Since 2009, Arthur Remillard has had a difficult time proving that he exists. But why?
In 1933, Arthur was delivered by a midwife and later adopted, according to a Gainesville Times report. He has no birth certificate in state records.
On May 5, 2009, Georgia passed legislation (Senate Bill 86) creating Statute 21-2-216(g) which states that Americans would have to further prove their U.S. citizenship before their voter registration could be accepted. Because of the burdensomeness of SB 86 and similar legislation that is currently pending across the states, individuals, like Arthur, may find themselves living in a Catch 22.
Without a state-issued ID, Arthur has not been able to collect Social Security nor receive state aid. He needs a driver’s license to apply for a birth certificate and a birth certificate to apply for a driver’s license. While a passport would be an acceptable substitute for a birth certificate, Arthur says “I don’t need a passport. I don’t go anywhere out of the country.”
Before passing SB 86, Georgia had already been under scrutiny about a procedure to verify citizenship to determine voter registration status. In 2008, the state was sued by voting rights groups over voter list checking procedures that they said “amounted to a ‘systematic purging’ of voter rolls just weeks before the election,” the Associated Press reported on August 13.
Georgia is one of several states that is required to seek “federal approval before changing election rules because of a history of discriminatory Jim Crow-era voting practices.”
The “systematic purging” was a procedure to verify citizenship of voter applicants by comparing Social Security and driver’s license numbers. Those who were not verified were then required to take further steps to prove citizenship.
In May 2009, however, the U.S. Department of Justice found that the system was not only in violation of federal law, but also “seriously flawed,” erroneously flagging a disproportionate number of African-American, Latino, and Asian-American citizens as ineligible voters. In a letter to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Loretta King explained that the state’s citizen checking procedure was inaccurate, unreliable, and worse, discriminatory.
According to DOJ analysis, Georgia’s program “flagged a large number of persons who have subsequently demonstrated that they are in fact citizens, indeed, of the 7,007 individuals who have been flagged…as potential non-citizens, more than half were in fact citizens.”
In 2008, there were roughly 19 states that proposed legislation that would require Americans to show proof of citizenship, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The group also reports that as many as 7 percent of Americans – 13 million individuals – do not have ready access to citizenship documents. Currently, Arizona is the only state to require voter registrants to present proof of citizenship before voting.
For the past few years, there has been a noticeable increase in legislation calling for U.S. citizens to prove that they are, in fact, Americans before their applications to register to vote are approved. One such bill in Tennessee (Senate Bill 194) – before it was amended – required voter applicants to show evidence of citizenship.
According to an earlier version of the Tennessee legislation, all county administrators of elections would have had to reject any application to register or re-register to vote if it is not accompanied by certifiable documents. For some average Americans, these standards have proven too difficult to overcome – like Arthur Remillard.
Yet, because of the dedication of a number of non-profit organizations in Tennessee, Senate Bill 194 and the similar House version 270 were amended removing the retrogressive language from the bills and have been replaced by a check box that states:
“_____I affirm that I am lawfully present in the United States.”
While, this is a victory for the citizens of Tennessee, Georgia officials continue to push for preclearance from the Justice Department to implement its 2009 proof of citizenship law and stands by its similar list maintenance procedure. Currently, three states – Massachusetts, New York, and Wisconsin – have pending legislation related to the proof of citizenship to register to vote. To monitor these bills, sign up for Project Vote’s weekly Election Legislation eDigest here.