Voter Tax for poor blacks-Republican Shame
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.
Link Here
Judge halts Georgia voter ID law
Link Here
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.
Link Here
Judge halts Georgia voter ID law
Link Here
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 6:33 AM
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