“Every one of the more than 700 voters presented valid ID and none cast a provisional ballot.” The Woodruff mayoral election was the first in Spartanburg County since the photo ID requirement went into effect, but not the first 100% success for South Carolina’s new voter ID law. “The state held its first voter ID election in the Town of Branchville in Orangeburg County. All of the 205 people who voted in that election had a photo ID, Andino said, and no one requested an exemption. “ Statewide, only about 1,100 photo identification cards have been issued under the new law. “The actual number of voters who have requested the cards is lower, because the 1,100 printed include duplicates made to correct errors and test cards.”
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…).”
Hannity on Tom Perez and IG Report Last Night
IG: Obama DOJ Hired Attorneys Based on Left Wing Ideology
(Note: PJ Media has since published a better version of this post. Suggest you click to go there.) We received inconsistent responses from CRT staff to our questions concerning the purpose of the list of former Voting Section attorneys that DAAG Fernandes requested in late 2009 – a list that ultimately included 25 former Voting Section attorneys but omitted several former Section attorneys who were widely perceived to be conservatives. Fernandes stated that she requested a list of attorneys who had left the Section since 2005 and did not seek a list that excluded conservatives. Herren told the OIG that he could not remember how the list of attorneys was compiled, but believed it should have included attorneys who left during the prior administration, primarily those who departed the Section due to improper practices like those described in the prior OIG report. Wertz told us she believed that she may have worked on the list and said that she thought that Fernandes was looking for staff with extensive voting rights experience who might be interested in returning. However, when we pointed out that some attorneys on the list did not have extensive voting experience, she could not explain why they were included. She also could not explain why conservatives were left off the list even though they had significant voting litigation experience. She said that they may not have been interested in returning, though we found that Voting Section staff did not make any attempt to gauge the interest of the conservative attorneys. Berman said that the list was made up of attorneys with redistricting experience.
Sources familiar with the thinking of Civil Rights Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez report that he and others in the Department believe the Inspector General’s report vindicates the attorney hiring decisions over the last few years in the Civil Rights Division. In essence, Perez believes that the report shows that the attorneys were qualified. He must not have read page 218 of the report.
This, of course, misses entirely the point of the charges levied at the Division about hiring. Qualifications weren’t the core issue, ideological biases were. And on that score, the IG Report offers Perez no quarter. In fact, the IG report concludes that the criteria that only attorneys with experience working at a civil rights organization, which is invariably (and empirically) left of center, will be hired should not be a qualification. Perez should know better than to claim that the report vindicates the Division’s hiring decisions – because Perez himself complained about the recommendation to jettison this qualification.
But ideological binders can produce skewed thinking, and that’s happening in relation to the report by Division leadership. Consider the damning passage below. For years we heard that the Bush administration made hiring decisions based on ideology. Turns out Julie Fernandes, with the help of Deputy Becky Wertz were up to the same shenanigans – except this time for the purpose of recruiting liberal attorneys because of their ideology. The pair created an ideologically pure list of left wing lawyers to recruit to the Voting Section. The list excluded conservative attorneys who left the section in the same timeframe who also had extensive experience litigating Voting Rights cases – but left in part because of the harassment by liberal DOJ employees.
Will the names “Fernandes” and “Wertz” be thrown around for years in the left wing blogs as violators of DOJ policies against ideological hiring? Of course not, because the ends justify the means to this crowd. Note the horse-hockey explanations offered by Wertz and Berman for the list. From the IG Report starting at 218:
Although we did not receive a consistent explanation for the purpose of this list, we did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that the list was actually used in the recruitment and selection of new attorneys for the Voting Section. However, we found the explanations we received about the list troubling because it appeared that the list was prepared in part for recruiting purposes (Fernandes said she thought that there may be former staff who wanted to return to the Section), people widely perceived to be conservatives were omitted from it, and staff in the Voting Section failed to provide a consistent explanation as to why that was the case.
We believe these incidents point to ongoing risks within the Voting Section for future violations of merit system principles, as well as for creating perceptions that CRT engages in favoritism based on ideology and politics. “
Wertz said the conservatives “may not have been interested in returning,” because of course Becky Wertz is a clairvoyant. She was able to tell that hardworking lawyers who left because of the poisonous atmosphere she has personally presided over for years drove them out didn’t want to return (more on that management style another day). She seems confident that they never wanted to return even though she never contacted a single one of them, and some of them were in fact looking for jobs.
In the real world outside of government, Wertz’s excuse has a name not fit for this blog but it starts with bull.
Then consider Bob Berman’s response to the IG, that he wanted lawyers with “redistricting experience.” (And it is no accident the two – Wertz and Berman – were sympaticao on this effort.) His response doesn’t hold water because the list of attorneys who left didn’t all have redistricting experience. I can name names, but I won’t. So that explanation for the ideological hiring by Fernandes and Wertz doesn’t hold water.
Why does all this matter? Ask South Carolina, ask Texas. Ask Louisiana or Florida. Ask the Governor of Pennsylvania who received a letter from this Voting Section demanding he turn over documents his office used to prepare a press release. Ask any of the jurisdictions who faced a Voting Section willing to twist the law (or overrule career lawyers on South Carolina Voter ID) to achieve partisan ends.
We’ll have much more on this here at this blog, other news sites and in time in Congress. But this episode gives you yet another example of the mismanagement and ideological rot that has infested that place for years.