Attorney General Eric Holder has dispatched federal poll watchers to 18 states to watch for discrimination against voters. The Hill reports, “Monitors will head to Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.”
Holder defended his move by stating it is the job of the Justice Department to “stand vigilant” and work to “ensure that every voter can cast his or her ballot free of intimidation, discrimination or obstruction.”
Holder’s choice to send poll watchers results from the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that overturned components of the Voting Rights Act. In that ruling, the court determined that a portion of Justice Department rules requiring states to get its permission to change their voting laws is, in fact, unconstitutional. That ruling paved the way for nine states to change voting laws without the approval of the Justice Department.
The 2014 midterms are the first major election since that ruling.
Holder has been outspoken about his opposition to voter ID laws, calling them “restrictive” and “burdensome.” He asserts that such laws unfairly target minority voters, despite data that suggest otherwise.
According to the Judicial Watch, since North Carolina’s voter ID bill was signed into law in 2013, for example, the number of blacks registered to vote not only increased, but black turnout increased significantly by 29.5 percent. Still, the Obama administration continued to insist that voter ID requirements suppress black turnout.
And when it became increasingly clear that the DOJ was wrong, they turned to a rather strange defense of their case.
Former Justice Department voting rights lawyer J. Christian Adams explains, “The Justice Department had actually argued that even if black voters turned out at higher rates under voter ID (which they do), because blacks have to take the bus more and their life is generally harder, then the voter ID and curtailing early voting violates the Voting Rights Act.”
Economist and political columnist Thomas Sowell contends that the DOJ is simply attempting to advance a narrative that will encourage racial divides:
Since blacks and whites both have to show photo I.D. for everything from cashing checks to getting on a plane, why has requiring a photo I.D. for voting caused such shrill outcries?
Unfortunately, this is part of the cynical politics of promoting as much racial polarization and paranoia as possible, in hopes of getting more black voters to turn out to vote for the Democrats.
After all, Holder’s concerns regarding voting rights do not seem to extend beyond minority voters.
On November 4, 2008, members of the New Black Panthers stood outside a Philadelphia polling facility bearing nightsticks and employing an intimidating stance. When questioned about their presence and their possession of weapons, the Panther members claimed that they were concerned citizens and “that’s why we’re here.” Not until a YouTube video of the encounter with the Panthers circulated did the incident gain notoriety, prompting the Bush Justice Department to sue the Black Panthers involved for violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act through their use of racial slurs, military-style uniforms, and possession of weaponry. Following the lead of the Bush administration, the Obama administration launched an investigation, and the DOJ won a default judgment against several of the New Black Panther members when they failed to appear at their hearing in April 2009. Shortly after, however, the Obama administration elected to dismiss the charges after compromising with the New Black Panther members, who agreed not to carry “a deadly weapon” within the vicinity of a polling place. That is, until the 2012 elections.
Meanwhile, former Department of Justice official Christian Adams testified before the Civil Rights commission “pursuant to a subpoena investigating the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation dismissal.” During his testimony, Adams claimed that the Obama administration has generally failed to prosecute “non-whites” in voter intimidation cases.
And though Holder contends that it is the role of the Justice Department to “stand vigilant” to ensure that voting laws are not violated, he has turned a blind eye to voter fraud, in fact pretending it does not exist.
Holder has stated that “in–person voting fraud is uncommon.”
Liberals have latched on to these claims. “It’s a made-up problem invented by GOP operatives,” said Robert Koehler in the Huffington Post.
But reporter John Fund has written several books on voter fraud, and a recent survey by Old Dominion University has shown that there are over one million registered voters who are not citizens and therefore are voting illegally.
Four Frederick County, Maryland citizens have filed a lawsuit in federal court to request a review by election officials of nearly 400 of their county’s residents who had declined participation in jury duty because they were not U.S. citizens, but were somehow registered to vote. The lawsuit is said to have documents proving that approximately 100 of the nearly 400 non-citizens have been voting in Maryland elections since 2006.
Further proof of voter fraud is found in a recent academic paper published in the journal Electoral Studies that provides evidence of voting by non-citizens.
In 2012, investigative journalist James O’Keefe sent his organization Project Veritas to New Hampshire during primary voting season. Three Project Veritas videographers in Manchester and Nashua captured footage of poll workers handing out ballots to people who used names of deceased voters. Because IDs were not required, the poll workers could not know that the requesters were not who they said they were.
Deroy Murdock, National Review Online contributing editor, remarked at the time, “New Hampshire Democrats seem unconcerned that their voter rolls contain the names of dead people and that, absent ID rules, fraudsters conveniently could vote the ballots of the expired. Instead, Democrats want to indict these whistleblowers.”
“They should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if in fact they’re found guilty of some criminal act,” Democratic governor John Lynch told WMUR-TV.”
Unfortunately, it seems that if it is not to come to the defense of minority voters, Holder is not interested. It is almost certain that the poll watchers for today’s elections will be looking for very specific things, none of which will have to do with the presence of Black Panthers outside the polls, or with illegal voters attempting to vote.
And for those voting at polls without poll watchers, Holder has them covered too. The Department of Justice has also set up toll-free lines for people to call with civil rights complaints.
