Georgia showing that both sides are wrong on Voter ID

It’s been five years since Georgia enacted its Voter ID law, and it seems that the dire consequences predicted by the liberals have not happened. Contrary to their claims that the law would disenfranchise thousands of minority voters, the fact is that black and Hispanic voter turnout has increased dramatically, outpacing population growth.

Conversely, the law has not caused the discovery of rampant voter fraud either, as predicted by conservatives. While that may deflate the argument in other states that would seek to pass similar laws, the statistics do not necessarily prove there is no such thing as voter fraud. As the argument has gone in states where ID is not required for voting, proponents of Voter ID laws state they cannot prove there is fraud because no one is required to prove their identity in order to vote. The fact that Georgia has not seen cases of voter fraud since requiring ID doesn’t prove there were never cases of it in the first place. It merely proves that since people have to prove their identity in order to vote, they haven’t had any cases of people attempting to cast fraudulent ballots.

As for disenfranchising any voters, there were some voters whose ballots were not counted. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

Still, the law has had real and measurable effect for some voters: Since November 2008, the ballots of 1,586 Georgians didn’t count because of the law. (They arrived at the polls without a photo ID, cast provisional ballots, and did not return later with the required ID.) Overall, 13.6 million votes were cast in the state during the same period.

By the numbers, that works out to approximately 0.01% of all votes cast in Georgia since November 2008 were not counted as a result of people failing to comply with the Voter ID law there.