EHRHART LIST PROS TO VOTER ID BILL

Wednesday, November 30, 2005 ~ Marietta Daily Journal

State Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), the House Rules Committee chairman, accepted a challenge from this columnist recently to make the case for the new voter photo-identification law.

Dear Don,

The law wasn't passed to remedy one certain instance of fraud. It was passed to eliminate the potential for fraud, which is clearly present.

1. Under the old law, it was possible for anyone to vote as anyone else. The right to vote is a revered one, but it is only the right to vote as yourself and once. The Legislature has the right and the responsibility to close potentials for fraud and that's what they did.

2. Those who look for specific examples can look to-.the Atlanta Journal Constitution's 2000 report on the 5,000-plus dead voters who voted (over the previous 20 years in Georgia).

3. The very nature of the fraud - impersonation - makes it almost impossible to catch. If you're good at it (and it's hard not to be if you can just go to a place where no one knows you, vote for a person who never votes and sign a statement that says you're that person), how will you get caught?

4. We live in a time in which identity theft is rampant and easy. Why do we care more about whether people prove who they are when they write a check, rent a movie, go into a building etc. than when they vote?

5. The recent report of the AARP GA president voting early in DeKalb was so ironic- He said the only form of the 17 forms he had was a driver's license (photo ID) but he wasn't going to show it because he didn't have to - instead, he signed the affidavit that says I am who I say I am. That's ridiculous-.

6. I should make the point that the General Assembly is not going to back down - there will be a photo ID requirement. Judge Murphy's arguments about the cost and poll tax notwithstanding, I think you will find a bill crafted for this session which satisfies such anyway. We will make a photo ID free to anyone. His arguments are absurd anyway. If you run out the thread on his foolish poll tax then you could consider the gasoline you had to purchase to drive to the polls a tax. Or-. since the law says you must be clothed in public, the clothes you were forced to buy and wear are a poll tax.

As for whether Judge Murphy is a Democrat and an activist at that, I would direct you to his lineage as relative of the former speaker and his service as a Democratic politician in the Georgia House.

Bottom line: The General Assembly is sent to pass laws we need. There is a huge opportunity for fraud, and so the General Assembly has the right and obligation to make sure that opportunity isn't exercised.

~ Earl Ehrhart

Dear Earl, Let the readers decide. But your poll tax analogies and Judge Murphy's guilt by kinship just don't fly.

dmckee9613@aol.com

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