Nice to hear Julian Epstien agree that I was “vindicated,” even if he quickly moved onto his talking points.
Author Archives: J Christian Adams
“Goodlatte calls for investigation of DoJ Voting Section”
The Voting Section isn’t out of the woods yet. The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee is coming after the Voting Section.
Item one for Chairman Goodlatte should be Tom Perez’s opposition to implementing the hiring changes suggested by the Inspector General. I have details about the suggestions, the absurdity of the excuses offered by certain DOJ officials, and Perez’s opposition to the recommended changes here.
“Meet Tom Perez: Obama’s Latest Cabinet Fiasco”
A well written and slicing editorial.
CPAC Photos
Two photos from my day at CPAC – one being interviewed by Allen West and the other on NRA news with Grover Norquist and “Rooster.”
Texas poll: Support for Section 5 preclearance drops to 44%
We gave the same question we asked in October 2012 to half the respondents (600) in the February 2013 UT/Tribune Poll. We found that in the four intervening months, support for the substance of Section 5 had declined while opposition had increased. Overall support for the principle of pre-clearance fell from 51 percent to 44 percent, and opposition increased from 36 percent to 40 percent. Link to the full story
GOP Congressman Promises Eternal Federal Oversight of Southern Elections
A GOP Congressman promises that no matter what happens in Shelby v. Holder, he will “make” GOP members of Congress pass a new Section 5 to maintain federal oversight. One problem, it’s not 2006 anymore in the party.
Congressman Sensenbrenner makes this statement in the article:
He added: “If you look at what happened after Section 5 was amended in 1982, the number of African-American and Republican representatives in Congress and in state legislatures has gone way up.”
I can’t quite find what part of Public Law 97-205 (the 1982 Amendments) addressed the substantive standards of Section 5. Perhaps the author meant to say Section TWO and Sensenbrenner got it right. Or perhaps Sensenbrenner is confused about which part of the Voting Rights Act was amended in 1982. It was Section 2 and Section 4 that were chiefly amended. Section 5, it seems, was not – at least not in any way that would increase the number of black elected officials. That’s what the amendment to Section 2 did, not Section 5.
Why is Tom Perez Opposing the IG Recommendations?
When the last Inspector General report came out about Civil Rights Division hiring, AAG Wan Kim promised to implement all of the suggestions. His successor AAG Tom Perez is not as magnanimous and appears resistant to implementing changes described by the report as necessary. We believe that the Division should consider instituting several additional protections that will minimize the risk of prohibited personnel practices, as well as the perception of favoritism. We found that the Voting Section’s use of the “general civil rights/public interest experience” criterion in its evaluation of applicants, without any greater specificity or definition, was problematic. We recognize why reviewers might look favorably upon applicants with “general civil rights experience” and/or “public interest experience” in the context of the Section’s work. However, we believe that criterion lacked sufficient connection to the qualifications required for the experienced trial attorney position and, due to its broad scope and use to assess the degree of applicants’ “commitment” to civil rights, was vulnerable to misuse to determine applicants’ ideological leanings. The reasons the committee members gave us for using this criterion were not persuasively connected to the job skills needed to be a successful voting rights litigator. . . . We believe that the “general civil rights/public interest experience” criterion is not sufficiently “tailored” and the explanations provided to us regarding the practice of assessing the degree of applicants’ civil rights “commitment” were inadequate. . . . We did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that CRT staff considered applicants’ political or ideological affiliations when hiring experienced trial attorneys for the Voting Section in 2010. Nevertheless, the primary criterion used by the Voting Section hiring committee in assessing the qualifications of applicants, namely prior voting litigation experience, resulted in a pool of select candidates that was overwhelmingly Democratic/liberal in affiliation.
Senators take note.
In particular, Perez seems opposed to implementing changes regarding hiring practices which has resulted in a 100 percent liberal or leftist bias in Voting Section lawyers. Some inside the DOJ simply cannot understand that this is a problem, and for that blindness, a heavy price may be paid if Perez is nominated for Secretary of Labor. (An aside: I spent the day on Capitol Hill and there is an emerging view that Perez will not be nominated. Damaged goods. I am not sure I agree with that assessment given the people nominating spend an inordinate amount of time justifying the correctness of their position, even if it is a corroded one.)
So here is the problem, from the IG report at 218-219:
When Loretta King implemented this change in 2009, (prior “commitment” to civil rights as evidenced by working for the groups), I knew it was a problem. I also know the new test resulted in perfectly qualified candidates being rejected because their left wing bona fides were inadequate. And now the Inspector General agrees with me. But will Perez do anything about it? It appears the answer is no. It appears he doesn’t even understand the problem. He plainly opposes the IG’s suggestion in Appendix A of the Report.
Fine. Normally such stubborn intransigence would carry a small price. But when the person rejecting the IG change may be before a firing line of angry Senators from South Carolina, Louisiana and elsewhere, the price of stubbornness is much higher. In fact, 41 of those Senators deciding that Tom Perez should not be the Secretary of Labor means that Tom Perez will not be the Secretary of Labor. Time to reconsider.
“A glimpse into the seedy political underworld in upstate New York”: Democrats preyed on “most vulnerable members of society”
Will the slap on the wrist sentencing empower others to do the same? Four years later: Four Democrats involved in an upstate New York voter fraud scandal were sentenced yesterday for their respective roles, receiving punishments ranging from hundreds of hours of community service, to jail time. The group consisted of a former city clerk, an ex-City Councilman, a Democrat operative, and a Committeeman who a year ago had declared ballot forgery in upstate New York to be “a normal political tactic“. Those sentenced yesterday were cooperating witnesses in a scheme which saw dozens of voters testify that absentee ballots had been submitted in their names during the 2009 Working Families Party (WFP) primary. Securing the WFP line allowed Democrat candidates to obtain more votes in the general election… [W]itnesses throughout both trials provided a glimpse into the seedy political underworld in upstate New York. Democrats preyed on those they felt were the most vulnerable members of society, those making easy targets for their voter fraud scheme… Four Democrats sentenced. Two more under indictment. Two acquitted due to altered testimony. And another who somehow escaped criminal prosecution despite an admission and a prior felony conviction. The upstate New York voter fraud scandal should serve as a reminder that fraud doesn’t simply occur at the national level. But it should also be a concern for those who value the integrity of the election process. These men forged ballots and received incredibly tame punishments for that fact.
CPAC Panel Friday
My posting slows Friday as I will be on a CPAC Panel at 10:30 with Joel Pollack of Breitbart.com, Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute, Mark Kirkorkian of the Center for Immigration Studies and Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch.
A Substantive Debate about North Carolina Voter ID
Full debate video at the link. One of three ID opponents on the five-person panel, Bob Hall, “executive director of left-leaning Democracy North Carolina,” notes (correctly) as many in the anti-ID crowd do that “lawmakers should try to tighten up the rules for mail-in absentee ballots.” Hall also repeats the same equal protection concern claimed by fellow ID opponent and North Carolina NAACP President William Barber, that “treating absentee voters differently from others” by not also requiring ID with mail-in absentee ballots “invites court challenges.”
The General Assembly can easily allay the concerns of Hall, Barber, et al by extending ID requirements to absentee ballots. Kansas’ SAFE Act offers a model, requiring that “Each voter must show photographic identification each election,” whether voting in person or by mail ballot.
But the “largely symbolic” opposition to voter ID, against a Republican majority elected on a promise of passing Voter ID, may be more about the larger “blueprint” of a Progressive collective to “weaken our opponents’ ability to govern by crippling their leaders (McCrory, Tillis, Berger, etc…).”