Challenge to photo ID law tries again

ATLANTA -- Anyone thinking the U.S. Supreme's ruling on a recent voter ID law settled the matter would be wrong.

The Georgia Democratic Party has launched a state and a federal assault last week by filing a new lawsuit in Fulton Superior Court, and a revival of an old one in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The same Atlanta lawyer, Emmet J. Bondurant filed both.

He found encouragement in the nation's top court decision to uphold a voter ID law from Indiana.

"The Indiana case is actually favorable," he said. "... Those principles, if applied in the Georgia case, lead to the invalidation of the Georgia law."

Not so fast, says Randy Evans, the Georgia Republican Party's lawyer and a member of the State Election Board.

"Even the Supreme Court justices who were against photo ID conceded that Georgia's statute was less restrictive than the one upheld by the Supreme Court," Evans said. "Anyone who believes that courts systematically rejecting (the high court's) position is a good thing just does not get it and probably never will."

Secretary of State Karen Handel, a Republican, says the challenges are only aimed at scoring political points.

"It's really pretty distasteful," she said. "... It's abundantly clear, at core issue, they're trying to stir up the pot. Give me a break, it's being filed by the Democratic Party of Georgia, so it's obviously political."
Bondurant has his own suspicions about the political motives, those behind the law in the first place. He said Republicans pushed it through to discourage voting by people too poor to own cars or need drivers licenses -- most often blacks who overwhelmingly vote Democratic.

"Considering the Republicans sponsored the legislation, don't be surprised by their motives," he said. "I'm not in the business of scoring points. I would never file any lawsuit I didn't intend to win."

Bondurant had a chance to question Republican officials under oath about their motives. He acknowledges they never revealed any sinister plots in court.

Still, he says, as many as half a million registered voters in Georgia have no drivers license, a figure Handel disputes. And just 7,500 voters have requested a free photo ID.

Having to go to the county registrar's office or 57 statewide offices of the Department of Driver Services to get an ID -- even if there's no charge -- amounts to an inconvenience and a transportation expense.

"It doesn't take a lot of inconvenience or discouragement to say, 'to hell with it,'" Bondurant said. "That isn't good for democracy."

He notes that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a "poll tax" that was as cheap as $1.50. So a cross-county trip for an ID when gas costs $4 can be considered even more suspect.

Also feeding his suspicions is the fact that the same law eased rules for voting absentee, a method more popular with Republicans. Their argument that anyone without a photo ID can merely vote absentee doesn't sound so simple for the quarter of the adult population that is functionally illiterate, Bondurant says.

The lawyer doesn't object in principle to requiring photo IDs, as long as there is a 10-year deadline for getting them. And the free, state-issued IDs would have to be available in grocery stores, housing projects and nursing homes, places that poor folks frequent.

Handel counters by pointing out the four glitch-free elections when the IDs were required, specifically the record turnout for the presidential primary in which Democrats outnumbered Republicans. That doesn't strike her as evidence that voters are being discouraged.

Of the 2.1 million voters in the primary, only 416 came without an ID. Then 198 of them returned with an ID in time to have their provisional ballots counted.

What about the 254 who didn't return with an ID?

"For all we know, it's because they weren't who they said they were," she said.

Every challenge to Georgia's law has failed so far, including one argued in the Georgia Supreme Court by former Gov. Roy Barnes. That one was dismissed because the plaintiff actually had an ID she could have voted with.

The law's opponents had trouble finding someone who couldn't vote because of the ID requirement. The Indiana case gave them a break by demonstrated that the U.S. Supreme Court would accept the case filed by a group rather than individual voters, meaning a suit by the Georgia Democratic Party is less likely to be dismissed.

The federal challenge to the Georgia law succeeded initially in a Rome district court until legislators made enough modifications to satisfy the judge there. That's what Bondurant is appealing.

He's asking for a rush decision before the July primaries, guaranteeing the issue will return to the Summer headlines.

With former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr winning the Libertarian presidential nomination, pollsters predict the election could be close here for the first time in decades. As Bondurant observes, half a million voters could make a big difference.