“Redistricting promises to keep identity politics alive.” Las Vegas Review Journal.
Author Archives: J Christian Adams
Reapportionment complicates Obama reelection
DOJ Preclears MS lawsuit settlement over poll chaos
The Voting Section at the Department of Justice has precleared a settlement in an election lawsuit arising out of LeFlore County, Mississipppi. The Mississippi Republican Party sued the LeFlore County Election Commission seeking that they simply follow state law regarding the conduct of elections. From the Jackson Clarion Ledger: Chaos in the Mississippi polls is not unlike the facts described in the ruling in United States v. Ike Brown arising out of Noxubee County, Mississippi. Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann has sought to clean up the mess in Mississippi, but because the Secretary of State does not have direct control over county or party run elections, the mess has continued in some parts of the state.
“The agreement settled a lawsuit Republicans filed over chaotic conditions at the polls during the 2008 presidential election. . . .The decree also prohibits cell phone usage after voters have signed the poll books.“
Pleadings filed in the Brown case show that elections in Noxubee, even after the voting lawsuit was filed, were infested with violations of law, hundreds of instances of forced assistance, and like in LaFlore, outright chaos inside the polling places. You can read sworn statements here and here about the chaos and violations of state law in Noxubee. Here is a picture of Ike Brown in Noxubee County handling an absentee ballot a few days after he told a federal judge he would have nothing to do with the election and would have no role in the processing of absentee ballots. All of these violations of law occurred after the federal court had already entered a liability finding against Brown for this same sort of lawless behavior.
Mississippi has serious problems with the integrity of elections. Elections there are some of the worst run in the nation. The Secretary of State desperately wants to fix the broken system, but state law vests too much authority in the county election commissions and parties. Thankfully the state Republican Party has stepped up and forced one out-of-control county to follow the state election law. In Mississippi, merely following state election law is a novel concept in some corners of the state.
Florence (SC) election tangle
Read all about it in SC News Now. This one sounds like when you are fishing and a snag becomes a tangle that wraps around the rod and works its way to the reel, and digs in six different opposing ways.
More on the Kinston dismissal
At National Review. Sounds like an appeal is coming.
DOJ Voting Section Alum to Iraq
Yet another trip to Iraq for a Voting Section lawyer.
Christian Ortego served in the Voting Section from 2005 to approximately 2007. He’s one of those guys who might not have come from a “civil rights” group, but he sure knew how to litigate civil rights cases at the Department of Justice. He ships off for a year in Iraq this week, leaving family, home and hearth behind. I hope to write more about Christian, and the active litigation docket the DOJ lawyers had from 2005-2008 in the Voting Section. False rhetoric about the Bush Justice Department has become vogue in some corners, and enough is enough. Christian Ortego was one of the top shelf litigators who brought Hispanic representation to places like Osceola, Florida.
He’s a guy that knows what’s right, and what’s wrong. Truth from fiction. Good from evil.
When people say the Bush Voting Section didn’t do anything, and Tom Perez is busy restoring the place, it’s the work of people like Christian Ortego that shine light on that falsehood. He worked hard to protect voting rights, and now he’s going to work hard in Iraq. Maybe he can be a voting assistance officer once he gets there. Woe to the state that doesn’t send ballots in time if he is. Godspeed Christian, our prayers follow you.
Kinston challenge to Section 5: Sum J DOJ
The court in the Kinston Section 5 challenge (Laroque v Holder) granted summary judgment to the DOJ Defendants. Standing was the reason. The standing argument was very difficult and this decision is not much of a surprise. Shelby lurks.
Outpost Restrepo, military voting, and movie time at DOJ
My latest at Pajamas Media is here.
Anyone who has not seen the Sundance award winning documentary Restrepo, should. It is a genuine and stark look at the brave Army soldiers who spent a year in no-man’s-land fighting Islamic militants almost every single day. Outpost Restrepo doesn’t have fax machines or internet connections. Soldiers there get ballots by mail, if they get them at all. They live with dust, smoke from burning latrines, swinging pick-axes to burrow into the rock, and firefights as regular as the sunrise.
The documentary provides a vivid account of why the Department of Justice cannot rely on technological solutions such as internet access and fax machines to cut corners in protecting military voters like they did in 2010. Instead of the ridiculous and useless field trip the Voting Section chief encouraged to watch a court hearing, he should mandate every staff member watch this movie. Sources with direct knowledge tell me that the attorneys supervising military voting rights protection explicitly cut corners and negotiated settlements with states allowing ballots to mail late, simply because these states offered internet and email access to ballots. This is shameful and disgraceful, and frankly, after seeing Restrepo, sad.
“No computers. No fax machines. No time to relax at O.P. Restrepo. Firefights are almost a daily event here. Ballots here come by mail, if they come at all. And rough men standing ready in the night occupy so many other O.P. Restrepos.
Their dust-choked and primitive existence renders pathetic and naive their government’s reliance on computer technology to help them vote.
So when DOJ officials try to explain their half-hearted efforts to protect military voters, Congressmen should ask the witness, ‘have you seen Restrepo?”'”
The full article on Restrepo and the DOJ is here.
Kansas Secretary of State Kobach featured
In the Washington Times.
“The specter of illegal immigrants casting votes in U.S. elections has long frustrated Republicans, and Mr. Kobach is now poised to do something about it. Even before he’s sworn in, he’s already hard at work drafting voter-fraud legislation that he says will be most the comprehensive in the nation.
“This will be head and shoulders above anything any state has ever done to secure the voting process,” he said. “My hope is to create a model with regard to stopping voter fraud that can be used in other states, like we did in Arizona” with immigration.”
Thursday Washington Examiner: 2 Year Coffee Break at DOJ
I have a piece at the Washington Examiner on the phony “reopening” of the DOJ Voting Section. Stay tuned to Pajamas Media for more on this story about rank hypocrisy and broken campaign promises:
“One thing worse than a hypocrite is a hypocrite in government office. The Obama Department of Justice has plenty of hypocrites. Nowhere are they more apparent than when they attack the voting rights record of the Bush Justice Department.