The Georgia "exact match" voter registration law at first seems to depend on Identification Numbers, but then it doesn't.
Under the Georgia law, a "board of registration" is required to verify identity before any voter registration application will be accepted as valid. There are two ways for the board of registration to verify identity.
One is to compare Identification Card Numbers provided by the voter registration applicant "with the applicant's record on file with the [Georgia] Department of Driver Services or the federal Social Security Administration[.]" Ga. Code Ann. § 21-2-220.1(c)(1) (emphasis added).
The way this is done is that "local county election officials take the information from the voter registration application" and input it into a Georgia-wide computer voter registration system called "Enet." Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda, Inc. v. Kemp, Order Granting Preliminary Injunction, Doc. No. 33, filed November 2, 2018 (N.D. Ga. Case No. 1:18-CV-04727-ELR). Download Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda Inc. v. Kemp Order Granting Preliminary Injunction Doc. No. 33 filed Nov. 2 2018 (N.D. Ga. Case No. 1.18.CV.04727.ELR)
Verify a person's identity by comparing what "local county election officials" input into a computer against what employees of the Department of Driver Services have input into a computer? Or by comparing the local county election officials' input against what employees or hourly-wage contractors of the Social Security Administration have input?
Seriously?
Who has not been at the receiving end of a harmful mistake or some other painful failure by say a bank?
Or by a credit card company?
Or by a department store?
Or by the Social Security Administration? (Which is notorious for declaring people dead when they are still very much alive, but the others and many like them are certainly no more reliable than the government.)
The other way that the board of registrars can by statute verify a voter registration applicant's identity is by "[t]he applicant providing sufficient evidence to the board of registrars to verify the applicant's identity[.]" Ga. Code Ann. § 21-2-220.1(c)(2) (emphasis again added).
To say again, seriously?
What does "providing sufficient evidence to the board of registrars" even mean? It sounds like the ancient Courts of Equity in which the Chancellor would determine the measurement of a "foot" by measuring everything against the size of his own foot. That led to substituting instead the standard measurement of a "foot" of 12 inches applicable to all.
For a law to be constitutional, in basic and simple terms the statute must be a means to serve a legitimate purpose of the government enacting it, in a way which is either rational or compelling depending on the level of judicial scrutiny involved. How is either subsection (1) or subsection (2) of the Georgia "exact match" voter registration law, both of which are quoted above, even rational?
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