On October 18, a U.S. District Court judge in Georgia enjoined the state from enforcing its new law, requiring voters who vote at the polls to show a government-issued photo ID. The injunction is 124 pages long and seems to be based on the 24th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids a poll tax or “any tax”. Georgia state ID costs $20. The state says it exempts the indigent, but the 24th amendment applies to all voters, not just indigents. Common Cause v Billups, 4:05-cv-201-HLM. If the ruling is not reversed on appeal, it may eventually have positive implications for states that require large filing fees (with no alternate means to get on the ballot) for all candidates except “paupers”.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
For how many years would the State ID be good?
$20 for eight years is only $2.50 per year.
How else should they prevent voter fraud?
I think the new law was reasonable.
Cost is truly a trivial factor.
What is a greater concern is the whole concept of “government-issued identification.”
“Voter fraud” is more properly “vote fraud” or “election fraud,” which some people consider a redundancy anyway.
What is wrong with the Iraqi process?
A purple finger writes and, having writ, moves on, never to vote again.
New laws, by the way, are very seldom reasonable.
Been a lot of debate about this law in Georgia. If voter fraud was a big problem in Georgia then this law might make sense. But this is not the case. The Secretary of State in Georgia has stated several times that no cases of voter fraud has occured in Georgia in recent memory that this new law would have prevented. Also this new law makes it extremely easy to vote absentee. No id is required to get an absentee ballot and you do not have to give a reason for voting absentee. The real problem with voter fraud in Georgia has been with voter fraud has been with absentee voting so once you examine the facts about voter fraud in Georgia this law makes no sense.
To calculate the cost of obtaining the state ID, you can’t simply include the $20 fee. You must also include the opportunity cost of taking the time to go to a government office, wait in line, and go through the requisite bureaucracy as well as the cost of transportation to and from said office, all of which usually costs _more_ for poor people. Furthermore, if someone doesn’t have the money, they have to borrow it, which also has a cost.
And I’m not even an economist. I’m sure I’ve missed some points.