Yesterday Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez told NASS that the Voting Section was enormously busy with “roughly” 100 investigations.  Rough indeed (more on how rough later).  Earlier at NASS AAG Perez indicated that the DOJ Voting Section needs more attorneys.  One might assume that will be a nonstarter with Congressman Frank Wolf who oversees the DOJ budget.

Consider today’s Morning Report, the document which indicates who is and who is not in the office.  Today’s morning report has “roughly” twenty attorneys leaving the office to go watch as spectators arguments in a Texas redistricting case.  Note that these attorneys are not working on the case being argued.  They are there for the show.  In addition to these 20 named individuals who are spectators at the show, other attorneys are listed as “late,” which means they too are likely to be at the show across town, though they didn’t come into work first.  These include managers.

This is just one small example how the stories we hear from the political appointees about a section abuzz with activity (those “roughly” 100 investigations in particular) don’t square with reality. The reality is that the Obama run Voting Section has an enforcement record that is a shadow of that accomplished during the Bush administration.  This wouldn’t be a concern if the 2008 political campaign wasn’t characterized by complaints about a lack of DOJ voting enforcement.  Naturally, the loud critics from 2008 have fallen silent, as I detail in my book Injustice.  Not a [public] peep from Wade Henderson.  [But plenty of griping within the family, you can be sure].

We’ll learn more about how rough (and hardly ready) some of these 100 “investigations” are shortly.  Well learn the roughly 100 investigations are their own sort of show, a show for an election year.