If Black People Vote The Terrorists Win

The president has told us and told us and told us that we are a nation at war. And the War on Terror is not a typical war either. No, we aren’t facing the armies of a fascist alliance, nor are we standing up to the threat of nuclear annihilation at the hands of the godless communists. No, what we are fighting here is a…well...er…a guy. A guy hiding in a cave somewhere.

Ok but this is a really evil guy and while he may not have an army, or a navy or an air force, he’s got some other guys who don’t mind blowing themselves up, which, if you think about it isn’t the best way to win a war, but no matter. We’re at war. Our president is a war president and like all nations at war we have to set aside certain of our liberties in this time of dire emergency.

Liberties like…well…let’s see…umm…how about voting? Yeah, voting has to go if we want to win the war on the guy in the cave.

At the end of a losing battle during the past legislative session, Georgia state Representative Alisha Thomas Morgan burst into the civil rights anthem "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around" to protest the passage of a law requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls.

Traitor. Why does she hate America so?

Thomas and other black lawmakers know they are in for a battle as Republicans stand determined to defend the law, which requires voters who do not have a driver's license to buy a state-issued ID card for as much as $35 — a fee critics say hurts the poor, the elderly and minorities.

The law eliminates the use of some other forms of identification to vote, including social security cards, birth certificates and utility bills. Supporters, including Republican Governor Sonny Perdue, argued that the measure would help prevent “black people from getting in our way…I mean fraud. It would help prevent fraud.”

In October, a federal judge blocked Georgia from enforcing the law, saying the measure amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax because the state is not doing enough to make ID cards available to those who cannot afford them. “We didn’t see affordability as a big problem,” said Republican Senator Cecil Staton, the legislation's chief Senate sponsor. “Course no one up here is poor.”

Staton is proposing to amend the law during the upcoming session. He said he is willing to make the state-issued IDs free for the asking. “We’ll make them available out of the Atlanta office of the DMV,” he said. “Anyone in the state can come in and get one at no cost. After they pay the $75 recording fee.”

The measure heightened racial tensions in the Legislature last spring. Many black lawmakers were distressed when their stories of blacks being deprived of the right to vote in the South during the Jim Crow era fell on Republican ears, and most of them walked out of the Capitol when the bill passed in March. The widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, called on the governor to veto the measure. “Oh yeah. Like I’m gonna veto a measure that guarantees I’ll be living in fat city. That woman must have fallen on her head or something.

The law did not go into effect until August, when it was approved by the U.S. Justice Department. Under the Voting Rights Act. Georgia and other states with a history of denying blacks the vote must get the department's permission to change their voting laws. “See. The federal government certified the law,” Staton said. “They don’t want blacks voting either...I mean fraud, they don’t want fraud.”

Democrats argued that there has been little voter fraud in Georgia and that the legislation was a ploy by the GOP to suppress voting among minorities and the poor. “Well, duh.” said a spokesperson for Senator Staton’s office who did not want to be named. “You think we could win elections if everybody voted? How many rich white people you think there are in this state?”