SWGA Politics

Karen Handel Just Doesn’t Get It – and Brian Kemp Agrees With Her

You see, she seems to think that a process that is so faulty that 60% of those it labels as “non-citizens” are in fact citizens is a good thing!

I wrote a decent amount on this topic in June, when it was first breaking. Back then, I used the actual DOJ and court documents to show exactly where MS. Handel erred in this situation, and those posts can be found here, here, here, and here for more details on the particulars of the issue.

The basics are this:

Ms. Handel has claimed that this is an issue with the “Obama Department of Justice”, yet it was a Bush Administration court that gave the initial order 9 days before the November 2008 elections and nearly three full months before Barack Obama was sworn in as President – and even longer before he actually had placed anyone in the Department of Justice or Court system.

This “common sense” program Ms. Handel created has been shown to be so flawed that 60% of the people it labeled as “non-citizens” were, in fact, citizens.

Regarding the “petition” itself, it is nothing more than a campaign ploy. A valid petition would have an actual petition statement available for you to read before signing, all Ms. Handel’s “petition” has is a place for your name and email information. It is designed to build her campaign database and NOTHING more.

Here is the email Karen Handel sent out Friday:

Karen Handel Calls on Obama Justice Department to Reverse Position on Non-Citizen’s Voting

Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel today sent a formal request to the Obama Justice Department to reverse course on its prohibition against the state confirming U.S. citizenship for people registering to vote.

The common sense program enacted by Karen’s office in 2008 used data from the Department of Driver’s Services and the Social Security Administration to make sure newly registered voters were actually U.S. citizens.

Last May the Justice Department banned Georgia from conducting citizenship checks – opening the doors to organizations like ACORN to register non-citizens and encourage them to cast ballots.

Following this move, Karen launched an online petition allowing Georgians to express their opposition to the Obama Administration’s move. More than 25,000 Americans signed that petition.

Today’s letter is the next step in a legal process to protect Georgia’s right to conduct its own elections and to ensure that all Georgia voters are actually citizens of this country.

“Citizenship verification worked in 2008, plain and simple,” Karen said. “Historic numbers of people of all ethnic backgrounds voted without difficulty and no qualified voter was kept from casting a ballot.”

To show your support for Karen’s fight against the Obama Administration and for citizenship verification of voters, please sign the petition today.

Pro-Amnesty MALDEF denounces voter check appeal to DOJ

Not only is Karen taking on the Obama Administration to ensure that only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections, she is also fighting other liberal groups such as the ACLU and MALDEF. It was no surprise this week when MALDEF attacked Karen for her efforts.

Karen announced the appeal on Wednesday, and according to yesterday’s article by the Associated Press, “the Mexican Legal Defense and Education Fund is denouncing Georgia’s appeal of the Justice Department’s rejection of a voter check plan.” The article also cites Elise Shore, regional counsel for MALDEF, calling Karen’s voting reforms a “flawed, unreliable system that creates barriers to voting.”

Karen is going to continue standing up against these groups to fight for sensible voting reforms. To read the entire article, follow this link.

The problem for Ms. Handel is that she is blatantly wrong here. At a minimum, according to my own understand of the law (and remember, I am NOT a lawyer), she is guilty of violating Federal law by making a change in the voting procedure in Georgia without explicit approval from the US Department of Justice. The particular Federal law in question is one that I personally feel is unconstitutional to begin with, but it has never been repealed or stricken by the courts, and therefore remains law, and that is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (reauthorized within the last couple of years for 25 more years). For those who are unaware, Section 5 of VRA basically says that in Georgia, several other states, and a few cities/counties in other states that aren’t wholly covered, to make ANY change to the elections process and/or procedure, you must get the US Department of Justice to approve your change BEFORE you implement it.

In the situation in question, Ms. Handel believed she was bringing the State into compliance with a Federal law called the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA) by tieing drivers’ license data into a way for the Secretary of State’s Office to verify citizenship. Nevermind the fact that – again, according to my own understanding here – the drivers’ license data was never meant to provide any indication of citizenship, since we want even illegals and other non-citizens to at least have the minimal competencies to drive on our roadways that a drivers’ license is proof of.

Of course, at least one of the candidates for her current job, Brian Kemp, said recently via twitter that “I support Sec. Handel’s defense of our elections”, which says to me that it is possible Mr. Kemp would follow in Ms. Handel’s fallacious footsteps.

Finally, a couple of very important points that I recently made on PeachPundit and feel should be repeated here:

I never said Voter ID was a bad thing – in fact, I think it is a very GOOD thing.

My contentions here are simple, and again, relate directly to HOW this was done, not WHAT (as far as general principle) was done:

1) Like it or not, Section 5 of VRA is Federal law. By implementing a change in voting procedure without getting explicit USDOJ approval beforehand, Karen Handel in her duties as Secretary of State violated that law. This is one of those situations where even *I* would more than likely play it EXTREMELY safe rather than sorry.

2) The process she implemented to achieve the noble goal of Voter Verification (NO ONE wants people voting who are not legally eligible) was so flawed that 60% of the people it labeled as ‘noncitizens’ were, in fact, citizens. In other words, it only labeled 40% of the people correctly! Back when I was in school, you had to get 70% of the stuff correct to pass the class!