By: Jeffrey Klein, Political Buzz Examiner
Examiner.com
In a speech Eric Holder gave at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas on December 13, 2011, he floated another trial balloon idea for the pollsters to process, and that is the threat of the Obama administration bringing action against states requiring stricter voter identification at the polls.
He implored American’s to “call on our political parties to resist the temptation to suppress certain votes in the hope of attaining electoral success and, instead, achieve success by appealing to more voters,” according to David Jackson’s USA Today article from December 14, 2011.
Fredreka Schouten, also a USA Today reporter stated that “more than half a dozen states have passed new laws to reduce early voting, setting up a clash with civil rights groups and Democrats who claim the rules could disenfranchise minority voters in the 2012 election for the White House and Congress.”
“Among states with new restrictions: Wisconsin and Florida, presidential swing states that also are key battlegrounds in the fight for control of the U.S. Senate, where Democrats hold a narrow advantage.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), whose state will now require photo IDs from prospective voters, criticized Holder’s appearance in Austin.
“Voter identification laws are constitutional and necessary to prevent fraud at the ballot box,” Cornyn said. “Facing an election challenge next year, this administration has chosen to target efforts by the states to protect the democratic process.”
Democrats, citing studies suggesting there is little voter fraud, say the measures are actually aimed at reducing minority votes for their candidates.
Eric Holder left the door open by saying … Where a state can’t meet its legal burden in showing an absence of discriminatory impact, “we will object.”
As it is impossible to prove a negative, his language implies that he will likely bring such actions–after he receives the go ahead by President Obama, who will have first consulted with Chicago, after they have analyzed the poll results.
There are a total of 17 states that now have strict voter ID laws, recently joined by Texas, Wisconsin and South Carolina which now require a photo ID, as well as Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, Rhode Island and Tennessee.
“It’s remarkable,” Jennie Bowser, senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said of the proliferation of new laws. In all, 33 states have considered new voter ID laws this year, as reported in Fredreka Shouten’s USA Today article from June 19, 2011.
“I very rarely see one single issue come up in so many state legislatures in a single session,” she said. “This issue has historically fallen along stark partisan lines. Democrats tend to oppose voter ID, and Republicans tend to favor it. This year, there are a lot of new Republican majorities in legislatures,” Bowser said.
Although Republicans now control both chambers in 26 states, it is clear that with 33 states considering stricter laws, there is a perception of [increasing] voter fraud that needs to be stamped out.
And, it appears there is good reason for the Republicans to be taking the lead, as the majority of federal state and local voter fraud convictions seem to belong to Democrats and their operatives, who use fake signatures and the names of deceased voters on phony registrations, petitions and absentee ballot applications as the tools of choice.
The plethora of headline stories coming from the 2008 Presidential elections alone, show that ACORN, the community organization that employed Barack Obama far, to be far and away in the lead with over 54 convictions over numerous states–where the only prosecutions have occurred under the Obama administration.
AG Eric Holder has shown himself to have no appetite for prosecuting voting fraud cases since coming to office, which is highlighted by documents obtained by Judicial Watch, showing that the Bush administration FBI and Department of Justice opened an investigation into ACORN but, the Obama Justice Department, while noting that ACORN had engaged in “questionable hiring and training practices,” closed down the investigation in March 2009, claiming ACORN broke no laws.
Then there was the New Black Panther members voter intimidation case, which evidence was caught on video tape, whose members were indicted by the Bush Justice Department–only to be let free and charges dropped by the Obama Justice Department, claiming once again, insufficient evidence to prosecute.
Finally, according to a July 8, 2010 Wall Street Journal article by John Fund, J. Christian Adams, a former career Justice Department lawyer, who resigned in 2010 to protest political interference in cases he worked on, testifying before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights–laying bare the source of this new DOJ prosecutorial “attitude.”
First, Adams claimed that Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, an Obama appointee, overruled a unanimous recommendation by six career Justice attorneys for the continued prosecution of members of the New Black Panther Party on charges of voter intimidation.
But Mr. Adams leveled an even more explosive charge beyond the Panther case.
He testified that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes made a jaw-dropping announcement to attorneys in Justice’s Voting Rights section, saying she would not support any enforcement of a key section of the federal “Motor Voter” law — Section 8, requiring states to periodically purge their voter rolls of dead people, felons, illegal voters and those who have moved out of state.
According to Mr. Adams, Justice lawyers were told by Ms. Fernandes: “We’re not interested in those kinds of cases. What do they have to do with helping increase minority access and turnout? We want to increase access to the ballot, not limit it.”
Fund said in his article that Ms. Fernandes was endorsing a policy of ignoring federal law and encouraging potential voter fraud, and that she was unavailable for comment, but the Justice Department issued a statement accusing Mr. Adams of “distorting facts” in general and having a political agenda.
Now that statement sounds like the Eric Holder DOJ that we have all come to know and greatly disrespect.
It should be noted that having Holder speak at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum provided the perfect [Axelrod] optics, as in 1965, then President Johnson was instrumental in passing the landmark Voting Rights Act, which the Justice Department now uses to ensure voting rights.
If AG Holder and Ms. Fernandes really want to “ensure voting rights,” and “increase access to the ballot [boxes]” for eligible voters, then I recommend they commit the resources necessary to fully implement the MOVE Act, passed into law in 2009 to ensure military personnel access to voting, especially when deployed overseas.
According to the Military Voter Protection Project and Chapman University’s AMVET’s clinic, data collected by congressional mandate reveal that only 4.6 percent of eligible military voters cast an absentee ballot that counted in the November 2010 election; whereas, in 2006, it was 5.5 percent.
These numbers came despite the MOVE mandate of a voter registration office on every military installation before the November 2010 election–even though, there are now still 25 percent of the bases without one.
As far more than 4.6 percent of registered [civilian] minority voters participated in the November 2010 elections–it is apparent that the logical move to fulfill Ms. Fernandes patriotic “zeal,” would be to re-directed her ire at the Pentagon.
If not, then it will be very apparent that Barack Obama and Eric Holder are setting the table to increase voter fraud, which appears to favor the Democrat party, and decrease the mostly Republican military patriots from participating in the process they claim to hold so dear.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Jeffrey Klein
