Will Matt Colangelo and Tom Perez Be Accountable for SC Voter ID Folly?



From PJ Media:  “Congress might get answers if they haul DOJ Voting Section Chief Christopher Herren before the House Judiciary Committee for answers. The Democrats could hardly object. After all, they dragged Bush-era Voting Section Chief John Tanner before the Democrat-run House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about Georgia Voter ID. There is precedent. Democrats could hardly object when the Voting Section Chief during the Bush administration was made to dance the dance before the Committee.”

Footnote to Supreme Court on Burden of Section 5: “Justice can cost millions”

According to media reports, the Section 5 litigation over one piece of legislation, the infamous photo ID bill, cost South Carolina $3.5 million dollars.  That cost was to simply put the law into effect.   That’s $3.5 million dollars and all-out assault by DOJ lawyers over a law that is not as strict as the Indiana photo ID law and which the Supreme Court found non-objectionable and non-discriminatory.  


Of course, none of this would have happened if an overly politicized DOJ would have simply accepted the recommendations of career attorneys to provide preclearance. In the end, the political appointees improperly overruled that recommendation twice and South Carolina had to go the court to preclear the photo ID law when it should have been simply precleared administratively.  Instead of administrative preclearance, we had Attorney General Holder make the bill a political issue, calling it a “poll tax.”   

There is simply no way around it.  The federal government (DOJ) wrongfully interfered with state election law, in part on non-substantive reasons: politics and overzealousness.  This is not how a healthy political system works, much less the noble notion of “federalism.”  After multiple administrative objections where South Carolina tried to work with DOJ to no avail, the state exercised its legal right to go to the DC District Court for preclearance.  And they won.  However, if South Carolina had not stood on principle, the will of their elected legislature would have never gone into effect.  It is shameful that the courts once again had to reign in DOJ.    

The damage caused by the federal government’s intrusion:  A $3.5 million dollar Section 5 burden and the South Carolina photo ID law being delayed for over a year through multiple elections including the Presidential General Election.  This may be what the Supreme Court meant by a law not being proportional and congruent to justify such an invasion of the normal balance between state and federal voting laws. Giving such authority to a politicized federal agency in the executive branch to preempt state law is no small matter.  The Holder DOJ has proven why. 

“SC Voter ID Costs: Seeing Triple”

The burden of preclearance for a non-discriminatory South Carolina photo ID law:  $3.5 million. 

The article opines that the costs were high because DOJ (and the intervenors) tried to make the Section 5 preclearance process as lengthy and costly as possible.  That strategy may come back to haunt them as it shows the lack of proportionality of Section 5.  The cost of Rhode Island photo ID section 5 preclearance:  $0.  Cost of South Carolina photo ID section 5 preclearance  $3.5 million.  The cost of Tennessee photo ID section 5 preclearance: $ 0.  Kansas….yep, you guessed it: $0.

Why were the costs associated with defending this law so high? That’s a good question … Obviously the costs associated with defending this legislation fall most squarely on the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ) – which went out of its way to make political hay at South Carolina’s expense (even after its non-political staff recommended approving the legislation).

“Damn liberal bureaucrats in D.C. are responsible for this bill,” one source familiar with the case tells FITS.

More to the point, the fact that South Carolina is one of a handful of states which has to “pre-clear” election laws with Washington is ridiculous. Our state has a black U.S. Senator and an Indian-American governor – and while neither of them is the fiscal conservative champion they claim to be – their presence in such high offices would seem to indicate the Palmetto State’s history of disenfranchising minorities is a thing of the past.

Court Settles It: DOJ LOST South Carolina Voter ID Case

The Justice Department actually argued to the federal court that South Carolina was NOT the prevailing party in the Voting Rights Act lawsuit to approve Voter ID.  Remember, career staff at the Voting Section recommended that the South Carolina voter ID law be precleared.  But radicals in the front office, including Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, demanded that the law be objected to, and that decision forced South Carolina to go to court.  Now the federal court has ruled clearly that South Carolina was the “prevailing party” and the Justice Department will be liable for the state’s costs.  From the State paper:

“The state Attorney General’s Office blamed the U.S. Department of Justice for the high cost of the case. They accused the federal government of delaying the case by 120 days by filing numerous frivolous motions, including challenging the 12-point font size on a document the state filed.


“The Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., bears responsibility for the litigation costs,” said Mark Powell, Wilson’s spokesman. “The decision was so emphatic, even the Department of Justice and Interveners did not appeal it. South Carolina was forced to pay a hefty price because a handful of Washington insiders refused to do the right thing.”


The handful of “Washington insiders” quick to play with other people’s money are Tom Perez and Matthew Colangelo.  The bad decision to reject the career advice was theirs.  The taxpayers deserve answers, and the pair deserve consequences.