Georgia: Tanner defends DOJ's voter I.D. decision
AP reports: The head of the Justice Department's voting rights division told members of the NAACP that when he cleared Georgia's voter ID law he didn't look at whether it violated the Constitution.
"All we can look at is racial discrimination, we can't look at anything else," John Tanner told the annual meeting of Georgia's NAACP.
"You can't look at whether it's a poll tax, you can't look at whether it violates the Equal Protection Clause (of the Constitution)."
Tanner said that Justice Department lawyers are very limited in what they can consider when they "pre-clear" state laws under the Voting Rights Act. The voting chief faced criticism after a memo revealed that he signed off on the Georgia law in 2005 over the objections of four of the five career employees who concluded it ran afoul of the voting rights law.
Tanner said Thursday that Georgia statistics examined by Justice Department lawyers showed that minorities are "slightly more likely" than non-minorities to have a photo ID. -- Voting chief defends approval of Georgia's voter ID law