters were allowed to cast “challenged ballots” in the primary and have the opportunity to prove their citizenship.
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108 comments Add your comment
ronald
August 23rd, 2010
11:48 am
Its about time this was approved. Its only logical to ask someone to provide ID when they vote. Democrats have always known that certain groups of minorities who were not eligible to vote, had been voting mostly for them, which is why this ID check has been delayed for as long as it has. This is politics and nothing else.
Ezra
August 23rd, 2010
12:32 pm
ronald you are correct! The idea that Georgia must ask the DOJ for approval of a state law is just more reconstruction. It has been 45yrs since that mandate and they have attached another 25yrs to this sterotyping. Lets put Georgia down and keep it down! It is the minority ruling the majority. We need to take back our country and our state.
mike
August 23rd, 2010
12:52 pm
Well, Ronald and Ezra. I do believe if you read the article in it entirety it clearly points out that this law suit was filed during bush administration. “The Justice Department in 2008, then under Republican President George W. Bush, first questioned the system and said federal law required the state to verify a voter’s identity, but not his or her citizenship.” So please keep your racist thoughts to yourself and just go to the polls on November 2, 2010. And let’s see what happen’s! One more thing though Ronald! Did you even graduate from high school or just dropped out in the third grade?
carlton
August 23rd, 2010
12:55 pm
Just think about the words from the DOJ, no less…it’s not necessary to know if a person is a citizen to allow them to vote, but it is enough to know they have a drivers license. no wonder we are in trouble!
JBM
August 23rd, 2010
12:57 pm
“Well, Ronald and Ezra. I do believe if you read the article in it entirety it clearly points out that this law suit was filed during bush administration.”
Ha! Read? Like that’s gonna happen.
Shaquandralishanickra
August 23rd, 2010
1:02 pm
Damn, now i gotzta get mo fake ids soz I can votz mo den wonz!
neal kelley
August 23rd, 2010
1:05 pm
damn.. you an ignorant fool!!!
Shaquandralishanickra
August 23rd, 2010
1:11 pm
Neal – youz sum kinda cracka ass cracka!
missgrace
August 23rd, 2010
1:25 pm
Of those voters that were flagged how many were found to be ineligible and trying to vote fraudulently? Isn’t this an important fact in determining whether the system works or whether it is a lot of effort to address a non existent problem? Why doesn’t the AJC do the work to get the facts that enable us to assess what is going on? I would like to know.
Carlton - how right you are
August 23rd, 2010
1:45 pm
The DOJ is full of turd heads!! Let’s review, Washington state, New Mexico State and I believe UTAH ALL grant drivers license’s WITHOUT BEING A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES!!!!!! And just how damn easy is it to transfer to a Georgia license? Dear God, and those DOJ a$$holes want to control our election process!!
Mark
August 23rd, 2010
1:45 pm
Funny how we are so concerned with verifying the voters, yet no one is concerned about the unverifiable electronic voting system.
Derek
August 23rd, 2010
1:48 pm
missgrace – since all of this is open-record info, if you really care, why don’t YOU look it up! It’s just like a liberal to rely on a liberal paper to do the work for them. But I’ll save you the effort, IF IT’S EVEN ONE VOTER then it’s good enough! And I’d bet my paycheck, against your minimum wage check that at least “1″ was caught!
Bosch
August 23rd, 2010
1:49 pm
“Its only logical to ask someone to provide ID when they vote.”
Which, the state has always done. I’ve had to provide an ID every time I’ve voted since 1988, so what is the issue here?
It is politics and nothing else, but in this case it’s the GOP making much ado about nothing and stirring up fear that people are voting for Dems in droves with absolutely no proof of it ever happening. You GOP are certainly predictable tools.
Derek
August 23rd, 2010
1:49 pm
Mark – why don’t you join the “capitalist” Republic and design an invention that is verifiable and quit moaning about the system we have!
ray
August 23rd, 2010
1:51 pm
This is a huge problem. The only reason a non-citizen like the president is in office is because there are literally millions of non-citizens voting in our elections every year. If we could kick them out of the country, we could restore an American to the highest office in the land and return this country to its place of prominence.
L
August 23rd, 2010
1:56 pm
Ray, do you also believe that the moon landings are a hoax and crop circles are real?? The STATE OF HAWAII has verified the President’s citizenship status. Not some random person, not some conspirator, but the STATE OF HAWAII! Get over it and move on.
Matt
August 23rd, 2010
1:58 pm
Please Bosch, we have proof Rep. Doornan lost to Sanchez via the illegal alien vote. We know the current guv. of Washington state won by voters who were later certified to be dead and somehow voted(Acorn). We know the Dems believe they should do ANYTHING to win because their ends justify their means. We now know Stewart Smalley up in Minnesota won by an illegal vote count(and what a piece of work he is huh liberal?). And so you go liberals, and so you go.
granny godzilla
August 23rd, 2010
2:00 pm
i am a moron
OldSnarky
August 23rd, 2010
2:01 pm
L, just who is ‘the state of hawaii’. Its just some person that works in that department. Wake up and smell the coffee dodo bird. Gee whizz!
ronald
August 23rd, 2010
2:03 pm
Mike said: “Well, Ronald and Ezra. I do believe if you read the article in it entirety it clearly points out that this law suit was filed during bush administration. So please keep your racist thoughts to yourself and just go to the polls on November 2, 2010.”
Mike- The fact that this became an issue during the Bush administration is meaningless. It was the Georgia Democratic party that fought to keep Georgia from being able to use Voter ID. If you don’t believe me, go back and read the April 20th, 2010 article here on AJC by Bill Rankin.
It says:
“Superior Court Judge Tom Campbell, in a three-page order signed Monday, rejected claims by the Georgia’s Democratic Party and others that the voter ID law unduly burdens the right to vote.”
By the way, the “others” include the NAACP who continued to participate and support these legal actions attempting to prevent Georgia from checking voters ID. You can call me a racist if you want, but I’m just stating the facts. You should ask your Georgia Democratic congressmen why they fought so hard against a bill that simply verified whether or not voters were actually eligible to vote. The bill had nothing to do with race….until Georgia Democratic congressmen, Jimmy Carter, and the NAACP tried to make it about race. You already know why Democrats took the stance they did and so does everyone else.
I’ll leave you with one of the many ridiculous Jimmy Carter quotes from October 2005-
“Georgia passed an absolutely obnoxious law,” said former President Jimmy Carter, who lives in the Peach State. “It was specifically designed to prevent old people, poor people and African-Americans from voting,” he said.
This mantra was repeated over and over and over again until people finally read the bill and realized that there were no provisions in the bill that addressed race at all.
ronald
August 23rd, 2010
2:05 pm
Typical for the AJC- My previous response from 15 minutes ago is not being posted.
Mark
August 23rd, 2010
2:06 pm
Derek, someone beat me to it more than a thousand years ago when they invented paper. There are systems that are reasonably verifiable available for sale now.
Rusty
August 23rd, 2010
2:06 pm
Good thing there is no such thing as a “fake ID”
get a grip
August 23rd, 2010
2:07 pm
If all the republicans would get out and vote it really wouldn’t matter. If you didn’t vote….shut up!
JBM
August 23rd, 2010
2:07 pm
Matt at 1:58, Care to provide links to all this “proof?”
Karl Quick
August 23rd, 2010
2:09 pm
“… the state checks voter registration information against drivers license and Social Security databases.”
Note AND Social Seecurity… Drivers licenses are not reliable as a citizenship test, but social security number is suppose to be (though fraudsters often steal SSNs too.)
Question: is the address in the Drivers License checked against the name/address of the citizen via SSN?
I doubt it, since to my knowledge, unless the IRS does it, addresses for SSNs are not kept up to date.
What should be done: Drivers License, IRS return address, linked by SSN to the individual. Don’t file for taxes (to pay or get refund or EIC)? Then don’t vote. Who’s that for reasonable?
S GA Independent
August 23rd, 2010
2:34 pm
I have never been asked to show anything beyond a picture ID (Driver’s License) and I have been voting in GA for close to 50 years. However, I have SEEN folks allowed to vote that I KNOW can’t and don’t drive, and they were not asked for any ID because they were brought in from a traing center for the Mentally Handicapped on a State Paid Van.
If the courts think that GA’s voter verification is questionable, what is going to be done in PORT CHESTER, NY where a judge has ruled it OK for each Latino Vote to count 6 times instead of as ONE vote?
cyberties
August 23rd, 2010
2:40 pm
Since when was citizenship NOT a prerequisite to the right to vote? If citizenship status is a requirement for voting in any election in this country, then WHY can’t a person’s status be ascertained at the time of their REGISTRATION?
I am all for every voter voting with no interference from the government, but we make it too easy for politcal operatives to commit (and get away with) voter fraud. All in the name of PC.
Just look at the last three presidential elections and you can see there are some SERIOUS flaws in the way people are allowed to register and vote in this country.
Vince Hugh
August 23rd, 2010
2:45 pm
It’s a very logical law and simply prevents people who are not legal citizens and registered voters to vote and only once. Who could possibly be against that?
MarkRH
August 23rd, 2010
2:45 pm
Most registration issues are with persons who are already registered but are ineligible because they moved, died, or committed a felony.
Illegals are living off-grid and do not register or vote to avoid detection. Voting offers them nothing in return for risking deportation.
The real issue isn’t unauthorized voters but corrupt election officials.
JJ Jones
August 23rd, 2010
2:49 pm
This is common sense. The law says you have to be a citizen to vote. Georgia is enforcing the law.
Anyone who opposes this is in favor of voter fraud.
JBM
August 23rd, 2010
2:50 pm
Matt at 1:58, Off hunting all that “proof”, huh? I’m sure as soon as you find it, you’ll bring it straight here, you betcha!
JJ Jones
August 23rd, 2010
2:53 pm
Bosch,
There are millions of people who have licenses in the US that are not citizens. Foreign students, people here on work visas, people with green cards, etc. All of them can legally obtain a licence. That does not mean they have the right to vote.
Andy
August 23rd, 2010
2:54 pm
Where in the hell does the Federal Government find the constitutional authority to tell any state how it must verify it’s voters? It’s not their god damned business.
Old Snarky certainly smells like one
August 23rd, 2010
2:55 pm
OS, you certainly come off sounding like a moron. is it a clever disguise or true ignorance? using your line of reasoning there would no valid IDs at all. you must be sniffing more than coffee. maybe you spent a few years huffing glue.
IDonTwantTo
August 23rd, 2010
2:56 pm
You show your license when you go in the door and get checked off a list, right? You go inside, get your ballot and they want your license again. What for you say? So they can scan the barcode on the back of your license just before they scan the barcode on your voting card. Voting is supposed to be secret. Don’t tell me they aren’t tying my driver’s license into my vote! I’m madder’n hell about it.
Clara Morrison
August 23rd, 2010
2:58 pm
“The Justice Department in 2008… said federal law required the state to verify a voter’s identity, but not his or her citizenship.” Seriously?? We don’t want non-citizens voting–it’s like the world has gone mad. Of course, you should have to prove citizenship before you vote!
A. Lucas
August 23rd, 2010
3:03 pm
Why do you call the process “a controversial state system of verifying voters’ identification and citizenship”?.
What is controversial about trying to restrict access to the ballot box to qualified voters?
The (Justice) department called the process “seriously flawed” because it subjected minority voters to “additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register or vote.”
The same DOJ that dropped the case against the Black Panther Voter Intimidation accusation?
Why is the burden “erroneous”? There are people waiting in line to emigrate to the U.S.A. to shoulder the enormous burden (?) of citizenship.
You are asked for more information when you charge a pair of shoes.
Pablo
August 23rd, 2010
3:03 pm
As a poll worker in Georgia I can tell you what I am verifying when you step up to my table:
Are you a registered voter? Are you in the right voting precinct? Have you already voted? These are all done by looking at the voting database under the name, address, and birth date you provide. Lastly, I am making sure the name you gave me is really you, hence the approved photo identification. And I can telll that I have been clearly instructed that an i.d. is absolutley required – no exceptions.
JBM
August 23rd, 2010
3:04 pm
Matt said this at 1:58: Please Bosch, we have proof Rep. Doornan lost to Sanchez via the illegal alien vote. We know the current guv. of Washington state won by voters who were later certified to be dead and somehow voted(Acorn). We know the Dems believe they should do ANYTHING to win because their ends justify their means. We now know Stewart Smalley up in Minnesota won by an illegal vote count(and what a piece of work he is huh liberal?). And so you go liberals, and so you go.
I asked for links to all this “proof”. So far, nothing. Anyone else out there care to help poor ole Matt find this “proof?”
IDonTwantTo
August 23rd, 2010
3:07 pm
Pablo @ 3:30
So why do you guys scan the bar code on the back of my driver’s license as well as my voting card? This is AFTER you have already verified my ID in your database.
Rick
August 23rd, 2010
3:07 pm
The department called the process “seriously flawed” because it subjected minority voters to “additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register or vote.”
==================
Just what “minority” voters are we talking about here? Maybe they are talking about illegal aliens (as a minority voting block).
If a “path to citizenship” is ever granted, a voter check like this will be sorely needed. Those currently known as illegal aliens will be “out of the shadows”!
poor Andy doesn't know the constitution
August 23rd, 2010
3:07 pm
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution is what you are looking for. also read the national voting rights act of 1965
redduke
August 23rd, 2010
3:10 pm
JBM, Minnesota Majority dot org studied just ONE element of voter fraud in Minnesota and uncovered hundreds of examples that are being pursued by prosecutors. was it enough to overturn? No but that only took me 5 minutes of research. The fact is ACORN and other Leftist organizations are hyjacking the voting system and only through the use of good, free and open technology can it be cleaned up.
JBM
August 23rd, 2010
3:12 pm
redduke at 3:10, Gimme that “proof”. Come on, you can do it. Gimme the links.
Pablo
August 23rd, 2010
3:13 pm
Scanning the driver’s license brings up your voting registration information faster than the old method of typing out your last name – it shaves off a few seconds for each person. It is not required, and if you don’t feel comfortable doing it, just ask them to look you up manually.
SWalker
August 23rd, 2010
3:16 pm
We’ve had voter ID in Indiana since 2006. They check it when you walk in. They don’t scan it. In Indianapolis we used to have a terrible time with voter fraud. Once a news team followed a bus full of people being driven from one poling location to another. It was needed.
Mutual
August 23rd, 2010
3:17 pm
I can tell you, moving here from Florida 5 years ago I had to have my birth certificate, drivers license from my previous state (or another form of picture ID) and my social security card, I have had a drivers license since I was sixteen with a clean record, so it is not as easy as some might think to obtain a Georgia License.
bob
August 23rd, 2010
3:17 pm
JBM, you keep asking for links for a thread that does not accept links then joke about someone else being able to read. Google works, try it.
Jimbooo
August 23rd, 2010
3:17 pm
Hooray!!!!!!! Go Georgia. Only 56 to go if you are in Obama land.