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FirmhandKY -> RE: Real voter suppression caught in the act (9/21/2010 10:14:40 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: thornhappy
Looks like it was at a single polling place. Here's an interesting view from a conservative (Abigail Thernstrom) writing in The National Review (trust me, that ain't a liberal publication).
A number of conservatives have charged that the Philadelphia Black Panther decision demonstrates that attorneys in the Civil Rights Division have racial double standards. How many attorneys in what positions? A pervasive culture that affected the handling of this case? No direct quotations or other evidence substantiate the charge.
Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, makes a perfectly plausible argument: Different lawyers read this barely litigated statutory provision differently. It happens all the time, especially when administrations change in the middle of litigation. Democrats and Republicans seldom agree on how best to enforce civil-rights statutes; this is not the first instance of a war between Left and Right within the Civil Rights Division.
The two Panthers have been described as “armed” — which suggests guns. One of them was carrying a billy club, and it is alleged that his repeated slapping of the club against his palm constituted brandishing it in a menacing way. They have also been described as wearing “jackboots,” but the boots were no different from a pair my husband owns.
A disaffected former Justice Department attorney has written: “We had indications that polling-place thugs were deployed elsewhere.” “Indications”? Again, evidence has yet to be offered.
Get a grip, folks. The New Black Panther Party is a lunatic fringe group that is clearly into racial theater of minor importance. It may dream of a large-scale effort to suppress voting — like the Socialist Workers Party dreams of a national campaign to demonstrate its position as the vanguard of the proletariat. But the Panthers have not realized their dream even on a small scale. This case is a one-off.
There are plenty of grounds on which to sharply criticize the attorney general — his handling of terrorism questions, just for starters — but this particular overblown attack threatens to undermine the credibility of his conservative critics. Those who are concerned about Justice Department enforcement of the Voting Rights Act should turn their attention to quite another matter, where the attorney general has been up to much more important mischief: his interpretation of the act’s core provisions. [The rest of the article is about redistricting.]
Truth, Justice, or the Obama Way
The Justice Department is forced to investigate itself.
BY Jennifer Rubin
September 27, 2010, Vol. 16, No. 02
And besides, the head of the Civil Rights Division, Thomas Perez, had testified before both Congress and the commission that the case was legally and factually defective. He had also insisted there was no opposition in the department to enforcing civil rights laws against minority defendants.
In fact, there is ample evidence, including Justice Department emails obtained by The Weekly Standard, that Perez testified untruthfully. There is every reason to believe, moreover, that if allowed to testify, several other Justice Department attorneys would substantiate Adams’s allegations and contradict Perez’s sworn testimony. Not to mention that the department itself acknowledged last week that the matter of biased enforcement of voting laws requires investigation.
EDITORIAL: Scandal at Justice: Enabling vote fraud
Whistleblower blocks epidemic of dead voters
The Washington Times
6:29 p.m., Friday, September 3, 2010
The dead voters may be forced back into their graves. The biggest scandal emerging from the infamous New Black Panther voter- intimidation case didn't even involve the Black Panthers. Instead, it came when whistleblowing attorney J. Christian Adams told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that top Justice Department official Julie Fernandes had openly refused to enforce laws that require states to remove ineligible names - dead people, felons, people who have moved - from voter rolls.
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Mr. Adams' notice letters report that South Dakota, for example, has 17 counties with more registered voters than there are citizens of voting age living there. Mississippi has 17 such counties. Alabama has seven, and Indiana, Kentucky and Texas have 12 each. Most of the states threatened with suits have reported no cleaning of their voter lists for years. Multiple press accounts in Tennessee show a serious problem with convicted felons and illegal immigrants being registered and sometimes voting.
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This developing scandal of mystery voters and dead voters resurrects the story about the Justice Department's own website showing more substantial efforts to help felons reacquire voting privileges - even though the department has no statutory authority to do so - than to help ensure the opportunity for military personnel overseas to have their votes cast and counted on time.
There Really Is Something Rotten in the Justice Department
September 7, 2010 7:30 P.M.
By Hans A. von Spakovsky
This is due to the Department’s refusal to enforce the part of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act that requires states to remove ineligible voters from their registration rolls — people who have died or moved away, and felons who have not yet had their voting rights restored.
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Adams’s letters are based in part on a report filed with Congress by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in June 2009 on the impact of the NVRA. It includes voter-registration statistics from the states for 2006–2008. This data shows some amazing results. For example, Adams says, there must be a fountain of youth in states such as Maryland, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Tennessee: None of them removed a single dead voter during that two-year reporting period. Many counties in states such as Alabama and Rhode Island also show a similar miracle — no voters were removed from their voter rolls for having died.
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There are also several states — South Dakota, Mississippi, Texas, Kentucky, and Indiana among them — with more registered voters than (according to the Census) people of voting age.
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For trying to enforce federal law, we were labeled as “vote suppressors.”
Now I know why some Democrats aren't so worried about the upcoming election.
The dead shall vote the party ticket. [:D]
Firm
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