One Person, No Vote (YA edition): How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally

by Carol Anderson

As the attorneys dug deeper into the data, they uncovered that 17.7 percent of black households did not have access to a vehicle as opposed to 4.4 percent of white households. Even more troubling were the statistics in the two counties that Atlanta spread across—Fulton and DeKalb. In Fulton, almost three-fourths of those without a vehicle were black people. In DeKalb, the figure was 63.5 percent. Similar analysis on poverty rates, access to birth certificates, and unemployment rates (given that government work IDs were acceptable) resulted in the same pattern of racial inequality that would easily impact the ability to vote. On August 25, 2005, DOJ attorneys recommended that HB 244 be rejected “on the ground that the state has failed to meet its burden of proof to demonstrate that it does not have the effect of retrogressing minority voting strength.”