Georgia judge denies petition to force secretary of state to process an estimated 40,000 "lost" petitions

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2014/10/28/3585449/court-allows-voter-suppression/


Would anyone like to lock in a prediction now as to whether or not this judge is correct? Who here honestly believes that the secretary of state will ultimately process these voter registration forms and permit these citizens the right to vote? Voting is already underway, and they 40,000 citizens of Georgia - mostly minorities and mostly from democratic leaning districts - are being disenfranchised right before our eyes.

When you can't compete in the world of ideas...employ racist voting tactics, refuse to walk on stage because your opponent has a fan...aggressively gerrymander districts...etc...etc...

ATLANTA, GEORGIA—On Tuesday, Judge Christopher Brasher of the Fulton County Superior Court denied a petition from civil rights advocates to force Georgia’s Secretary of State to process an estimated 40,000 voter registrations that have gone missing from the public database.

Though early voting is well underway in the state, Judge Brasher called the lawsuit “premature,” and said it was based on “merely set out suspicions and fears that the [state officials] will fail to carry out their mandatory duties.”

Angela Aldridge, an organizer with the group 9 to 5 Atlanta Working Women who has been working to register voters for several months, told ThinkProgress she was “furious” when she learned of the outcome: “That impedes people’s rights,” she said. “People need information before they go out to vote and they don’t even know if they’re registered or not. They were discouraged, upset, kind of frazzled, not really knowing what was going on. What can you even say to people who want to vote but possibly can’t? They might get disengaged and say, ‘Why vote? It doesn’t matter.’ It’s really disheartening.”

The New Georgia Project, who spearheaded the voter registration drive and brought the lawsuit against the state, vowed Tuesday to “continue to pursue all legal avenues available.” But with the election mere days away, there may be little remedy for the tens of thousands of people who submitted all necessary documents, but have still not received a registration card. Four of those impacted voters were present at the court hearing, but were denied the opportunity to testify.

Dr. Francys Johnson, President of the Georgia NAACP, who represented the 40 thousand voters in the court, called the ruling “outrageous.”
“All in all – a republican appointed judge has backed the republican Secretary of State to deny the right to vote to a largely African American and Latino population,” Johnson wrote in a press release.

On Monday, dozens of Georgians occupied the Secretary of State’s office to demand he meet with them and explain what happened to the tens of thousands of missing registrations. At that protest, in which eight activists were arrested, former American Government teacher and civil rights lawyer Marsha Burrofsky told ThinkProgress she suspects foul play.

“When we started registering people this spring, people were saying, ‘You know, I registered six months ago, but I haven’t gotten anything yet!’ We thought that was strange,” she said. So we sat down with our list of registrations and checked, and about 20 to 20 percent were not showing up. We truly don’t know where things stand with them.”

Burrofsky said the people she registered in Dunwoody, Georgia, a more affluent and conservative community, did show up in the system, while those in more diverse and low-income communities in DeKalb County mysteriously disappeared.

“It just hadn’t occurred to me that this would be a tactic that the Secretary of State could use. I was very naive, I guess. I feel absolutely sick that this election is being stolen,” she said.

With the races for the state’s governor’s mansion and Senate seat too close to call, the missing voters could not only sway the political control of the state, but the political control of Congress’ upper chamber. Aldridge, who has spent several months registering voters in Fulton and Cobb County, told ThinkProgress that it is imperative to increase participation in marginalized communities so that elected officials better represent the constituents.

“I don’t believe that the government represents the whole state yet,” she said. “The politicians always say, ‘These are our values.’ But it has nothing to do with my personal values! That’s why we have to get out to vote, to make sure our state represents our values.”

Longtime Atlanta resident Atuarra McCaslin with Moral Monday Georgia, who organized Monday’s action, summed up his feelings on the situation. “It’s an unjust thing going on, he said. “Those 40,000 now can’t participate in the voting process, even though it’s their right as citizens. The Secretary of State doesn’t really care about those 40,000 people, who are primarily people of color and youth. Those kids have been waking up politically, and now their voices are going unheard. It’s just not right.”

Texas is even worse.



http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/26582-republican-officials-in-texas-knew-voter-id-law-would-disenfranchise-500000-before-bills-passage

Republican Officials in Texas Knew Voter ID Law Would Disenfranchise 500,000 Before Bill's Passage

By Ross Ramsey, The Texas Tribune
25 October 14


Republican state officials working to pass a voter photo ID law in 2011 knew that more than 500,000 of the state’s registered voters did not have the credentials needed to cast ballots under the new requirement. But they did not share that information with lawmakers rushing to pass the legislation.
Now that the bill is law, in-person voters must present one of seven specified forms of photo identification in order to have their votes counted.
A federal judge in Corpus Christi has found the law unconstitutional, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the state can leave it in place for the November election while appeals proceed.
The details about the number of voters affected emerged during the challenge to the law, and were included in the findings of U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos.
During the 2011 legislative struggle to pass the voter ID law, she wrote, Republican lawmakers asked the Texas secretary of state, who runs elections, and the Texas Department of Public Safety, which maintains driver’s license information, for the number of registered voters who did not have state-issued photo identification.
The answer: at least a half-million.
There was evidence, the judge wrote, that Sen. Tommy Williams asked the Texas Department of Public Safety to compare its ID databases with the list of registered voters to find out how many people would not have the most common of the photo IDs required by the law. No match was done to see how many people did not have other acceptable IDs. “That database match was performed by the SOS, but the results showing 504,000 to 844,000 voters being without Texas photo ID were not released to the Legislature.”
Gonzales Ramos sourced that finding in a footnote, noting that in a deposition, Williams, a Republican from The Woodlands who has since left the state Senate, said he requested that information and then did not share it with fellow lawmakers.
That many voters could make a real difference. Rick Perry, a Republican, beat Bill White, a Democrat, handily in the 2010 race for governor, winning by almost 13 percentage points. That was a difference of 631,086 votes. Earlier this month, the secretary of state announced that a record 14 million Texans are registered to vote in the coming general election. Using that office’s 2011 estimate, it is no stretch to think that 3.6 percent to 6 percent of current registered voters do not have the photo IDs now required to cast a ballot.
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, Democrat of Houston, testified in the federal case that he asked the secretary of state for the information and never received it. But not everyone was uninformed. Citing depositions from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Ann McGeehan, an elections official with the secretary of state at the time, the judge wrote, “Lt. Gov. Dewhurst was aware of the no-match list results showing 678,000 to 844,000 voters being potentially disenfranchised.”
A spokesman for Dewhurst, Andrew Barlow, said the lieutenant governor was aware of the results when he gave his deposition, but not when the Legislature was debating the bill.
The no-match list was not enough, apparently, to prompt voter ID proponents to revisit the measure during the 2013 legislative session. So far, three statewide elections have been held using the new voter ID requirements, without clear evidence that it affected either turnout or outcomes: a vote on constitutional amendments in November 2013, and the party primaries and runoffs earlier this year.
The fate of the legislation was never in question in 2011. On the final vote, only 47 of 150 House members and 12 of 31 senators voted against it. Litigation started immediately and led to the ruling this month that the law is unconstitutional; has “an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans; and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose.” The judge capped that by saying the law acts as an unconstitutional poll tax.
The Republicans who wanted the law won in the Legislature, and the Democrats who did not want it won the first round in court. However, the Supreme Court left the law in place, apparently wanting to avoid any disruption in this year’s elections.
At the moment, that leaves a legal contradiction: The law is both unconstitutional and in force.

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Voter fraud ....