Texas AG Abbott should prepare now to defend the interests of Texans on Voter ID


In Texas, the Star Telegram reports:  “As politically emboldened Republicans predict almost certain enactment of a voter identification law in the 2011 Legislature, the House point man on the issue is pushing a measure patterned after one of the most stringent voter ID laws in the country.  House Elections Committee Chairman Todd Smith of Euless, who was at the center of the partisan brawl over voter ID during the 2009 Legislature, has introduced legislation that would require voters to show a photo ID to cast ballots.  HB401, modeled after a Georgia law, would also authorize creation of a voter identification card, which would be among the approved ID forms.”

If Texas is modeling this voter identification requirement after Georgia, the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott should immediately review the bureaucratic and ideological based opposition of the Voting Section at Department of Justice during the Section 5 preclearance process on a number of recent voting changes in Georgia.  Texas AG Abbott should consult with Georgia on how they successfully defended their voter citizen verification requirements by opting for Federal Court. 

After naively giving the Voting Section the benefit of doubt, Georgia eventually concluded that the Holder DoJ was simply not capable of calling balls and strikes.  Georgia eventually went to the only place where they would receive a fair hearing – the three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia with a threatened direct appeal to the Supreme Court.  Going to Federal Court provides sunshine in discovery and requires that Department of Justice bureaucrats actually articulate their novel legal theories to three Federal Judges as opposed to simply reciting advocacy group assertions to each other in the halls of the voting section.   

For important policy issues of the Legislature and Executive Branch including redistricting or election administration citizenship verification or voter identification, the chief advocate for the state, Texas Attorney General Abbott, has a responsibility and duty to seek the fairest possible hearing on this voting change.  That place would be the Federal Courts.  AG Abbott should prepare his litigation plan now.  Upon passage of the voter ID law, he should immediately request expedited review by a three judge panel in D.C.  

DOJ wants more money for welfare agency voter registration

The Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice has shown its hand to Congress. It wants more money and federal employees in the Voting Section.   What is the new litigation priority?  Dead people on the voter rolls?  Minority vote dilution?  Helping Spanish speaking voters?  Nope.  As reported last week in the Washington Examiner, those issues are genuinely “closed for business” at the Holder DOJ.

Instead, the DOJ has told Congress in this document  that they want more money and staff, get this, to ensure that welfare and other public assistance agencies are registering as many voters as possible.  Section 7 of the Motor Voter law enacted in 1993 requires welfare agencies and DMV’s to offer voter registration opportunities.  It also requires military recruitment facilities to do the same, but don’t expect much attention there. 

Section 8 of Motor Voter is the counterpart to Section 7, and it requires that the rolls be kept clean and free from ineligible, dead and felon voters.  Sections 7 and 8 represented a compromise in Congress.  Without 8, there wouldn’t have been a Section 7.  The Bush Administration enforced both provisions, but change has come to Washington.  Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes announced that the Obama DOJ would not be enforcing Section 8 because it doesn’t “have anything to do with increasing minority turnout.”

The budget request notes there are active investigations of states taking place.  That means that undercover DOJ employees are trolling around welfare agencies, hanging out in the lobby, and grabbing welfare applicants and chatting them up to see if they were offered a voter registration card. They will interview individuals who have just been inside welfare agencies.  It is a labor intensive investigation. 

You don’t suppose an aggressive welfare agency voter registration crackdown by DOJ would have anything to do with the 2012 Presidential election would you?  It’s not like the DOJ has shown a lack of interest in enforcing the voting rights of, say, military members, have they?  I wonder who voters who are registering at public assistance agencies might vote for.  There’s just no way tell.

The DOJ budget document quoted below describes the Voting Section priorities, and nary a word about enforcing Section 8 in addition to welfare agency registration enforcement:


“Instituting and maintaining an aggressive affirmative litigation program: The Voting  Section also enforces the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The NVRA requires that individuals be given the opportunity to register to vote when applying for services at public assistance or disability offices under Section 7 of the NVRA or State driver license agencies under Section 5 of the NVRA. These provisions of Federal law must be vigorously enforced if groups who have been chronic nonparticipants in the American democratic process in the past are to be become active voters in the future. In the recent past, the Voting Section has entered into two out-of-court settlements with Arizona and Illinois regarding the failure of those States to comply with the public assistance agency voter registration requirements of the NVRA. Importantly, the Voting Section has a number of active statewide investigations in other states regarding possible failures to comply with Section 7 of the NVRA, and these investigations will be informed by the biannual nationwide NVRA report issued by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in July 2009. The Administration has already informed the Voting Section that it expects it to mount a vigorous Section 7 initiative in the coming months and years, and the Voting Section intends to carry out this mission with an eye toward investigatory reviews and, if appropriate, enforcement actions against those States that are not complying with Section 7. The requested additional resources will be used in part to fund this Section 7 enforcement work, which is very resource intensive.”

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:

“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.“

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. 

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.

Gastonia (NC) voter fraud indictment

Another indictment out of the November 2010 election for voter fraud is announced. From the Gastonia Gazette in North Carolina:


“A Gaston County grand jury returned a true bill of indictment this week against Jerry Lee June Jr., 28, of 4461 Lamar Ave., for felony voter fraud. The indictment asserts that June was still serving probation for another recent felony conviction when he cast a provisional ballot.  June was released from the Gaston County Jail on Thursday after posting a $1,000 secured bond.”

Someone alert Tova Wang , yet another amendment to her November 4 report concluding no voter fraud occurred on November 2 appears to be in order.

Senate Omnibus Bill intended to terminate the Election Assistance Commission (EAC)

The recent Senate Omnibus Spending Bill pulled last night by Harry Reid intended to permanently dissolve the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and terminate all Requirements payments to States.  This move reflects the growing disenchantment of the agency in the Congress and with the National Association of Secretaries of States (NASS).  In July of 2010, NASS, the organization of chief election officials across the country, openly encouraged the Congress not to give the EAC rule-making authority and lobbied not to reauthorize or fund the EAC.   While this defunding and termination of the EAC was found in the latest Senate Omnibus Spending Bill, the U.S. House of Representatives is also considering ending, at a minimum, their requirements payments authority.  In the past number of years, the Committee on House Administration has also had a multitude of oversight issues with the dysfunctional federal agency and may quickly join the chorus of critics to defund the agency.  The EAC was hit with and settled charges of political discrimination in the hiring of a senior employee and the recent sudden resignation of Commissioner Gracia Hillman left the EAC with just two commissioners and lack of a quorum for official actions.  Meanwhile, the other potential commissioners remain bottled up in the Senate.

One must ask – has the agency finally hit bottom?  Probably not.  There a number of reasons that this site will explore in the months ahead.  And as the new Congress takes control, the new Republican majority in the House will likely demand answers from the agency on their many legitimate and unanswered questions. 

The bigger question today is how did the EAC ever reach such a low in the hearts and minds of chief election officials and the Congress that they now face extinction?  

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.