Mar 12 2010
Citizenship Checks Denied
Yesterday, I pointed out that part of the agenda of the Committee to Modernize Registration was to automatically add people to the voter registration rolls, regardless of whether their citizenship could be demonstrated. These voters would then remain on the rolls forever. The only way of preventing them from voting would be to have them sign something on election day. As I noted, I have emailed and written the Committee to ask for an analysis of all the states and whether citizenship status is tracked at their motor vehicle facilities. I still haven’t received a response.
In this modern age, the Committee to Modernize apparently isn’t too interested in using technology to verify citizenship, instead choosing to have these noncitizens deselect themselves from the process by not showing up to vote.
The Committee certainly has supporters at the United States Department of Justice. The DOJ has been in an ongoing battle with the State of Georgia. Georgia is attempting to use the Georgia driver’s database as well as the Social Security database to verify citizenship. DOJ says that because of its disproportionate impact on minorities, the Georgia plan is illegal.
We have actual evidence of the Department of Justice stepping in and denying the State of Georgia a very reasonable modernization of their own system. I wonder if those advocates of modernization will come to the defense of the State of Georgia and whether they’ll modify their own proposal to add a citizenship check?
The Georgia case is now going to the court system. How they fare will certainly be of interest to anyone who is looking for accuracy and integrity in our voter rolls.
It also begs the question as to what other states are doing to take advantage of databases that track citizenship. What we know is that the advocates of “modernization” have little interest in this aspect of modernization.
Here are a variety of the documents laying out the Georgia citizenship verification battle.
October 14, 2008 Georgia SOS Letter
December 10, 2008 Georgia SOS Letter
February 2, 2009 Georgia SOS Letter