When Republicans in Georgia created a new “voter-identification law” earlier this year, they knew a key hurdle would be approval from Bush’s Justice Department. As written, the law forced Georgians without driver’s licenses (disproportionately poor, black and elderly citizens) to pay for a state ID card in order to vote. The city of Atlanta, with a large African-American population, did not have a single facility where the cards are sold. It seemed like a pretty obvious attempt to discourage likely Dem voters from participating in the process.
And yet, Bush’s Justice Department approved it anyway, saying that it is consistent with federal civil rights laws. (Fortunately, a federal judge struck down the law last month, comparing it to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.) In light of the law’s discrimination problems, how did the DoJ approve of the Georgia law in the first place? Well, it’s a funny story.
A team of Justice Department lawyers and analysts who reviewed a Georgia voter-identification law recommended rejecting it because it was likely to discriminate against black voters, but they were overruled the next day by higher-ranking officials at Justice, according to department documents.
The Justice Department has characterized the “pre-clearance” of the controversial Georgia voter-identification program as a joint decision by career and political appointees in the Civil Rights Division…. But an Aug. 25 staff memo obtained by The Washington Post recommended blocking the program because Georgia failed to show that the measure would not dilute the votes of minority residents, as required under the Voting Rights Act.
The memo, endorsed by four of the team’s five members, also said the state had provided flawed and incomplete data. The team found significant evidence that the plan would be “retrogressive,” meaning that it would reduce blacks’ access to the polls.
A day later, on Aug. 26, the chief of the department’s voting rights section, John Tanner, told Georgia officials that the program could go forward. “The Attorney General does not interpose any objection to the specified changes,” he said in a letter to them.
In this case, career attorneys (i.e., those not hired by Bush) who specialize in civil rights law, found the Georgia law inadequate. They were overruled the next day by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his aides.
And the White House wonders why Bush has a 2% approval rating among African Americans.