Voter Tax for poor blacks-Republican Shame

[Old Vet]

October 25, 2005

A poll tax is a poll tax is …

If we've learned anything about discrimination in this country over the past half century or more, it's that requiring people to pay a fee of any kind for the privilege of voting is illegal, indecent and unAmerican.
And it doesn't matter what you call it. Last week, in Georgia, Republican state officials argued in court that the state's new voter-identification law, the toughest in the nation, was necessary to combat voter fraud. A federal judge saw it differently. He looked at the requirement that voters without drivers licenses pay $20 or more for an official state ID card, recognized immediately that this would have a disproportionately negative impact on Georgians who are poor and black and declared ipso fact, hocus pocus, e pluribus you have to be kidding, that it was a poll tax.
Of course it was. And that's illegal. Georgia Republicans haven't gotten many votes from blacks in recent years, but this insulting law is hardly the way to win new supporters. What's more, there was apparently no office in Atlanta where the ID cards could be bought.
Some Republicans are talking about appealing the ruling. That would be adding salt to the wounds of Georgia blacks. Scrap the racist law and find a fairer way to fight voter fraud.

[wakeme2008]

1. the Georgia Repugs were stupid...

Had they planned for lots of places in the Black areas of Georgia they could have "looked" like this was about voter fraud... But they didn't.

It was only to stop Black votes. Period.

[Old Vet]

2. Exactly.............

[skylarmae]

3. republican shame implies a 'soul' or 'souls' ...

makes me wonder if there is even one among the throngs...

[RepublicanElephant]

4. gov sonny perdue got in office playing the racist flag card...

...and with a little help from electronic mystery ballot boxes.

[salin]

5. Looks like some repubs are trying to drag the state

right into the fifties. Just shows how emboldened and all-powerful they believe themselves to be - no fear of backlash, no sense that they could ever lose power. Given, as the OP says, the GOP in GA was winning elections w/out the African American vote - one has to ask... then what is the point of this modern day poll tax? A sign of more and more restrictive laws to be passed a way to begin to try to reenact Jim Crow? Sadly, the lack of strong, overwhelming national reaction to the massive and clear disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida sent a signal someone on Ga.

The bigger question is how many other states are quietly trying to do the same thing?

[roseBudd]

6. last 4 digits of the social and a birthdate should be sufficient

It is for my bank when I call them.

[KingFlorez]

7. They want a one-party state

Otherwise they'd make getting the ID easier. They will do anything to keep a grip on power. Joseph Stalin would be proud.