Although Secretary of State Brian Kemp signed off on a settlement in which he promised to allow persons to register when they apply for food stamps or related public assistance programs – as federal law has required since the 1990s – he had a conniption fit over the whole affair.

“The U.S. Department of Justice and left-wing interest groups are conducting a full frontal assault on the rights of states to manage their elections processes in a fair and secure manner, including registration, verification of citizenship and fraud protection,” Kemp said in an angrily-worded news release sent out by his office announcing the settlement.

The state’s top elections officer blamed Georgia’s legal problems partly on ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), an organization that once was heavily involved in attempts to register voters from low-income communities.

In that statement released by his office, Kemp “condemned the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the ACORN-affiliated Project Vote organization for coordinating efforts behind a lawsuit that challenged the state’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act.”

It’s a little difficult to see how ACORN could have been involved in this particular litigation since the organization filed for bankruptcy in November 2010 and ceased operations at that time.  By time ACLU attorneys filed the voter registration lawsuit against Georgia in June 2011, more than seven months had elapsed since ACORN closed its doors.

The takeaway is this:  regardless of who made the final decision to sue Georgia over its voter registration procedures, the lawsuit was a useful reminder that people whose income does not place them in the top 1 percent still retain the legal right to vote.

The Rome News-Tribune, whose editorial page is one of the most delightfully acerbic in the state, published a pointed critique (under the headline of “Yes, poor can vote”) of the state’s actions in settling the voter registration lawsuit (link to it here):

Brian Kemp is Georgia’s secretary of state but is plainly preparing to run for the presidency of the Confederacy as soon as it can be reconstituted.

Seething as he threw in the towel regarding yet another civil-rights lawsuit in federal court on whether Americans should be allowed to vote, Kemp raged that the U.S. Justice Department and interest groups were “conducting a full frontal assault on the rights of states to manage their elections processes in a fair and secure manner.”

What Kemp found so unpalatable was agreeing to surrender a lost cause. There are not 50 state rights to vote. There is one federal right to vote and, yes, the supremacy of the national interest over state preference has been established since 1865.

Knowing defeat was certain, Kemp signed off on a settlement agreeing Georgia will comply with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 that requires applicants for public benefits — food stamps, TANF and so forth, as well as those renewing benefits or even just changing their address — be asked by state employees if they are registered to vote and, if not, whether they would like to be. And to assist them if they express such a desire.

Unlike Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, Kemp did not get to leave with his sidearms and horse . . .

The purpose of the 1993 federal law was to remedy a huge under-registration of eligible voters among lower income groups, which still largely exists. Kemp failed to mention that if Georgia had been doing this all along — and it is not the first state to be caught for simply believing having a sign on the wall and forms on a table would suffice — there would have been no lawsuit, no $175,000 in plaintiff lawyer fees that Georgia must now pay, and no new black eye added to the many the state has in this realm.

Under the settlement Georgia must also train employees to provide registration information correctly, give data on its results to the civil-rights plaintiffs, plus offer registration opportunities to those calling a benefits office or applying online.

This, Kemp insists, is an unbearable workload and expense. In reality, the status quo of voters denied by deliberately being kept in the dark is unbearable.

Missouri, Ohio, Indiana and New Mexico were earlier dinged with similar settlements. In Missouri since that 2008 lawsuit such registrations annually went from 8,000 a year to 115,000. Since the Ohio settlement in 2009 more than 380,000 low-income new voters have been added.

By contrast, Georgia records show that in 2010 the state averaged almost 70,000 food-stamp applications every month with fewer than 4,500 applicants registering.

It’s not really a secret as to why there is opposition to such registration that very much follows partisan Republican lines. Lower-income voters, also often heavily minority, tend to vote lopsidedly for Democrats. And those “missing registrants” plainly exist in large enough numbers to swing many elections away from the GOP should they start actually voting in the same percentages as middle-to-high income election participants.

Given Georgia not long ago put in another line of defense against “everybody” being able to vote — as is actually the intention and desire and goal of our form of representative government — it is hard for Kemp to justify his tirade against obeying federal law . . .

There’s nothing wrong with assuring Americans planning to vote are legally entitled to do so.

There’s something very wrong with keeping them from doing so because somebody with a political motive prefers they never register, or because they can’t afford to get a certified copy of a birth certificate, which is the situation those seeking public assistance are quite likely to be in.

This has always been a “let the chips fall where they may” sort of nation, meaning that the voters for good or ill make the decisions. It’s high time that, without lawsuits being required, it also allowed all the votes to fall where they may.