The U.S. Justice Department has struck down a controversial Georgia election law as a violation of Voting Rights Act:

In a letter released on Monday, the Justice Department said the state's voter-verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a "discriminatory effect" on minority voters in Georgia.

"This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote," said Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's civil-rights division. Ms. King's letter was sent to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker on Friday.

(…)Justice Department officials said the citizenship match has flagged 7,007 individuals as noncitizens but that many of those matches have been shown to be in error.

"Thousands of citizens who are in fact eligible to vote under Georgia law have been flagged," the Justice Department letter said.

Last month, we spotlighted a recently-passed Georgia law (SB 86) requiring voters to provide citizenship documentation when registering. That law also requires database matching, and we noted at the time that such systems routinely disqualify a high percentage of lawful voters – sometimes as high as 30%. Now we have proof that Georgia’s system would be no different, and the Justice Department acted accordingly.

Hopefully, the Justice Department will soon strike down SB 86 as well.

Yesterday was a dramatic day in the Texas House, as Democrats stuck to their principles and used parliamentary rules to block a Republican-sponsored voter ID bill that would have disenfranchised thousands of law-abiding Texas citizens.

In order to force their bill through the closely-divided House, Republicans scheduled other votes on a series of important bills immediately after the voter ID bill – essentially holding these bills hostage against a midnight deadline to advance legislation. When Democrats blocked the voter ID bill, the bills waiting behind it couldn’t come up for a vote either.

Hundreds of bills thus became collateral damage from the Republican vote-suppression scheme, including:

• A bill guaranteeing health insurance for children in the state’s child support system;

• Funding for a new, regional windstorm insurance pool for the Gulf Coast;
• A package of healthcare quality and affordability bills to provide health insurance options for small businesses, fight childhood obesity, and promote best practices within the healthcare industry; and
• A measure to overrule Gov. Perry and accept $555 million in extra federal stimulus funds.

The stimulus bill actually was brought up in the final 15 minutes before midnight and could have passed, but Republican legislators prevented that vote in retribution for their failed voter ID bill.

Now, after weeks of refusing to schedule earlier votes on these and other important priorities, Republicans are trying to blame the Democrats for the failure of these bills, but Democratic Caucus Chair Jim Dunnam is having none of it:

"Someone who controls the agenda, and decides when we are going to hear bills, can't complain when they set the bills that they say are so important on the last few days," Dunnam said. "They’re the one s who set them on the last few days and now they are complaining that we’re not going to get to them.

(…)"Why wasn’t insurance reform on the house floor weeks ago? Why wasn’t the windstorm insurance bill on the floor weeks and weeks ago? Why’d we go home last week every day at 6 or 7 o'clock so that committees could go have dinner? And then turn around and say that [Democrats] are wasting time? Those were decisions that the Speaker made."

Republicans can try all they want to spin away their own failure, but in the end, the record is clear: Democrats spent the day defending the voting rights of thousands of law-abiding Texans, but when petulant Republicans didn’t get what they wanted, they responded by punishing Texas’ children, property owners, and laid-off workers.

Last week, the Illinois Legislature unanimously passed a Democratic-sponsored bill to remove several key barriers to student voting in the state. The University of Illinois Daily Illini explains:

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Naomi Jakobsson and Sen. Mike Frerichs, both of Champaign-Urbana, allows people voting for the first time to present a university-issued ID and a piece of mail at their local address or an apartment lease as proof of identification. In past elections, including last fall's, many students were turned away from polls on campus for not having proper documentation. The old requirements demanded voters show a driver's license with a local address, which many students don't have, or two other forms of ID with a local address, and leases were not accepted.

This Democratic effort to improve student election participation stands in stark contrast to state-level Republicans around the country, who have a long and shameful history of working to disenfranchise student voters by throwing up frivolous and unreasonable roadblocks, including:

• A 2004 effort in New Hampshire, in which Republican election administrators wrongly threatened students with the loss of scholarships, revocation of health insurance, and even imprisonment for attempting to register at their college addresses;

• A 2007 bill, supported near-unanimously by Maine Republicans, which would have revoked the residency status of students at Maine colleges, preventing them from voting at their university addresses (thankfully, Democrats blocked the bill); and
• Letters in 2008 from Colorado Republican officials illegally threatening students with “criminal penalties” for not getting Colorado driver’s licenses and car registrations after registering to vote. Outraged Democrats called the move “bull****,” and “not supported by law.”

These are just a few of the most outrageous examples of Republican scare tactics that Democrats have been fighting at the state level for years. Illinois’ new law is a giant step in the right direction should serve as a model for other legislatures and the federal government.

And for any students or parents who are concerned about this, the law is unequivocal: students have the right to register and vote using either their parents’ home address or their local address wherever they go to school.

With little exception, it’s entirely the individual’s choice.

Georgia Republicans in the legislature and Gov. Sonny Perdue have enacted a controversial new law that imposes onerous new documentation burdens for new voters and requires registration information to match records in the state driving database. This new law threatens to disenfranchise thousands of lawful voters and hamstring the efforts of nonpartisan registration groups.

The law's most widely-reported change forces new voters to submit documentation proving US citizenship (such as a passport or birth certificate) with their registration forms -– a requirement that has voting-rights advocates outraged:

The law revived a racially charged battle in Georgia. Critics complain it would disenfranchise poor and minority voters — many of them U.S. citizens — who lack required documents.

Starting Jan. 1, 2010 if Justice approves, the Georgia law would require all applying for voter registration to provide documented proof of U.S. citizenship. Those who stay on active voter rolls and have already registered before then would not have to submit such documents as a U.S. passport, naturalization documents or driver's license or birth certificate.

"It's tantamount to a poll tax," said Elise Shore, regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She said the group was considering a legal challenge if the law clears the Justice Department.

Another, arguably more worrying, section of the law orders the Secretary of State to verify all new registrations using the state’s Driver Services database.

Ohio faced this same issue in 2008, when Ohio Republicans sued to force the Democratic Secretary of State to perform similar database matching. In that case, which eventually went to the Supreme Court, independent analysts like NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice noted that such requirements routinely invalidate thousands of lawful voters –- sometimes at rates as high as 30 percent.

If upheld by Justice Department officials, who must evaluate the changes under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the new law will likely make it much more difficult to register to vote, and it could leave thousands of lawful voters disenfranchised by clerical typos completely beyond their control.

For years, Republicans in Texas have been trying to force a major new voter ID law through the state senate.

Democrats, though in the minority, have been successful in keeping that legislation from reaching the floor because long-standing chamber rules require that two-thirds of the members consent for any bill that is being considered for debate.

Now, that seems likely to change in 2009.

Late last month, Republicans passed a proposal that would alter the way that voter ID legislation is brought up for debate:

The measure, which carves out a special exemption in Senate rules for the voter ID legislation, would make it impossible for Democrats to block the proposal as they did in 2007.

The move threatens to ignite partisan division in the chamber not seen since a bitter fight in 2003 over redrawing boundary lines for congressional districts in Texas. That change sharply increased the number of Republican U.S. House members in the state.

The change in procedure was opposed by all 12 Democrats in the Senate and a lone Republican.

Democrats in the state rightfully contend that there is no evidence of voter fraud to demand such legislation.