Republicans Don’t Cheat

So says Georgia state Senator Eric Johnson of Savannah:

The importance of countering voter fraud is a plank in nearly every state GOP platform, and the national one as well. Why?

”That’s easy. Our voters don’t cheat,” said Eric Johnson of Savannah, the ranking Republican in the state Senate and a prime supporter of Georgia’s 2005 voter ID law.

“We wouldn’t know how to cheat. [Democrats] seem to be creative. I mean they’re out there registering prisoners now. Openly and actively,” Johnson said.

The post points out that up to now it has been the Democrats in Georgia complaining about election fraud, but no more:

If ballot integrity is one GOP incentive, changing demographics could be another. Given their party’s limited appeal among minorities, Republicans have long viewed with trepidation the proportional shrinking of the nation’s white population.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s voter registration operation carries the potential of speeding that process in Georgia, which has among the lowest voter participation rates in the country.

Only half of those eligible to vote in Georgia actually cast a ballot in the 2004 presidential election, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And that was a high-water mark in the state’s voting history.

And this year?

Figures from the office of Secretary of State Karen Handel have made clear that the prospect of the first African-American president produced a surge of black voter registration that ended last week.

But it’s not just Obama’s success in bringing new voters into the game that has Georgia Republicans worried — for registration is only half the battle. Traditionally, where Democrats have fallen short is in the delivery of these new voters to the polls on Election Day.

Early voting may have changed that. So far, close to 40 percent of all early votes in Georgia have been cast by African-Americans, who usually make up 25 percent of the voting universe in statewide contests.

Early voting, pushed forward by state Republicans “to make it easier for the party’s harried, suburban supporters to cast their ballots” is now called “a mistake” by Johnson.