Lawsuit challenges Georgia electronic voting

[jefferson_dem]

The Associated Press
Published on: 07/13/06

Just days before Georgia's primary elections, a coalition of groups opposed to the state's
electronic voting machines filed a lawsuit challenging the system.

The legal challenge, filed Thursday in Fulton County Superior Court, claims the system is
illegal and unconstitutional because it fails to give voters a verifiable record showing their
ballot was recorded correctly.

Georgia implemented the new system in 2002.

"If I had some evil intent and I wanted to disenfranchise an entire state, what better job
could I do than what happened in 2002?" said Garland Favorito, a plaintiff in the suit and
co-founder of VoterGA, the coalition that filed the lawsuit.

<SNIP>

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/0714metvotingsuit.html

[TroglodyteScholar]

1. Hell yea...

...these are the heroes in my state!

[gademocrat7]

2. I agree.

[Up2Late]

3. Well, I'm not going to hold my breath, but I hop this works!

We have had a few "legal victories" as of late here in Georgia.

Former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes was able to get the Voter ID requirement put on HOLD for this July Primary, and I think someone else just got it put on hold for all of 2006.

Federal Judge Rules Voter ID Card Law in Georgia Is Illegal

By BRENDA GOODMAN
The New York Times
Published: July 13, 2006

ATLANTA, July 12 — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Georgia law requiring voters to present government-issued ID cards violated the United States Constitution by discriminating against minorities, the poor and the elderly.

If the preliminary injunction imposed by Judge Harold L. Murphy of the United States District Court in Rome, Ga., is not overturned on appeal, it may keep the law from being enforced until this case is settled.

Last week, a state judge temporarily blocked the law, ruling that it violated voter protections in the State Constitution. On Wednesday, the State Supreme Court denied an emergency motion by Gov. Sonny Perdue to overturn the ruling.

The Voter ID law, passed in March 2005 by the Legislature, which is Republican controlled, originally required voters to have drivers’ licenses or other government identification or to buy a special state card. In October, Judge Murphy struck down the law, saying the requirement to buy the special card amounted to an unconstitutional poll tax. The Legislature rewrote the law to make the cards free.

(more at link) <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/us/13voter.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>

[Sherman A1]

4. Agreed

I hope that we see more of the same elsewhere.

[SoCalDem]

5. It's a "safe' time to bring all this up

because there's "no time" to ctually correct anything, and all the attention will just spotlight the fact that there's an election coming.. It will get all parties stirred up, without actually having to "fix" anything..and then after the election, they will put this beast back on the shelf until a few weeks before the NEXT election..

In the USA these days, nothing is ever really corrected or seen to ...it's just talked about and then put away for another day.. :(