I’ll be speaking at the University of South Carolina School of Law today at 12:40 p.m. in Room 135. Topics will include the Department of Justice and the dismissal of the New Black Panther case, race neutral enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and redistricting.
Florida Governor Rick Scott has withdrawn a submission to the DOJ of new redistricting rules. This story seems to miss the possibilities. It notes – “earlier this month, new Gov. Rick Scott sent a letter to DOJ withdrawing the request for preclearance of the Florida plan.”
Here are a couple of possibilities. Perhaps Governor Scott recognized what this website has been saying for months – submit your plans directly to federal court and by-pass the DOJ. Georgia did it. Maybe Florida is doing it too. States can avoid the secretive DOJ administrative approval process by going straight to an unbiased federal judge. Hopefully that’s what Rick Scott is up to.
Another interesting possibility is, what if nothing requires Rick Scott to submit the plan? What if no Florida statute requires the Governor to actually submit changes? Section 5 can function in a peculiar way. If there is a law with which an executive disagrees, the executive can simply refuse to submit the law to the DOJ (or to the federal court) and if there is no legal remedy (or obligation) under state law, it would seem that the law would never take effect. If no state law compels an executive to submit the plan for preclearance, how could a mandamus lie against the executive. A strange quirky possibility indeed. Is this what Rick Scott is up to? If so, he must have some pretty saving Voting Rights lawyers down there. Time will tell.
I will be on WOIC in Columbia SC tonight at 7pm on Counterpoint with Rich Bolen. 1230 am. 7-8.
The topic will be the New Black Panther dismissal, Eric Holder, the DOJ and legislative redistriciting.
The grand jury investigating voter fraud in Troy (NY) slogs on. The “Working Families Party” head testified.
At PJ Tatler about the Special Litigation Section at the Department of Justice.
“It’s going to pass,” State Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr., D-Brownsville said. “The votes are there.”
Sources in Austin tell me that the Senate may ad an amendment requiring Texas to bypass DOJ preclearance and go straight to United States District Court for approval. This is smart, wise and prudent if Texas wants to save money, time, and make it more likely that the law will become effective under the Voting Rights Act. Its something every state subject to Section 5 preclearance of redistricting plans should copy.
Heather MacDonald has this (non-election related) article in the Weekly Standard about the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division. Some interesting tidbits quoted from the article:
* According to DOJ’s civil rights division, the LAPD does not investigate racial profiling complaints with sufficient intensity. The department seems to tolerate a “culture that is inimical to race-neutral policing,” say the federal attorneys. These accusations are nothing short of delusional. The LAPD is arguably the most professional, community-oriented police agency in the country, having been led for most of the last decade by modern policing’s premier innovator, William Bratton.
* This September, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Perez announced a litigation campaign against school districts for so-called “disciplinary profiling”—disciplining black students at a higher rate than white students. He used student population ratios as the benchmark for appropriate rates of student discipline. “The numbers tell the story,” he said. “While blacks make up 17 percent of the student population, they are 37 percent of the students penalized by out-of-school suspensions and 43 percent of the students expelled.”
* If the Justice Department were serious about police reform, it would publish its standards for opening a pattern or practice investigation so that police agencies could take preventive action on their own. It has never done so, however, because it has no standards for opening an investigation; the initial recommendation to do so is based on the whims of the staffers, such as: “I feel like going to Seattle and my Google sweep picked up a few articles on the police there” or “My buddy at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund called me and asked us to open up an investigation in Des Moines.”
Missouri House passes voter ID. Stltoday.com has more.
“’This is nothing better than a Jim Crow law,’ said Rep. Jeff Roorda , D-Barnhart. ‘This is not 1950s America. This is 2010 and it’s embarrassing that we’re drudging up all this ugliness from our past.’”
Story here. “The state Justice Department announced Friday that Correy Grady faces one count of felony election fraud. He could get up to three years and six months in prison and $10,000 in fines if he’s convicted.
According to a criminal complaint, Grady, now 33, was convicted in 2006 of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, both felonies. He was on probation when he voted in 2008.”
Someone should let Ricardo Pimentel know.
More information click here.
