There are some interesting aspects of the DOJ criminal prosecution of Representative Stat Smith.  Smith reached a plead deal involving criminal civil rights violations according to this statement from the FBI.  Smith engaged in two separate schemes.  First, he cast absentee ballots for voters who were ineligible.  This is the most interesting charge because it implicates voter registration procedures in the Bay State.  Why are ineligible voters on the rolls?  Is Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act being followed by state and local officials, or, are the voter rolls in Smith’s district full of people who should not be on the rolls in the first place?  And if so, the FBI certainly now knows.  If the FBI now knows, will the Civil Rights Division Voting Section do something about it?

Second, Smith requested absentee ballots from voters who were properly on the rolls, but then had them intercepted prior to delivery to the voter.  This is precisely the behavior that Noxubee County Democrat Party Chairman Ike Brown engineered in Mississippi.  Smith then voted and cast the absentee ballots.  One presumes that the voters must have been highly inactive for him to have dared request the ballots.  Once again, this implicates list maintenance issues in the Bay State.  NVRA requires removal of inactive voters after two dormant federal elections.  But two dormant elections is hardly enough dormancy to dare request absentee ballots.  Are there Bay State voters who have been on the rolls and dormant for more than two federal cycles?  If so, those entities now targeting Motor Voter Section 8 violations (See Judicial Watch’s lawsuits in Indiana and Ohio) and others may want to take a closer look at Massachusetts. 

Finally, it is curious that the DOJ pursued civil rights charges, but nobody from the criminal section at the Civil Rights Division appears to have been involved in the case.  Is this the famous partisanship of that division manifesting again?  From the release:

“Representative Stephen Smith, 57, of Everett, Massachusetts, will plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of deprivation of rights under color of law. . . . The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugenia M. Carris of the U.S. Attorney’s Public Corruption Unit for the District of Massachusetts and Trial Attorney Jeffrey E. Tsai of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section.”