LETTER TO USA TODAY ON VOTER ID LAWS

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris helped George W. Bush steal an election when she illegally disqualified thousands of Democratic voters by falsely accusing them of being convicted felons

Dear Editor,

Your editorial "GOP's anti-fraud regulations smack of vote suppression" hit the nail on the head: instead of trying to win over voters with better ideas or more competent governing, in recent years the GOP has a national strategy of using every means possible to suppress voters who are likely to choose a Democratic candidate. In the 2000 election, it was the Florida Republican Secretary of State who helped George W. Bush win a razor thin election when she disqualified thousands of predominantly Democratic voters who were falsely accused of being convicted felons. It is not a coincidence that a number of Republican controlled state legislatures, including ours In Georgia, out of the blue passed voter ID laws even though this had never been a problem. Meanwhile, our State loosened the requirements- and increased the chances of real fraud- for absentee ballots, because those voters are more likely to vote Republican. The spokesperson for the right wing Heritage Foundation, Mr. von Spakovsky, who wrote the "opposing view" to your editorial, had the right argument but the wrong side when he said that the plaintiffs in the Georgia lawsuit challenging the State ID law "couldn't produce anyone who would be unable to vote because of the voter ID requirements." The truth is that the State couldn't produce a single person who had ever cast a fraudulent ballot using a fake identification. But if Mr. Von Spakovsky were honest, he would have to admit that the sudden national Republican passion for ID laws isn't meant to prevent all Democrats from voting- their hope is to discourage enough (like the old poll tax and literacy test) so that Republicans will win close elections. And that stinks.