Fraud, Reform, And Political Power: Controlling The Vote, From
Nineteenth-Century America To Present-Day Georgia

Issues Brief

Written by Tova Andrea Wang, Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation

The Century Foundation, October 27, 2006

Converted from pdf downloaded January 26, 2007 from

http://www.tcf.org/Publications/electionreform/wang_historyvoterfraud.pdf

INTRODUCTION

Voter identification has become one of the hottest topics in the debate over
election reform, both in Congress and in states across the country. The
rationale for requiring photo voter identification at the polls, proponents
argue, is that there is widespread fraud that must be stopped.
Identification supporters continue to make this argument no matter how many
times they are confronted with the facts: study after study and
investigation after investigation show that polling place fraud of the sort
that identification would prevent has rarely occurred. Meanwhile,
thousands-perhaps millions-of eligible voters would be disenfranchised by
such a requirement, affecting election outcomes. Identification requirements
would be most likely to impede the poor, minorities, the disabled, the
young, and the elderly-all groups that historically have tended to vote for
Democrats. And identification advocates who raise concerns about voting
place fraud are closely associated with the Republican party.

Largely overlooked in the current tempest is the extent to which virtually
the same debate has occurred again and again throughout American history
since the 1800s. To provide perspective on today's circumstances, this brief
looks back at how accusations of voter fraud in the past have been used to
justify actions that made it more difficult for less advantaged citizens in
particular to cast ballots.

Voter Registration Procedures

Voter registration requirements enacted in the nineteenth century included a
wide variety of measures implemented in the name of reducing fraud but with
an underlying agenda of restricting the shape of the electorate for
political purposes. Although some genuinely may have argued that the use of
a voting registry would prevent duplicate voting and the like and thus help
to ensure clean elections, political parties abused the new requirements for
their own gain. As historian Tracey Campbell points out, "while some
supporters of a registry system expressed their concerns out of a heartfelt
wish to 'preserve purity,' most undertook their work out of a desire to
preserve partisan advantages under the guise of electoral reform." 1

For instance, throughout the states, as such measures were passed,
Republicans sought to impose more onerous registration restrictions in urban
areas, claiming they were the main sources of fraud-though they were also
the primary locus of Democratic voters. As Harvard University Professor
Alexander Keyssar explains,

In 1836, Pennsylvania passed its first registration law, which required the
assessors in Philadelphia (and only Philadelphia) to prepare lists of
qualified voters: no person not on the list was permitted to vote. Although
the proclaimed goal of the law was to reduce fraud, opponents insisted
that's its real intent was to reduce the participation of the poor-who were
frequently not home when assessors came by and who did not have "big brass"
nameplates on their doors.... In New York, the 1830s witnessed the beginning
of a prolonged partisan struggle over voter registration. Early proposals
for a registry were unmistakably designed to hinder the voting of Irish
Catholic immigrants and thereby reduce Democratic electoral strength.2

Political scientists Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward go further in
saying,

Early voter registration laws emerged out of conflicts in which state and
local parties were very active contenders, if not the principal
contenders.... The sources of these partisan conflicts are clear. State
Republican parties stood to gain from disenfranchising urban and
working-class voters, and northern Democratic parties stood to lose, not
only because the laws were aimed at the cities where the Democrats were
stronger, but because the immigrant and working-class voters who were more
likely to be affected were the key to Democratic power in the cities. 3

The pattern in New Jersey was similar. That state enacted its first voter
registration law in 1866. "Faced with a huge influx of immigrants, and a
population spike, the Republicans took control of both houses of the
legislature in 1866 and then took aim at what they deemed to be the
Democratic Party's reliance on illegal votes, particularly those from the
cities. 4 The Republicans forced through a law creating a voter registration
system in which only those who personally appeared before the board of
registry and proved their qualifications was registered to vote.

Arguing that the registry laws made voting "troublesome, inconvenient, and
expensive," the Democratic press charged that the laws were being instituted
to keep from "the polls the poor working man, who could not afford to take
time off from his job to register." When the Democrats returned to power in
1868 they overrode the Republican Governor's veto and abolished
registration. But in 1871, the Republicans took control again and reinstated
registration, confining it solely to the seven cities in the state with
populations of more than twenty thousand people. 5

Claims of fraud in the state led to further actions over the next several
years to make the registration process more difficult. In 1890-only in more
populous districts-"a potential voter had to: (1) register for a general
election in person on the second or fourth Tuesday of September, or on the
Tuesday two weeks before the election; (2) answer twelve questions about his
name, address, age, place of birth, and employment; and (3) sign the
registry book. When the lists were printed, the local police had to verify
the authenticity of the names and addresses." In less populated districts, a
registry was compiled by conducting a door-to-door canvass. 6

In New York in the late nineteenth century, claims of fraud again were used
by partisans to justify selective restrictive voter registration rules.
Professor Ronald Hayduk recalls how Republicans tried to make it more
difficult to register in the cities, which Democrats opposed.

In 1867 a debate between Democrats and Republicans took place that was to be
repeated time and time again in New York state. An amendment proposed at the
constitutional convention required a statewide compulsory voter registration
law. Democratic delegates from New York City insisted that registration
should be uniform throughout the state, while upstate delegates, who were
Republicans, stoutly maintained that registration laws should not apply to
rural sections. 7

Hayduk argues that fraud-or, actually, the specter of fraud-was used more
generally by Republicans in New York to gain and maintain political power:

Charges of fraud and corruption appear to have been used for political
purposes... Republican organizations in New York City beat Democratic ones
primarily by fueling hostility toward the party system, often through the
use of state committees for investigating electoral practices. Periods of
party-machine control of government alternated with periods of reform
control, and the city's self-appointed reformers used exposes and
investigations as a central strategy to gain political advantage. Then as
now, documentation of incompetence, graft and under-the-table dealings had
potential to undermine the public's trust in the incumbent administration.
The reform movements used exposes of corruption to gain power, and in the
process they laid claim to their own leaders' right to rule. 8

Hayduk even argues the allegations of corruption against Boss Tweed and
Tammany were greatly overstated, and were used at the time for the purposes
of partisan gain through restrictive registration laws.

Soon after New York City's intensely scrutinized elections under Tweed,
there were further attempts to increase the stringency of registration laws
and to expand such laws to other cities. The primary new restriction was
that voters must register in person yearly at an election office or site,
whereas previously election registrars had drawn up lists of registrants.
This shifted the burden of registering from government to the individual.
The new requirement was introduced ostensibly to reduce the possibility of
election fraud, but it proved particularly burdensome for working people who
found it difficult to register at the hours and locations available. 9

Felon Disenfranchisement

Laws disenfranchising felons and ex-felons, many passed post-Reconstruction,
were often largely designed with the purpose of disenfranchising African
American voters. By 1920, "all but a handful [of states] had made some
provision for barring from suffrage men who had been convicted of a criminal
offense, usually a felony or 'infamous crime' .... In the South, these
measures often were more detailed and included lesser offenses, targeting
minor violations of the law that could be used to disenfranchise African
Americans. 10 In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled Alabama's felon
disenfranchisement law unconstitutional, finding that racial discrimination
was the motivating purpose of its enactment in 1901. The crimes selected for
inclusion in the amendment were believed by delegates to the constitutional
convention to be those that were more frequently committed by blacks. "The
delegates to the all-white convention were not secretive about their
purpose." 11

While obviously much of this was animated by pure racism, felon
disenfranchisement laws were and continue to be a mechanism for partisan
advantage. And again, advocates argued that such laws were necessary to
ensure honest and clean elections. During the late 1800s, since felon
disenfranchisement did not seem to be a deterrent or an effective form of
retribution, "states in the late nineteenth century drifted toward a
different rationale: that disenfranchisement of felons was necessary to
protect the integrity of elections and--in the words of a much-cited Alabama
Supreme Court decision--'preserve the purity of the ballot box.'" 12

Recent history shows how this has played out as more of a partisan weapon.
As Spencer Overton writes,

An estimated 1.6 million people in the United States have completed their
sentences but cannot vote. Despite the fact that 80 percent of Americans
favor restoring voting rights to these citizens, the disenfranchisement
persists because some politicians oppose extending the right to vote.... "As
frank as I can be," said Alabama Republican Party Chairman Marty Connors in
2003, "we're opposed to [restoring voting rights after completion of
sentence] because felons don't tend to vote Republican." Studies suggest
that just under 70 percent of former felons would vote Democratic.... In
2002, Republican U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky opposed federal
legislation extending the right to vote in federal elections to all former
felons who had completed their sentences. "States have a significant
interest in reserving the vote for those who have abided by the social
contract," Senator McConnell explained. "Those who break our laws should not
dilute the vote of law abiding citizens." But McConnell did not mention that
the voting restriction strengthens his political grip in Kentucky. McConnell
would have likely lost a tightly contested 1984 U.S. Senate race if it
weren't for Kentucky's ban on voting by former felons. 13

Again in 2006, after a judge ruled Alabama's felon voting restriction
unconstitutional, the Republican party claimed that it was an attempt by a
liberal judge to help Democrats at the ballot box. 14 Earlier this year, the
former state Republican chair of Washington State, Chris Vance, said
Democrats wanted to change the state's felon voting rights law because it
would benefit them. 15

The converse is also possibly true-Democrats who argue for felon voting
rights may indeed be motivated by persuasive democratic values, but they are
not blind to the partisan repercussions. If ex-felons had voting rights, Al
Gore would have won Florida and thus the 2000 election by several thousand
votes, and as many as five Senate elections would have gone to Democrats
instead of Republicans since 1974. 16

Disenfranchisement of "Paupers"

Paupers, that is, people on public relief, were denied the right to vote in
twelve states in the 1800s. Once again, it was alleged that their votes
could be used to commit fraud and must be prevented from tainting the
systemwhile at the same time the Republicans who tended to pass such
measures knew that the poor were more likely to vote for Democrats.

"Advocates of these laws frequently invoked a vivid, if implausible, image
of the trustees or masters of poorhouses marching paupers to the polls and
instructing them how to vote. 17 In 1932,

the Republican chair of the Board of Registration in Lewiston, Maine,
acquired a list of relief recipients from the town's overseers of the poor
and proceeded to strike 350 recipients from the town's eligible voters....
Enraged at what he regarded as an unjust and partisan act, Herbert E.
Holmes, the Corporation Counsel of Lewiston and a Democratic candidate for
the state senate, immediately sent a telegram to President Hoover....
Republicans in Maine, however, insisted that politics had nothing to do with
the registration boards' action: they were simply enforcing the state
constitution. 18

Residency Requirements

In the early nineteenth century, states began to enact residency
requirements for voting, in part because, advocates claimed, workers who
were more mobile were a source of electoral fraud. In truth, "Federalists
and Whigs tended to favor longer periods of residence, because they were
wary of the unsettled and the poor and suspect that most transients would
vote for Republicans or Democrats. The Democrats shared this analysis,
advocating shorter residency requirements in the hope of enfranchising more
of their own supporters." Whigs and Democrats as a result fought over such
rules in several states throughout the first half of the century. 19

Disenfranchisement of Women

Even the disenfranchisement of women until 1920 was deemed necessary to keep
the voting system pure. For example, in New Jersey, "By the early nineteenth
century, the balance of political power had shifted, charges of voting fraud
were rampant, and the Federalists, as well as two competing groups of
Republicans, concluded that it was no longer to their advantage to have all
'inhabitants' [the existing prerequisite to voting rights]--including women,
aliens, and African Americans-in the electorate." The New Jersey legislature
therefore passed a law that only free white male citizens could vote. "Those
who supported this retrenchment made little or no mention of the incapacity
or incompetence of women; they were simply fighting corruption, correcting a
'defect' in the constitution, and clearing up 'doubts' about the composite
of the electorate." 20

Immigrant Voting

Finally, putting additional requirements on immigrant voters-those who were
citizens and eligible to vote-was used to gain a partisan edge. In the
post-Civil War era,

While alien suffrage was being phased out, numerous states placed new
obstacles in the path of immigrant voters: most commonly these were
supported by some Republicans, opposed by Democrats, and justified on the
grounds that they would reduce fraud. One such obstacle was to require
naturalized citizens to present their naturalization papers to election
officials before registering or voting. Although not unreasonable on its
face, this requirement, as lawmakers knew, was a significant procedural
hurdle for many immigrants, who might easily have lost their papers or been
unaware of the requirement. 21

GEORGIA: A CASE STUDY

Georgia of course has its own rich history of African American
disenfranchisement, and thus early Republican decline, some of which
surpassed that of its Southern neighbors. For example, Southern history
scholar J. Morgan Kousser argues that "The cumulative poll tax, adopted at
Toombs' 1877 constitutional convention, insured that the Georgia GOP would
never rise again.... The Republican party was weaker in Georgia during the
1880s than in any other Southern state except South Carolina." 22

Kousser goes on to explore the partisan advantage reaped by the poll tax:

Were [the Democratic politicians] any less capable than their Republican
counterparts in Florida, Alabama, or Tennessee, or some of their Democratic
successors in Georgia? Was there more violence and intimidation in Georgia
than in Louisiana or Mississippi? ... Why did the poor white-black coalition
do so much worse in Georgia than in other Southern states? These questions
have no simple answers, but we do know that generous amounts of violence and
ineptitude, as well as tactical errors, were not peculiar to Georgia and
that poll tax laws in other state severely damaged lower-class opposition
parties. These considerations suggest that the unusual frailty of the
Republican party in Georgia was directly related to the fact that Georgia
was the only Southern state with a poll tax prerequisite throughout the
1880s. 23

Also of note, in 1908 the Georgia legislature uniquely passed what was
actually called the Disenfranchising Act:

The new law provided for registration by any male who was sane, had no
criminal record, had paid all taxes since 1877, had met the existing
residency requirements, and had satisfied one of the following requirements:
(1) had served honorably in wars of the United States or in the forces of
the Confederate states, (2) had descended from persons who had such service
records, (3) was of "good character" and could understand the duties of
citizenship, (4) could read and write in English any paragraph of the state
and federal constitutions or could understand and give a reasonable
interpretation of any paragraph of such constitutions, or (5) owned at least
forty acres of land or property assessed for taxation at a value of $500. 24

The array of Jim Crow laws that existed throughout the South, including
Georgia, until the civil rights movement of the 1960s is of course well
known. But discrimination in voting did not end with Jim Crow. From 1982 to
2005, the ACLU Voting Rights Project alone filed 141 lawsuits against
Georgia for violations of the Voting Rights Act. During that same time
period the United States Department of Justice blocked more than eighty
voting changes requested by state and local officials on the ground that
these changes were either deliberately designed to disenfranchise minority
voters or would have the effect of doing so. 25

1997 Voter Identification Law

In 1997, Georgia legislators passed its first voter identification
requirement for voting, 26 and, just like today, claimed that fraud was the
reason such identification was necessary. However, the claims then were
almost as inexplicable as they are now. Legislators from both parties
claimed the law was in response to the voting fraud scandal of Dodge County
that year.

The odd thing about that claim is that the Dodge County voting fraud scandal
was solely about vote buying-a form of fraud that an identification
requirement would do nothing to address. In that case, twenty-four campaign
workers pled guilty or were convicted of being part of vote buying
conspiracies-they offered between $20 and $60 per vote.

Some of the people who sold their votes were taken in groups to cast
absentee ballots at the Dodge County Courthouse. In one illustration of how
the schemes worked on election day, the indictment alleges that Wayne
Cartwright, named as an unindicted co-conspirator, received $3,500 from an
unnamed co-conspirator. He then distributed the money from his truck-$30 to
$40 per vote-to voters who had been transported to the polls by some of the
defendants. 27

Despite the fact that a voter identification requirement at the polling
place would not prevent vote buying, news reports from the time constantly
refer to the Dodge County case as the impetus for the requirement. The
Florida Times-Union reported when the Senate passed the bill, "With the
advent of motor-voter registration and criminal charges pending against 21
Dodge County residents for election fraud, Sen. Jack Hill, D-Reidsville,
said the public needs reassurance that the system can work with integrity.
'It doesn't take much fraud to cause uneasiness,' Hill said." 28

In early 1998, that same paper reported,

A month after sentences were handed down in Georgia's biggest vote buying
scandal in decades, New Year's Day brought a new law mandating that
Georgians prove who they are before they cast a ballot. The Dodge County
case convinced lawmakers of the need to force voters to display
identification before going into a polling booth.... "The Dodge County
incident made everyone a lot more aware of the problems with election
fraud," said Secretary of State Lewis Massey.... Massey said the federal
Motor Voter statute implemented in 1995 has created the "opportunity for
fraud" which, in addition to the Dodge County scandal, makes voter
identification necessary. 29

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the voter identification requirement
bill "is part of an election reform package pushed by Secretary of State
Lewis Massey to help prevent election fraud like the vote buying scandal in
Dodge County that resulted in 21 indictments." Ironically, at the same time
the legislature was considering the voter identification requirement, it was
deliberating a no-excuse absentee ballot bill. 30

2005 Voter Identification Law

Passage of Georgia's 2005 Voter Identification law-which required every
voter to present a government issued photo identification at the polls-was
highly acrimonious and completely partisan. Indeed there was Democratic
walk-out in both chambers during the debate. Democrats, particularly
African-American legislators, compared the bill to poll taxes and literacy
tests.

Again, when we examine the background history of this bill, questions must
be raised. The genesis of the bill is particularly interesting: the lead
Senate sponsor of the bill was inspired by the right-wing blogger Erik
Erickson, also known as RedState.com. As Erickson wrote in August of 2005,

After months of handwringing over what to do over voter fraud, we came up
with a suggestion as a first step: require photo identification at the
polls. Its simple and its commonsense. So, we suggested the idea down in
Georgia. Senator Cecil P. Staton, Jr. picked up the ball. Despite personal
attacks on his integrity, [the] Senator submitted S.B. 84 to require the use
of government issued photo id to vote at polling locations. 31

In an earlier post, Erickson responded to complaints about the requirement
by the Senate Minority Leader Robert Brown, a Democrat, by saying

"Brown, who I consider a notorious race baiter, enjoys throwing the race
card at Republicans. It seems to me that were Brown to have his way, we'll
see the Georgia Democrats return to their race rhetoric of the past going so
far as to say Republicans want to burn down black families' homes and put
them back in chains.... In fact, this is an issue that can help Republicans,
if used in the right way. We all now have to have identification to get into
a lot of federal buildings. So, why should it be easier to vote--a right we
certainly don't want abused.... Full disclosure: I helped write one of the
first drafts of the Voter ID bill." 32

Comments about the bill by its sponsor are also particularly illuminating as
to the sentiments behind it. The Department of Justice's review of the bill
revealed this interesting tidbit:

Rep. Burmeister said that if there are fewer black voters because of this
bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud. She said
that when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do
not go to the polls.... Rep. Burmeister also explained the exemption of
absentee ballots from the identification requirement. She does not support
this but accepted this into the final version because the absentee voting
process creates a paper trail, which will prevent vote fraud, and will
ensure that rural voters can vote even if they cannot make it to a DDS
office. 33

As was reported after its passage,

Augusta Republican Sue Burmeister-the lead House sponsor of HB 244-has said
that people who want to vote will go out and get a driver's license or some
other type of state-issued ID in order to meet the requirements of the new
bill. "Where there's a will, there's a way," she said. Mrs. Burmeister, who
is white, also dismissed the complaints that minorities would be facing
similar restrictions on voting that were used to deter blacks from the polls
in past generations. Mrs. Burmeister argued that many minorities are smokers
and wouldn't be able to buy cigarettes unless they already had some form of
photo ID. "I will make the contention that minorities, especially the poor
community, smoke more and the elderly smoke more than your other classes,"
she said.... Democrats note that buying cigarettes and driving a car are
privileges, unlike voting, which is guaranteed. 34

The complete refusal of the legislature to publicly consider the merits of
the bill or any potential disparate impacts of the voter identification law
in any meaningful way also tells us something about the perspectives of its
champions. According to the Department of Justice review, "Susan Lacetti
Meyers, Chief Policy Advisor to the Georgia House of Representatives, who
worked with Rep. Burmeister in developing the legislation, told us that the
Legislature did not conduct any statistical analysis of the effect of the
photo ID requirement on minority voters." 35

A member of the State and Local Governmental Operations Committee, which was
responsible for first reviewing the bill, wrote the following.

At no time during any of these hearings did the bill's proponents cite even
one example of voter fraud that would have been prevented by HB 244. After
hearing almost no meaningful testimony, the committee passed the bill along
partisan lines, with every Republican supporting it and every Democrat
opposing it.... Second, in the same bill, Republicans expanded the potential
for election fraud by stripping away restrictions related to absentee
ballots. Notably, cases related to absentee ballots constitute the largest
number of verifiable cases of fraud in Georgia, including the Dodge County
vote-buying case that was erroneously claimed as justification for this
bill. 36

Absentee Ballots

The states that have enacted the strictest photo identification rules have
exempted voters who cast absentee ballots-the one realm of voting in which
there has been some actual evidence of fraud. Again, it is not a mystery as
to who votes by absentee ballot and who does not. According to the U.S.
Census, one in nine white voters nationally voted by absentee ballot,
compared to only one in twenty-one black voters. 37 As the National
Commission on Federal Election Reform noted, "the highest rates of absentee
voting are among holders of graduate and professional degrees and people in
managerial and professional occupations." Similar findings were made by
Department of Justice Voting Rights Section attorneys reviewing the Georgia
Voter Identification law. They noted that it "appears that the lowest income
voters, who are the least likely to have acceptable photo ID, are also the
least likely to participate in absentee voting. 38 Kimball W. Brace and
Michael P. McDonald, in the Final Report of the 2004 Election Day Survey,
submitted to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, found that
jurisdictions with predominantly non-Hispanic White populations reported an
absentee ballot request rate of 10.9 percent, while jurisdictions with
predominantly non-Hispanic Black populations reported a rate of 5.7 percent.

CONCLUSION

Political actors have been using disingenuous claims of fraud, and fraud
allegations based on little or no evidence, to pursue measures that would
provide them with partisan gain throughout the country's history. Under the
guise of fighting fraud or ensuring honesty and integrity in the electoral
system, partisans have enacted "reforms" that may or may not have helped
combat fraud, but most certainly served to disenfranchise certain groups of
voters and thus control the composition of the electorate for political
advantage.

As many have noted, none more eloquently than Alexander Keyssar in his
seminal book The Right to Vote, access to the polls has ebbed and flowed
across American history, but the overall tide has expanded the franchise.
The history is primarily one of pure discrimination, whether against blacks,
immigrants, women, or the poor, and the subsequent growing sense of society
that such disparate treatment was not acceptable in American democracy.

But an undercurrent of this same history is a story of using claims of fraud
or "tainting" of the elections to enact reforms that are at least somewhat
intended to shore up and maintain power for one party or another. These
historical practices continue today, most starkly in the area of voter
identification, but in other areas as well. For example, partisans continue
to use the registration process to skew the composition of the electorate,
through such acts as severely constricting third party registration groups
who work to register the poor and minorities, and challenging the
registration status of certain select groups of voters just before Election
Day.

Of course, measures need to be taken to prevent and catch fraud that might
impact the voting process and election outcomes. But the decisions as to
where resources and energy ought to go in engaging in that fight must be
based on legitimate information of where fraud exists in the system and to
what extent. Phony allegations of fraud, or imagined instances of fraud,
cannot be the basis for establishing law and public policy, especially when
it comes to such a precious matter as the right to vote.

Notes

1 Tracy Campbell, Deliver the Vote (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005), p.
14.

2 Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democrag in
the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2000), p. 65.

3 Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, Why Americans Still Don't Vote
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), p. 32.

4 Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote.

5 Ibid.

6 Jason P.W. Halperin, "A Winner at the Polls: A Proposal for Mandatory
Voter Registration," Journal of Legidation and Public Poliy 3, no. 69
(1999-2000): 76-79.

7 Ronald Hayduk, Gatekeepers to the Franchise (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern
Illinois University Press, 2005), p. 41.

8 Ibid., pp. 39-40.

9 Ibid., p. 44.

10 Ibid., p. 162.

11 Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985).

12 Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote, pp. 162-63.

13 Spencer Overton, Stealing Democracy: The New Politics of Suppression (New
York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006), pp. 58-59.

14 Tim Howe, "Alabama GOP Says Judge's Ruling on Registering Felons Is
Attempt to Bolster Democrat Voting Rolls," Alabama State Republican Party,
press release, August 24, 2006.

15 Gregory Roberts, "Voting Rights of Felons at Issue," Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, January 30, 2006.

16 Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, "Punishment and Democracy:
Disenfranchisement of Nonincarcerated Felons in the United States,"
Perspectives on Politics 2 (September 2004) : 491-505.

17 Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote, p. 61.

18 Ibid., pp. 239-40.

19 Ibid., pp. 63-64.

20 Ibid., p. 54.

21 Ibid., p. 138.

22 J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction
and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1974), p.p. 210-11.

23 Ibid., pp. 213-14.

24 Laughlin McDonald, A Voting Rights Odussey: Black Enfranchisement in
Georgia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 41.

25 Daniel Levitas, "Georgia's Record Confirms that Voting Rights Needed,"
Rome News-Tribune, June 1, 2006.

26 The distinction between the recent Georgia voter identification law and
this old one is that the 1997 law allowed for a wide range of types of
identification to be used at the polls for voting, and if the voter could
not produce such identification, he or she was provided a regular ballot
upon signing a statement affirming his or her identity. The new law requires
a government issued photo identification, which includes only six types of
possible identification, and no affidavit option.

27 Bill Osinski, "Election Fraud Case 'Shocking; Marshals Arrest Most of 21
Named in Dodge County Indictment," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February
20, 1997.

28 Lawrence Viele, "Move to ID Voters Clears Senate," Florida Times-Union,
March 1, 1997.

29 James Salzer, "Voter ID Now Law in Georgia," Florida Times-Union, January
2, 1998.

30 Kathey Alexander, "'97 Georgia Legislature: House, Senate Send Miller
Bill Requiring Voter Identification," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March
22, 1997.

31 Erik Erikson, "Voter ID Precleared," Redstate.com, accessed August 27,
2005, 10:37 A.M.

32 Erik Erikson, "Brown Opposed Voter ID Law," Redstate.com, accessed July
28, 2005, 8:30 A.M.

33 "Section 5 Recommendation Memorandum: August 25, 2005," Factual
Investigation and Legal Review, U.S. Department of Justice, Voting Section,
Civil Rights Division.

34 Brian Bassinger, "Voter ID Bill Draws Concern," Augusta Chronicle, March
27, 2005.

35 "Section 5 Recommendation Memorandum," p. 6.

36 M. Kasim Reed, "The Voter ID Debate: A Problematic Solution for a
Nonexistent Problem," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 3, 2005.

37 "Section 5 Recommendation Memorandum."

38 See John Mark Hansen, "Verification of Identity," in To Assure Pride and
Confidence: Task Force Reports to Accompany the Report of the National
Commission on Election Reform (Virginia and New York: Miller Center of
Public Affairs and The Century Foundation, 2001), sec. VI, p. 4.

Written by Tova Andrea Wang, Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation.
October 27, 2006

Posted by Miriam V.