Earlier this week, the State Department of Georgia got a reprimand from the Department of Justice, telling Secretary of State Karen Handel that the efforts she and her organization have pursued to clean up the voter rolls cannot be done.

This one of the ramifications of the Voting Rights Act that I have commented on earlier; the Department of Justice has final say in the decisions involving elections that Georgia pursues. The methods of verification of eligibility to vote is one of those fundamental functions of the states, with which the federal government should not be able to interfere, provided the states are abiding by the U.S. Constitution.

Handel and the State Department want to evaluate the registered voters in Georgia in order to eliminate those who are not citizens of the United States, a critical requirement in order to be able to vote. Her plan checked the voters’ registrations against their drivers’ license and Social Security number information.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Justice put the kibosh on the program because they claim it is inaccurate and puts an undue burden on minorities, because a disproportionate number of minorities are “flagged” by the program as questionable.

Reportedly, more than half of the names flagged turned out to be false positives, but there is no indication what the demographic proportion of those people are. In cases like this, the assumption just stands that there should be proportional representation demographically in situations like this without any substantial support.

However, none of that should really matter. There is no evidence that the state is targeting minority voters with the intent to keep them from being able to vote, and that would be the only circumstance that the federal government should interfere. The efficacy is not the Department of Justice’s problem; that is our problem as residents of the State of Georgia.

While maintaining up to date records of registered voters is definitely in the state’s interest (and the residents’), it might not be the most efficient way to combat fraud. The best way would be to head it off at the polls rather than registration, because a registered voter who does not vote has the same effect as an unregistered voter on the outcome of elections.

The photo ID requirement law here in Georgia (and a similar one in Indiana) is one of the cases that might be heard by the Supreme Court this week. However, as I mentioned last month, the Voting Rights Act is also being challenged by the Supreme Court, so there is opportunity for the question of voter registration to be a little bit different in Georgia soon.

The point, though, is that Georgia should be able to determine how it registers its voters and maintains that registry. If it required everyone to reregister every year, that should be its prerogative. The state has chosen to use driving records and Social Security numbers to that end, and the Constitution should be the trump card in this hand, not an arbitrary federal law.