In an editorial published November 12 ("GOP wants to protect right to vote — for right people"), Atlanta Journal Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker examines the so-called voter fraud about which Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel (Rep) has made such a big deal.
During Handel’s tenure, Republicans campaigned against voters’ rights, claiming a "widespread and pernicious campaign of voter fraud." One result of their campaign was the institution of a controversial system of verifying citizenship of newly registered voters (the procedure has been questioned by the U.S. Department of Justice and is the subject of a lawsuit); another demands that voters must show a picture ID before casting their ballots.
Says Tucker, "It’s classic sophistry; there is virtually no fraud by fake voters showing up at the polls...Their campaign against voter fraud is, well, a fraud."
In other words, Mickey Mouse may have been registered, but he never showed up to vote.
Despite these attempts by Republicans to disenfranchise thousands of poor or elderly voters who didn’t have driver’s licenses – and who tend to vote for Democrats – Obama’s GOTV defied their tactics.
As Obama’s poll numbers rose, Republicans desperately created one tactic after another to try to discourage voters from going to the polls.
"The alarm they raised was so absurd that it was comical." (Tucker)
Jim Powell, a Democrat running for the Public Service Commission, became a personal target for Handel, who insisted that he "didn’t meet residency requirements." Despite the fact that courts kept ruling against her, Handel continued attacking Powell until a unanimous ruling of the Georgia Supreme Court stopped her.
"Having first declared that Democrats were having little luck registering new voters, she later did every thing she could to try to keep as many new voters as possible from casting a ballot. The Department of Justice finally put state election officials on notice because they subjected an unusually high number of registered voters to background checks. It later turned out that, in most cases, errors such as typos in electronic databases were the problem, not voter fraud." (Tucker)
State Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah), who, with other Republican officials, supported early voting earlier this year in an attempts to make elections more convenient for their suburban constituents.
But when Johnson saw hundreds of thousands of black voters voting early, even waiting up to eight hours exercise their civil rights, he wasn’t such a fan any more.
"Even if it was well-intentioned, we may find that we’ve opened up more opportunities for those people who are looking for ways to cheat," Johnson said, adding that early voting allows "the ability to have time to go out there and pick up homeless people, and carry them to the polls, and register cats. It just opens up a 30-day period of time when, if your goal is to undermine democracy, you’ve got 30 days to do it instead of one." (emphases mine; source of quote unknown)
"Johnson didn’t explain how cheating is any more likely with early voting than with Election Day balloting, since the same state-sponsored photo identification is required for both." (Tucker)
And when Handel saw that legally registered voters were lining up for hours to vote early, she refused to try to extend early-voting hours, claiming that Georgia law didn’t explicitly give her authority to do so. (Florida Gov. Charlie Christ extended early voting there under a similar law; Republican GA Gov. Sunny Purdue probably would have chosen waterboarding before doing so.)
Handel has said only newly registered voters were checked, or those who changed an essential piece of information on their voter registration card, including name, date of birth, driver’s license number or Social Security number, and by checking voter registration application information against records held by the Georgia Department of Driver Services.
Last fall, Handel gave DeKalb County a list of voters who were not thought to be citizens; there were more than 7,000 names.
Many voters on that list were flagged incorrectly, from something as simple as transposed numbers on their drive’s licenses or because they had common names. Some had been registered to vote for 25 years.
Nearly 5,000 voters who could not present documentation of citizenship (naturalization papers, passports, birth certificates) had to vote on paper "challenge" ballots because the state was unsure whether they were citizens.
It was up to those voters to attend county hearings on the Friday following Election Day to confirm their citizenship, or their ballots would be discarded.
So let’s take a look at the tsunami of voter fraud.
· In Gwinnett County, 300 people cast challenge ballots. Of those, 192 returned to the county elections office to bring documents proving they are citizens.
But 108 voters did not return. Gwinnett’s board of elections held a hearing Friday morning to give those voters one last chance to prove their citizenship. No one attended, so the board didn’t count their votes.
· In Cobb County, 227 people cast challenge ballots. Of those, 161 returned to furnish their documents.
But 51 voters who cast challenge ballots had not provided proof of citizenship when the county held its hearing. Those votes were discarded.
· In DeKalb County, hundreds of people might have fallen into the non-citizen category, according to the list of 7,000.
Sixty-six voters cast "challenge ballots." Of those, 27 returned to furnish their documents.
But 39 voters who cast challenge ballots had not provided proof of citizenship when the county held its hearing. Those votes were discarded.
· Fulton County had 23 challenge ballots. Thirteen people returned to show their documents this week.
But ten voters who challenge ballots had not provided proof of citizenship when the county held its hearing. Those votes were discarded.
· The Clayton County Board of Elections and Registration voted unanimously to accept two citizenship challenge ballots after voters provided the appropriate identification.
But four voters who had not provided proof of citizenship when the county held its hearing. Those votes were discarded.
· In Cobb County, 227 people cast challenge. Of those, 161 returned to furnish their documents.
But 51 voters who cast challenge ballots had not provided proof of citizenship when the county held its hearing, and their votes were discarded.
Source: Most challenge ballots substantiated, AJC November 08, 2008, by Mary Lou Pickel with staff writers Kent Miles, Pat Fox, April Hunt and Megan Matteucci
Not a single one of those voters attempted fraud by voting with false documents.
If my math is right (please do check me), there was a total of 849 challenge ballots cast. Of those, 263 voters did not return with proper identification, or about 30%.
Any guesses how many of those voters were unable to take off a Friday afternoon to bring their papers (and I use this word intentionally) to county hearings? Or had no transportation? Or had no babysitter?
More important, 70% of voters whose citizenship was challenged did go to the hearings and had their ballots counted.
Not quite the "widespread and pernicious campaign of voter fraud."
But here comes the moment of Zen, in the form of an op-ed by Handel published today. I know we’re not supposed to use more than 200 words of a quote, but this is too delicious to snip. Forgive me.
Voters the real winners in recent election
Cynthia Tucker’s column accuses me of being a "partisan martinet" because of my efforts to uphold Georgia’s election laws and for failing to bend to the demands of partisan elected officials and special interest groups. As usual, Tucker’s criticisms are based largely on opinion rather than fact and couldn’t be further from the truth.
The voter verification process is among the policies she attacks. Even though the process is required by federal law and was upheld by U.S. District Court, Tucker criticizes me for verifying the accuracy of a voter registration applicant’s information. What is also lost on Tucker is that the process actually works, as the AJC’s own reporting showed ("Most challenge ballots substantiated," Metro News, Nov. 8). Hundreds of naturalized citizens were indeed able to vote in their first election a few weeks ago, while hundreds of potentially fraudulent votes were prevented from being cast by non-citizens.
When it comes to voter fraud, the real "myth" is Tucker’s repeated claims that it does not exist. This fall, my office worked to bring indictments against a sitting State Court judge in Chatooga County on three counts of voter fraud. We are also investigating numerous allegations of voter fraud from this election, including voters casting ballots in multiple states, questionable voter registrations, attempted in-person voter fraud and even voting by non-citizens.
Tucker also reprises her now debunked criticisms of the state’s photo ID requirement. Despite her claims that the requirement disenfranchises voters, the results prove otherwise. Although the percentage of active voters casting ballots declined slightly from 2004, more Georgians cast ballots during this election than any other election in Georgia’s history. To date, millions of Georgians have presented ID when casting their ballots and not a single person has come forward to say that they were unable to vote because of it.
The imaginative claim of a partisan motivation behind my decision on the residency of a Public Service Commission candidate is baseless and false. Georgia law has long required that candidates must reside in the districts in which they are running and that their homestead exemptions were proof of residency. While I respect the Georgia Supreme Court’s ruling, its decision obliterates any real, objective standard for residency and replaces it with purely subjective criteria that, ironically, can now be manipulated in the future for political or partisan purposes.
Tucker also persists in repeating dishonest and factually incorrect statements in her criticisms of me for not pursuing weekend voting, as Florida and North Carolina did. She selectively omits the fact that both states have had weekend voting on the books for quite some time and that Georgia law leaves polling procedures to local boards of elections.
Tucker also overlooks that Georgians enjoy perhaps the greatest ballot access in the country, with a full 45 days in order to cast a ballot. Maybe if Florida and North Carolina had followed Georgia’s lead, they would not have had to declare an "election emergency" to extend hours. I, for one, support this access and politically motivated calls to scale it back will certainly meet with protests from our citizens.
While the overwhelming majority of county election offices administered an efficient election process, there is always room for improvement. I remain extremely concerned and frustrated with the lack of leadership and preparation in some areas, particularly in Fulton County.
Going forward, I will also continue to work with county elections officials to examine ways to increase the counties’ ability to respond to longer than normal waiting times, including additional polling places during the advance voting week.
I want to thank Georgia voters for looking past the rhetoric and for participating in this historic election. A record number of Georgians cast ballots this year, and this should be embraced and celebrated.
What do these people have against cats that want to vote?
btw, tip jar is a few comments down -- y'all are too fast for me!