Representative Trey Gowdy and Senator Lindsey Graham want the DOJ Voting Section to turn over the memos that were prepared by Chris Herren and career staff and given to Tom Perez recommending the preclearance of South Carolina Voter ID.  Yesterday they sent another demand to the Justice Department to turn over the memos and work.  Justice has not denied that the memos exist because they can’t.  They exist, and the volume on this story isn’t going to reduce.

What strange symmetry we have.  But six years ago, the left wing blogospere and liberal election law academics were all aflutter about Georgia Voter ID and the dastardly actions of the Bush Justice Department. There was only one problem with that 2006 narrative – the Voting Section Chief recommended preclearance of Georgia Voter ID. 

Fast forward to 2012 where the Voting Section Chief again recommended preclearance, but was overruled for real. 

And it is expensive strange symmetry also.  Unlike the Georgia matter, the disregard of the DOJ career recommendations in South Carolina cost millions of dollars.  Small change for sure to bureaucrats, but not to members of Congress and the Senate charged with protecting South Carolina’s interests.  Considering that both of the members of Congress sit on key committees, this is going to be a bumpy ride.

Of course we won’t hear a thing from all those good folks so incensed in 2006 about career staff being overruled.  The silence will be delicious.

 Scotland, North Carolina.  And kudos to the Virginia SBE for helping catch fraud in North Carolina. 

Officials claim the voter was on probation at the time of the election and was not eligible to vote. Voting while a felon is considered a Class I felony.

link to story.

“Obviously we are disappointed by the ruling. Mr. Davis had argued that a citizen is injured when they are denied the right to fully participate in any political process. Even GovGuam did not find the ripeness argument to have enough merit to bring it in the first place.  Mr. Davis will be appealing the ripeness ruling to the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals where we are hopeful existing Supreme Court precedent will lead to a reversal and remand.  Regardless, no plebiscite election will ever take place on Guam without the discriminatory problems being fully litigated.”

 PJ Media.    This may rank as the smallest election ever monitored by the DOJ voting Section.  No doubt the election coverage memo had all of the usual fearsome stories of racial tension and complaints by civil rights groups to justify coverage.  The money spent by the Justice Department to fly, feed, house and drive lawyers to Columbia or Charleston was no object. (Contract price airfare for both,  $500-700 per).  Voter ID is too big of a problem to worry about spending thousands of dollars to monitor an election with 186 voters.  

If there has been an election monitored by the DOJ Voting Section which had fewer than 186 voters participate, email us here and we will post. 

 USA Today.

Today Stanford Law Professor Pam Karlan called out George Will on the pages of the Washington Post for using imprecise language about her writings.  I noted, as I did in Injustice, that Karlan has published demonstrably false scholarship in the Duke Law Journal about the Bush Justice Department, deceptively misstating the record of enforcement under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. I posted details here. Karlan has never corrected her false statements in the Duke Law School journal.

So where are all the law professors who love to snipe at any statement made by a conservative with which they might quibble?  Where are the guardians of precision and honesty when it comes to Karlan’s falsehoods?  Maybe one of them will have the guts to call Karlan out on her false statements in the Duke Law piece.  Will the Ivory Tower call out another professor for false scholarship?  Don’t hold your breath.  But if they do, we’ll make note of it.

The Foundry piece on the SC Voter ID case has this tidbit:

“This case illustrates two things. One is how expensive it can be to take on the U.S. Justice Department, even when the DOJ is wrong. Two is how additional facts show that ideology and politics drive the Holder Justice Department rather than the rule of law. This was aptly illustrated not just by the DOJ losing a very weak case where the facts and legal precedent were squarely against it, but by the Civil Rights Division then giving one of its highest awards, the Walter W. Barnett Memorial Award, on November 28 to the leading DOJ trial lawyer after he lost the South Carolina voter ID case.”

This is interesting.  I wrote about such behavior in Injustice.  The friendly birds are free to pass along more information on this.

Another Jeffry Toobin article is in the New Yorker (yes, they still publish) which haphazardly mixes myth, fable and law.  Among them are this gem, that long lines in Ohio conspired to rob a more splendid victory from Democrats and that somehow the Voting Rights Act has anything to do with it.

“Obama won in Florida, too, but a recent study by Theodore Allen, an associate professor at Ohio State University, found that, in central Florida alone, long lines, exacerbated by a law that reduced the number of days for early voting, discouraged about fifty thousand people, most of them Democrats, from casting ballots.”

Naturally no Toobin article would be complete without a quote from the phony Brennan Center’s phony voter ID study.  Peruse, enjoy, laugh – here at the link.