I don't know why this surprised me. The Bush Administration has been willing to play politics with health at the FDA; why wouldn't they play politics with voting rights at the DOJ?
A team of Justice Department lawyers and analysts who reviewed a Georgia voter-identification law recommended rejecting it because it was likely to discriminate against black voters, but they were overruled the next day by higher-ranking officials at Justice, according to department documents.
The Justice Department has characterized the "pre-clearance" of the controversial Georgia voter-identification program as a joint decision by career and political appointees in the Civil Rights Division. Republican proponents in Georgia have cited federal approval of the program as evidence that it would not discriminate against African Americans and other minorities.
But an Aug. 25 staff memo obtained by The Washington Post recommended blocking the program because Georgia failed to show that the measure would not dilute the votes of minority residents, as required under the Voting Rights Act.
The memo, endorsed by four of the team's five members, also said the state had provided flawed and incomplete data. The team found significant evidence that the plan would be "retrogressive," meaning that it would reduce blacks' access to the polls.
A day later, on Aug. 26, the chief of the department's voting rights section, John Tanner, told Georgia officials that the program could go forward. "The Attorney General does not interpose any objection to the specified changes," he said in a letter to them.
Outrageous.
For those who aren't familiar with this issue, the bullet. Georgia law requires that a voter present a form of identification in order to vote; otherwise, the voter must cast a provisional ballot. Until recently, there were 17 acceptable forms of identification. Last session, the Republican majority in the General Assembly struck 11 of those 17. Now, a voter must provide state-issued photo identification to vote.
The Republicans claimed that this would reduce fraud. However, they presented no evidence of any fraud that might have been prevented by this requirement. Further, the same law loosened restrictions on absentee voting, which does not require that the voter provide state-issued photo identification.
The Democrats opposed the law, because they felt it would disproportionately harm poor, minority, and elderly voters. In Wisconsin, where Republicans have tried to pass a similar bill, the Democratic governor offered this evidence of the disproportionate impact of the law on those voters:
An analysis of Department of Transportation records has found that minorities and seniors lack driver's licenses at rates far higher than do white people between 18 and 65.
[Gov. Jim] Doyle's spokeswoman, Melanie Fonder, said Monday that the study was evidence the proposal unfairly targets bastions of Democratic voters. Among black males between ages 18 and 24, 78% lacked a driver's license, the largest percentage of any demographic in the study. Other groups in which a majority lacked a driver's license were black males of any age (55% lack a license); Hispanic women of any age (59%); and black women, Hispanic men and Hispanic women between ages 18 and 24 (all between 57% and 66%).
"Those groups typically have strong Democratic turnout," Fonder said, "and that's who the Republicans have targeted with that proposal."
By contrast, only 17% of white men and white women of voting age in Wisconsin lack a driver's license.
Clearly, the intent was not to reduce fraud. The intent was to make it more difficult to vote for those who cast a ballot at the polls and without state-issued photo identification - Democrats - and to make it easier to vote for those who cast a ballot in the mail - Republicans.