A federal judge Tuesday blocked Georgia from enforcing a new state law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls.Let's make this clear: there isn't one person in Georgia that couldn't afford to buy a $20 ID card. Not one. If they can buy a television, if they can buy video games, or cookies and snacks at the grocery store, or any of these things, they can DEFINITELY buy an ID card in order to vote. Considering most states issue Driver's Licenses and ID's that last from four to six years, it's not as if they are going to buy it every other month.
In issuing the preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy said the law amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax because the state is not doing enough to make ID cards available to those who cannot afford them.
The requirement "is most likely to prevent Georgia's elderly, poor and African-American voters from voting," Murphy wrote. "For those citizens, the character and magnitude of their injury — the loss of their right to vote — is undeniably demoralizing and extreme."
The state forces stores to check ID's for alcohol. The feds forces banks to check ID's - and often more - when you make withdrawals and other bank transactions. Yet we are talking about a franchise where people have fought and died for for hundreds of years, and I'm just as able to pick any name, register, and vote under that name as I am with my own.
For a sitting federal judge to tell the nation that eliminating voter fraud is akin to a poll tax is morally and intellectually dishonest. This is a shining example of the need for high qualifications and intellectual standards for presidential nominees: this judge has no business being on the bench. This is more than a difference of opinion; it's a lack of common sense and a failure to interpret law.
Poll taxes were used to purposely keep poor people from voting, and they were issued at the time of registration or when you got to the precinct. These were added with the grandfather clause, which was an exemption for anyone whose grandfather or ancestors had the right to vote. Nevertheless, the poll tax was accessed on people in order to vote only. An identification card, which almost everyone needs nowadays, isn't just to vote. Even then, the Georgia Legislature has set up a program to allow people to get ID cards for free if they can't afford them. Thus, that defeats the purpose of a supposed poll tax, correct?
I ran a little check on Harold Murphy...He's the cousin of long-time former Georgia Democratic House Speaker Tom Murphy, which could explain how he got the job in the first place. An AJC writer wrote about how the Speaker was able to secure a reservoir onto their property, which overlapped against 1,000 acres of property that their family owned. According to the article, the property value rose greatly, and the state would have to compensate the family if the property was ever flooded. Murphy was defeated in 2002, and the Republicans took over the Legislature.
He presided over the infamous Georgia crematory case, where hundreds of bodies were exhumed and essentially left unburied behind the woods from the crematory by the owners instead of being cremated. However, he approved a deal keeping the families from filing civil suits against the crematory's owners, and instead allowed them to sue the insurance company! And get this one...Murphy also allowed a whites-only affirmative action plan to stand in Alabama, where white applicants were given preference at HBCUs, such as Alabama State.
Nevertheless, this ruling should not stand, and the Supreme Court should throw this out before the 06 elections.