What a narrow minded and ignorant statement.
Many blacks and whites who were born during the Depression were birthed by midwifes, as well as today in certain parts of this country. There is no official record of the birth therefore it's impossible for them to meet 5 he new voting ID requirements. Others, the poor you so disdain, simply can't afford it.
Put down that wide brush, mkay?
Reality check:
GeorgiaÂ’s Voter ID Lawsuit, Seven Years Later: Disenfranchised, or Still Voting?
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When Common Cause Georgia — a liberal “citizens’ lobby organization” — originally filed a federal lawsuit in 2005 over Georgia’s voter ID law along with a number of other plaintiffs, the organization claimed that hundreds of thousands of Georgians would be unable to vote. They produced witness after witness — who signed affidavits under penalty of perjury — claiming that they did not have a photo ID and could not obtain the free Georgia photo ID the law provided, and therefore would be turned away at the polls. The plaintiffs lost their lawsuit (as well as a state court action) after the federal court concluded that the law was neither discriminatory nor a burden on voters, and that none of them would be unable to vote.
Was the court wrong? Were the claims of these witnesses true? Were these individual Georgians prevented from casting their ballots?
Official state voting records show that the court was right. Many of these witnesses — again, who signed affidavits — went on to vote in the 2008, 2010, and 2012 elections.
Clara Williams was a 68-year-old African-American resident of Fulton County, Georgia, and a named plaintiff in Common Cause’s suit. Because she had been adopted, Mrs. Williams swore in an affidavit that she was “afraid that election officials will not allow me to vote because I do not have (and cannot obtain) a Georgia Photo ID in my name as it appears on my voter registration.”
But voting records show she voted in local elections in 2009, and in state and federal elections in 2010 and 2012.
When Amanda Clifton got a divorce in 2005 and changed her name, she swore the same thing in an affidavit: “I am afraid that election officials will not allow me to vote because I do not have (and cannot obtain) a Georgia Photo ID in my name as it appears on my voter registration.”
But voting records show that Clifton voted in the 2008, 2010, and 2012 elections.
Annie Johnson, then a 75-year-old African-American woman, cited economic hardship, physical disability, and the lack of a car as reasons why she would be unable to vote.
Annie Johnson voted in 2008, 2010, and 2012.
Ronnie Gibson, then a 49-year-old African-American man, signed an affidavit fearing disenfranchisement because he did not have and could not obtain a free photo ID card.
Georgia records show that he had no problems voting in the 2008, 2010, and 2012 elections.
Ruth Butler, then an 89-year-old white resident of DeKalb County, claimed she would be “unable to obtain a photo identification card without great personal and economic hardship.”
But there she was, voting in 2008, 2010, and 2012.
Betty Kooper (90), Pearl Kramer (80), Norma Pechman (84), Eva Jeffrey, and Cheryl Simmons (45) all cited economic hardship as the reason for their inability to get a Georgia ID card, yet all of them voted in the 2008 election. (Several of these voters have passed away since voting in 2008.)
Georgia voting records disprove the insistent claims that voter ID laws strip minority and elderly voters of the right to vote. These witnesses, after signing sworn affidavits that they did not have and could not obtain a Georgia voter ID card, nevertheless did obtain ID cards and did cast their ballots.
Similar sky-is-falling claims are now being raised over the North Carolina and the Texas voter ID laws, and these claims will doubtless prove to be as baseless as the claims from Georgia. (Several faux martyrs [4] have already been identified by critics of these new laws.)
The Department of Justice also recently launched a suit against Texas, claiming that the Texas law violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against black and Hispanic voters. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act forbids any voting qualification that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizens of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” The complaint against Texas claims that lower income and car-ownership rates will make it more difficult for blacks and Hispanics, in comparison to whites, to obtain a photo ID.
The complaint in the original Georgia case also made such claims. A number of the witnesses in the Georgia case signed affidavits citing their economic circumstances, or the inability to drive, or the fact that they could not afford a car as a major reason for their supposed inability to obtain a voter ID. Several of the production-line affidavits read: “I have certain circumstances that make my obtaining a Georgia identification card burdensome. In particular, my economic circumstances make me unable to obtain a photo identification card without great personal and economic hardship, I am not able to afford a car, and I do not have the economic means” to obtain the free voter ID card.
These Georgia voters managed to meet the requirements of the law and to vote after the court rejected their hyperbolic claims. Further, and contrary to what opponents said would happen in Georgia and Indiana, whose ID law was upheld up the U.S. Supreme Court, the turnout of minority voters went up, not down, in those states after the ID law was implemented.
How did the DOJ's case against the Texas voter ID law go?
Badly. Very, very badly -- for DOJ.
The Justice Department presented what it said was evidence that as many as 1.5 million Texans donÂ’t have the government issued photo i.d. required to vote, but Attorney General Greg Abbott says of the people on that roll, 50,000 are dead, 330,000 are over the age of 65 and can vote by mail, where a photo i.d. is not required, and more than 800,000 are on the list improperly.
Among the people who the DOJ listed as ‘lacking the required documentation needed to vote’ are Former President George W. Bush, San Antonio State Senator Leticia Van de Putte, and Licia Ellis, who’s husband, Houston state Senator Rodney Ellis, on Wednesday blasted the voter i.d. law as ‘just like the racist murder of James Byrd’ who was dragged to death in east Texas in 1998.
In fact, University of Texas students conducted a telephone survey of random people on the DOJÂ’s list of people who allegedly donÂ’t have the documents required to vote, and found that more than 90% of them, including 93% of African Americans and 92% of Hispanics on the list, actually have a photo i.d.
Which brings us to Victoria Rodriguez. The San Antonio teenager was the only individual in a flurry of ‘experts’ the Department of Justice called to the stand to represent the 1.5 million allegedly set to be disenfranchised under the Texas law. Rodriguez testified that she not only lacks a photo i.d., but lacks the documentation need to obtain one, and State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer said requiring her to pay to obtain those documents would amount to an illegal ‘poll tax.’
Under cross examination, Rodriguez admitted that she has a birth certificate, a voter registration card, and a Social Security Card, and only two of those three forms of i.d. are required to obtain a free voter i.d. card offered by the DPS. Rodriguez testified that she ‘doesn’t have time’ to go the DPS office to obtain the voter i.d. card, but she testified she had plenty of time to fly more than 1500 miles to Baltimore, catch a train to Washington DC, and sit for hours in a federal courtroom to testify about how unfair the Texas voter i.d. law is.
Perhaps the most embarrassing for the Justice Department was the testimony of its alleged expert witness, Harvard Professor Stephen Ansolabehere.
He testified that his research shows the law is ‘more likely to affect black and Hispanic voters worst than white voters.’
But under cross examination, Ansolabehere testified that in fact ‘almost no one is excluded’ by the requirement to vote.
Another Department of Justice ‘expert’ testified that the Legislature ‘intended’ to discriminate against minorities when it passed the Voter I.D. bill. But J. Morgan Kousser’s comments under cross examination show he knows little to nothing about the Texas Legislature (he referred to State Sen. Leticia Van De Putte as the enate Minority Leader, a position that doesn’t exist in the Texas Legislature) and lawyers for the state pointed out that he said the U.S. Supreme Court ruling which upheld a similar voter i.d. law in Indiana, a decision which was written by Justices O’Connor, Kennedy, Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas, was written so the five, laughably, could ‘promote white supremacy.’
Kousser also claimed in a book that Republicans are ‘not legitimate representatives’ of minority communities, and that any African American or Hispanic who supports voter i.d. ‘has been manipulated and misled by Republicans.
In fact, Kousser admitted that he got many of the ‘facts’ used to buttress these bizarre claims from ‘Wikipedia,’ an on line encyclopedia that anybody, including Kousser himself, can upload information onto.
Objections to Voter ID laws are utterly groundless.
Progressives hate them because they can't steal elections.