Fox News reports on the briefing of President Obama by Al Sharpton. “…we briefed them on our outrage at the Supreme Court’s recent decision…”
Is it right for the people of Chattanooga to be deemed exemplars of the
new Obama economy pumping packing peanuts for Bezos, but not advanced
enough to regulate their own elections?
Al Sharpton emerged from the White House after briefing the President, Attorney General, and Hillary Clinton. He confirmed that the Department of Justice would attempt to regain preclearance authority under the Voting Rights Act against those states with new voter ID laws.
“It was one meeting – it was unprecedented – the attorney general and the president in the Roosevelt Room of the White House,” Sharpton began. “I talked to the attorney general for an hour and the president for 40 minutes.”
Clearly unprecedented. The President must be weaker politically than anyone realizes, acting as if a primary is on the horizon, and not the unifying leader of all the people in a triumphant second term. Sharpton and the MSNBC lefties certainly have the ear of the President and the Attorney General. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court rulings on the constitutionality of voter ID in Crawford, the outdated formula for the Voting Rights Act, and the positive opinion of voter ID by a large majority of Americans are ignored and called “Jim Crow” supporters.
Today President Obama invited a gaggle of civil rights organizations to the White House as part of a roll out to 2014 midterm election mobilization. Present were the usual suspects, but also was the disgraceful racialist Al Sharpton. Sharpton has a long history of racial incitement ranging from the incitement that preceded the gasoline fueled murders at Freddies Fashion Mart, to the defamation judgment in the Brawley case, to admitting that the case against George Zimmerman lacked merit but that he demanded charges, well, just to have charges filed.
Inviting a charlatan race hustler like Al Sharpton tells you what you need to know about today’s White House event, and the ensuing efforts of the participants.
A special election has been set in Alabama’s 1st Congressional District. The order by District Judge Myron Thompson, which should have been properly labeled a consent decree given the procedural background of the matter, does not comply with the 45 day mandatory minimums for UOCAVA voters, a minimum some in the Voting Section have been hostile towards even before Congress made it the law in 2009.
UOCAVA ballots to overseas voters will not be mailed until October 8. From the order:
Secretary of State mails or electronically transmits, in accordance with the voter’s preference, standard primary runoff ballots to UOCAVA voters who have submitted applications by October 8, 2013.
One problem, the election is November 5, 2013. October 8 is 28 days before November 5. I was never very good at math, but I count that 28 is 17 less than 45.
The order has as an instant runoff provision, meaning anyone who decided to vote in the first primary election can choose who they might vote for in a runoff election. Of course this stop-gap ignores that some in the military might actually want to pay attention to the debates during the run off period. But never mind, some at the Justice Department will cut corners when it comes to military voters.
Then consider the general election – UOCAVA ballots won’t go out until November 15, 2013. That means the general election is 45 days later, right? Wrong. The general election is only 31 days later. 45-31= 14 too short.
All of this was done to get the election in before Christmas. After all, we wouldn’t want to inconvenience any of the political class during the holidays, right? All that campaigning might interfere with turkey and travel. Military voters? Oh well.
All of the procedures in the order to circumvent the Congressional mandate are welcome, but inadequate. The law says 45 days. Not 30 days with an instant runoff. Not 35 days with a ten day tack on after the election. In fact, Congress specifically rejected this idea.
The answer was to set an election that had 45 day gaps between each stage. But when you have some in the DOJ who don’t like the 45 day mandate, and never have, then Justice was offering discounts.
The District Court judge in the case in Myron Thompson. We have a pretty good idea how this deal went down. A few phone calls to chambers, whipping through a complaint and decree at the same time, no questions asked because of who was on the other end of the line, and as usual, military voters getting the short end of the stick. Better yet for Eric Holder, he can hide behind a nice sanitized order that doesn’t even have the traditional “We Ask For This” line as part of a settlement. It helps to have old friends in high places.
Paging Senator Cornyn, I hear that DOJ is going to have another nomination coming up again – this time the same person who may have approved this extra-legal agreement in Alabama.
Texas Attorney General displays advanced understanding of the Justice Department Voting Section’s partisan personnel:
Abbott pinpointed the administration’s long-term goal in taking Texas to court: Turning Texas into a Democrat state. He said the Obama administration is “using legal tools to achieve political ends, and we’re just not going to tolerate it.” He cited the fact that despite Democrat claims that voter ID and the state’s districting maps hurt Hispanics, the state elected five Hispanic Republicans just from 2010 forward.
“This has electoral college math all over it,” Abbott said, “because they realize that if they can get Texas’ electoral college votes, then Democrats will win presidential elections forever more.”
The Common Cause presser: Common Cause Urges Holder to Challenge North Carolina Voter Restrictions Attorney General Eric Holder should seek a court order overturning North Carolina’s discriminatory new voting laws and requiring that future changes in the Tar Heel State’s election statutes be cleared in advance by the Justice Department, Common Cause said Tuesday. “The attorney general’s strong response to a new Texas law imposing discriminatory Voter ID requirements has put states on notice that the administration intends to continue enforcing the Voting Rights Act,” said Arn Pearson, Common Cause’s vice president for policy and litigation. “Mr. Holder needs to back up those words with action in North Carolina as well.” North Carolina lawmakers approved a bill last week reducing early voting days, eliminating Election Day voter registration, repealing a program that allowed high school students to register before they turn 18, and dramatically restricting the types of voter identification that officials will accept at the polls. “It’s clear that this legislation was written to make it more difficult for tens of thousands of North Carolinians to exercise their right to vote. It will disproportionately impact minority voters and students, as well the elderly and those with disabilities who may not be able to obtain the kinds of ID it requires or get to a polling place on one of the designated early voting days,” Pearson said. “These are exactly the kinds of maneuvers the Voting Rights Act is designed to prevent,” Pearson said. “Until the Supreme Court’s ruling in June in Shelby County v. Holder, the Justice Department had authority to block them through a process called pre-clearance. The Texas and North Carolina laws that have emerged since that decision demonstrate why pre-clearance is so important and why the department should go into court now to restore it.” ###
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, the former Democratic Congressman and alleged serial sexual harasser, will try to weather two separate recall efforts.
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has taken to the airwaves of public radio to talk Shelby. In the interview, he became the first Republican who has urged a fix to Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act by enactment of a new coverage formula. That places him on this side of the many Democrats in Congress who are determined to pass a new coverage formula.
A couple of other thoughts – the Attorney General does not have standing to assert a Constitutional claim, as inferred in the interview. Moreover, a Section 2 case does not require proof of racial intent. It might, but it is not required. So the comments in the interview regarding this burden were not accurate.
Key snips:
GONZALES: I’m not suggesting that the department should not take advantage of the Voting Rights Act when they see racial discrimination in the voting context. That opportunity, or that authority, still existed irrespective of the decision in the Shelby case. They could have brought an action under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. They could have alleged a Constitutional violation under Article 14 or Article 15 of the Constitution.
No, I think I agree that the Department of Justice has an obligation, when they believe that voting rights are being infringed based upon race, that’s unlawful, and they have an obligation to enforce the law and to enforce the Constitution. And the question is, what is the best way to do that? In the past, it was much easier to enforce civil rights laws under Section 5. It was prospective. It gave the department an opportunity to step in, to weigh in, before a law actually took, went into effect. Now Section 2 was still available. Section 3 was available.
But those are much harder for the department, because what it does, it requires the department to wait until the laws are actually passed. They go into effect, and the department has to go in and show that, in fact, the intent of the law was to discriminate based upon race. The standard is much easier under Section 5, and that’s why the decision in the Shelby case was extremely important in terms of civil rights enforcement.
I think the best outcome here is for Congress to pass legislation to update the formula in Section 4. That then makes Section 5, once again, enforceable, and the Department of Justice has the preclearance authority that it had before the Shelby case. Now, unfortunately, because of the politics that exist in this country, you know, I’m not very optimistic that Congress is going to pass a law to update the formula in Section 4.
Roger Clegg at National Review responds to the New York Times
“We hope that Texas and the other states targeted by the DOJ will put up a vigorous defense. We have to admit, however, that in one sense we are happy to see Holder’s lawsuits, as opposed to a congressional effort to revive Section 5. In all likelihood, new voting-rights laws would either curtail perfectly reasonable election-integrity laws (such as those requiring voter identification) or facilitate racially gerrymandered and segregated districts (the principal use to which Section 5 has been put).”
National Review Online
