DOJ on voting laws – more corrupt enforcement and fraud

Editor’s Note – The Eric Holder Department of Justice picks and chooses how it enforces the law, who gets investigated, which laws are enforced, and it all smacks of exactly what the Democrats accuse the right of doing – fiddling with voters rights, or suppression. When the state leans red, they sue, usually for trumped up charges, the best example being Texas on its attempt to force voter identification:

The entire narrative of the left, and specifically Eric Holder regarding voter suppression is pure bunk, and the State of Texas proved it. All the rhetoric coming from his camp is not just rhetoric, its blatantly false. His ‘experts’ are not experts, they used “Wikipedia Facts” that weren’t facts, and what was said in public had to be re-canted under sworn testimony.

When the state leans blue, or Obama won it in the last election, or it sits on the fence, they look away from irregularities. The latest cases in point, Pennsylvania and Virginia. In Pennsylvania, the DoJ has made a very irregular demand – based on 42 U.S.C 1974, an act created to track voting after elections to see if there was suppression, they are demanding things far outside the four corners of the law and are perverting the law, all to benefit or increase Obama’s chances in Philadelphia it appears.

In Virgina, the accusations are flying from the Romney camp and others over a Washington, D.C. firms mass mailings to:

The organization has been mass-mailing the forms — pre-populated with key information such as names and addresses — to primarily Democratic-leaning voting blocs such as young adults, unmarried women, African-Americans and Latinos. (Read the rest below.)

In those pre-populated mailings many were addressed to deceased infants, out-of-state family members, and non-U.S. citizens. There over 15,000 new voters as a result, and it is clear they used “tactics that amount to, or at the very least induce, voter registration fraud.” The Romney camp has gone to the state for relief, but no word from the DoJ.

Eric Holder’s Keystone State Voter ID Shakedown

By J. Christian Adams – PJ Media

The Eric Holder Justice Department has done it again, this time in Pennsylvania.  Not content to use Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to shake down Texas and South Carolina, the DOJ yesterday sent a demand to the Keystone State for stacks of documents regarding Pennsylvania voter ID.

This letter was a highly irregular and purely partisan exercise designed to stoke Obama’s electoral base in Philadelphia. It is also designed to placate the civil rights industry, which has quietly simmered about the lack of enforcement of the Voting Rights Act to help minorities over the last three years.  (See, Wade Henderson – Cat Got Your Tongue?)

The demand letter to Pennsylvania was sent pursuant to 42 U.S.C 1974. This law requires election officials to preserve election records for 22 months after an election. It is designed to ensure that no racial discrimination occurred in the conduct of a particular election.  For example, poll books from 1966 would have to be kept for 22 months to ensure that both black and white voters who were properly registered were actually allowed to vote.

Like so much with this Justice Department, the partisans have perverted the law and demanded far more than the law allows, so much so that even liberal former DOJ lawyers are surprised.

Note that Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez signed the letter.  Normally, when I worked on cases involving 42 U.S.C. 1974, either the trial lawyer or section chief would sign the letter.  It may be that Chris Herren, the current section chief, would do neither what the career partisans below him wanted nor what the political gangsters above him wanted.  Internal dissent may be afoot, and with good reason.

The letter also demands that Pennsylvania turn over information far beyond what Section 1974 envisions. The letter reads like a discovery request in litigation, which of course it is — it’s just that the litigation hasn’t started yet.  In fact, it is almost impossible for DOJ lawyers to write a “J-Memo” without Pennsylvania’s cooperation. That’s another way of saying Pennsylvania is most likely to be sued only if they cooperate with the demand letter.

Expect DOJ to do something against Pennsylvania in the fall to really pump the political bellows, even if it is simply a notice of intent to sue.

Assistant Attorney General Perez should have to answer to Congress this week about any coordination between the DOJ and the ACLU regarding the latter’s lawsuit against Pennsylvania.  The letter reads like an ACLU wish list in their lawsuit.

The letter seeks all voter records, lists of people who don’t have ID, and internal studies which probably don’t exist exactly like DOJ suspects.  The letter even brazenly goes after Governor Tom Corbett’s press shop, demanding documents supporting his press release!

Read the rest here.

Romney camp asks Va. to probe voter forms

By: WESLEY P. HESTER - Richmond Times-Dispatch 

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign is asking Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to launch an investigation into voter-registration forms that are being sent to Virginia residents and addressed to deceased relatives, children, family pets and others ineligible to vote.

The errant mailings from the Washington-based nonprofit group Voter Participation Center have befuddled many Virginia residents, leading to hundreds of complaints.

The organization has been mass-mailing the forms — pre-populated with key information such as names and addresses — to primarily Democratic-leaning voting blocs such as young adults, unmarried women, African-Americans and Latinos.

In a letter to Cuccinelli’s office and the State Board of Elections, Kathryn Bieber, an attorney for the Romney campaign, calls for an investigation into the matter by law-enforcement officials, claiming that the mailings appear to violate “at least one and maybe several Virginia laws aimed at ensuring a fair election.”

Bieber refers to the mailings as “tactics that amount to, or at the very least induce, voter registration fraud,” and says the issue “presents a very significant risk to the proper administration of the upcoming general election.”

Citing a Sunday Richmond Times-Dispatch story that brought the mailings to light, the letter also asks the State Board of Elections to require registrars to reject all pre-populated voter registration applications from the group and review the eligibility of all Virginians who have registered in the past two months.

“This is the only way for voters and other interested parties to regain confidence in the voter registration and electoral process that has been abused by the Voter Participation Center,” the letter says.

Page Gardner, president and CEO of the Voter Participation Center, said the organization mailed nearly 200,000 third-party registration forms to Virginia addresses in June, which resulted in 15,026 new voters being registered as of July 18.

On Monday, the Voter Participation Center responded to the Sunday Times-Dispatch story, stating in a letter on its website that “imperfections in the VPC vendors’ lists — while regrettable and unfortunate — should not be the reason or the excuse to call an entire process that is working into question.”

Justin Riemer, the State Board of Elections’ deputy secretary, said forms have been sent by the group to deceased infants, out-of-state family members, and non-U.S. citizens, among others.

In a letter this month, the State Board of Elections asked the group to cease pre-populating their forms and raised questions about how the group was obtaining lists of registered voters, citing the errant forms.

Riemer noted that pre-populating the forms violates rules set forth in the state code and the Virginia Constitution requiring that voters fill out their own forms.

The State Board of Elections had not received the letter from the Romney campaign Tuesday afternoon and declined to comment on the specifics.

No comment was immediately available from Cuccinelli’s office.

Asked for comment on the Romney campaign’s letter, the Voter Participation Center issued a statement noting that their forms are official applications, not registration cards.

“Furthermore, they were approved before we sent them out by the State Board of Elections and are the same applications that anyone can access at a local government office or on the internet,” the statement read.  “Our process is legal and working.”

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