[StBernard] Obama Justice Department Accused of Ignoring Law Against Fraudulent Voting

[Westley Annis]

Obama Justice Department Accused of Ignoring Law Against Fraudulent Voting

CORRUPTION, FEATURED, PELICAN SITE FEATURED - BY KEVIN MOONEY ON NOVEMBER
29, 2011 8:17 AM 

Former DOJ attorney warns against illegal 2012 votes, Tulane Law professor
argues dangers are exaggerated

President Obama's Justice Department is "philosophically opposed" to
enforcing a federal law that calls for registration rolls to be purged of
ineligible voters, an election law attorney said during a recent forum at
Tulane Law School.

However, the department's attorneys are using a "heavy hand" to enforce the
"motor voter" section of the same federal law against Louisiana officials,
J. Christian Adams, a former Voting Section attorney with the Department of
Justice (DOJ) told audience members. He also warned against the possibility
that DOJ could attempt to extract a consent agreement from state officials
that extends beyond the scope of written law.

Adams cited a similar case in Rhode Island where the agencies and
organizations responsible for distributing voter registration forms,
including Catholic Charities, are now required to keep documentation for
every single person who declines to register.

"In other words, they have to prove a negative," Adams observed. "They have
to generate paperwork all across the state for every person who says `I
don't want to register to vote' and the [federal] government admits that
this goes beyond what the law requires."

In July, the DOJ filed suit against Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration in
the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana under Section 7
of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). The DOJ suit claims
Louisiana's social service agencies failed to provide eligible voters with
sufficient registration opportunities.

Unlike the Rhode Island state officials who "rolled over" and "agreed to
extra-legal burdens," Gov. Jindal's administration has vowed "to fight until
the last man at the Alamo," Adams noted.

As part of the consent decree that Rhode Island entered into with DOJ this
past March, the state has agreed to convert food stamp offices, cash
assistance offices, behavioral treatment centers, utility payment grant
offices and drug treatment centers into voter registration offices.

Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler "takes exception" to the idea that
the state's social services, health and welfare agencies are not stepping up
to make voter registration forms available. Schedler is named in the DOJ
complaint along with Bruce Greenstein, secretary of the Department of Health
Hospitals (DHH) and Ruth Johnson, secretary of Department of Children and
Family Services (DCFS).

"We have a very proactive approach to the community and we do a considerable
amount of outreach to make sure that everyone who wants a voter registration
form gets one," Schedler has said. "We have re-established training across
the state to make sure this is getting done. But what they [DOJ attorneys]
shoved in front of my face, before even telling us what the allegations are
and what we are being accused of, are consent agreements that go outside of
what federal law says, and would impose requirements that even a Democratic
Congress would not pass. But this is not a Republican or Democratic issue.
This is about fairness and logic and about overreach from Washington D.C. We
will not surrender."

President Clinton signed the NRVA into law in 1993 after reaching a
bipartisan compromise with Senate leaders, Adams explained during his talk.
Section 7 includes the "motor voter" provision, which calls for social
service departments to include voter registration services. Section 8 of
NVRA makes it a requirement for state officials to keep voter rolls up to
date and free of ineligible voters. But Adams claims that the Obama Justice
Department refuses to enforce Section 8 for ideological reasons.

"Congress passed Section 7 and Section 8 as a way to increase participation
and as a way to combat voter fraud," Adams said. "It was a compromise.
Section 7 would not have become law without Section 8, because there would
not have been enough votes in the Senate to prevent a filibuster of `motor
voter.' What we have now in the Justice Department are bureaucrats who have
vetoed out that compromise from 1993. Heading into next year's elections, I
do not believe this is a place where we want to be."

In his just released book entitled: "Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda
of the Obama Justice Department," Adams describes how Obama's top DOJ
appointees scuttled Section 8 investigations. Deputy Assistant Attorney
General Julie Fernandes made it clear during a "brown bag" meeting in
November 2009 that the agency had "no interest in enforcing that provision
of the law" since it was not related to boosting voter turnout, Adams wrote.

The testimony Christopher Coates, former chief of the Voting Section within
DOJ's civil rights division, delivered to the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights in Sept. 2010 backs up this version of events from "Injustice."
Coates also told the commission that eight states appeared to be out of
compliance at the time with Section 8 requirements; meaning they had more
voter names listed on their registration forms than they had people of
eligible voting age.

Louisiana has the same problem heading into the 2012 elections, Adams noted
during his Tulane presentation.

He cited several parishes with "implausible" registration numbers that
exceed the number of people living in those same parishes who can legally
vote, according to U.S. Census data. They include: Cameron, St. Helena, St.
Bernard, Orleans, St. Landry and Plaquemines.

But the actual instances of voter fraud are largely contrived and greatly
exaggerated, Tulane Law professor Tania Tetlow argued as part of her own
presentation during the forum. She cited a report from the Brennan Center
for Justice entitled: "The Truth about Voter Fraud" that challenges many of
the assertions made by Adams and others.

The problem in St. Bernard Parish, for instance, can be traced back to
Hurricane Katrina, which displaced a large segment of the population, she
said. While they may be living somewhere else temporarily, they intend to
move back and rebuild, Tetlow suggested.

As it turns out, fraudulent voting is "a very inconvenient way to steal an
election" because it involves a lot of trouble and effort and can only
result in a small number of votes, she continued.

"An efficient way to win an election is to try and disenfranchise as many
people who don't agree with you as humanly possible," she said. "I'm not
here to claim there are no examples of voter fraud in the U.S., that's not
the issue. "The issue is how many people are we willing to disenfranchise in
order to prevent any single act of voter fraud. "Ultimately those are the
tradeoffs we have to make, and they are tradeoffs."

She added:

"Trying to purge the rolls to make sure that St. Bernard Parish does not
have anyone registered who does not live there would cause a lot of
suffering and would disenfranchise a lot of people."

In response, Adams said the U.S. Census data he was using for St. Bernard
was actually post-Katrina data and that DOJ should not be permitted to
"cherry pick" which laws it will enforce, and which laws it will not.

"Hurricane Katrina did not go everywhere in the country," he said. "There
are plenty of other counties that were not affected by Hurricane Katrina
that have similar or worse numbers. You can only have the path of Hurricane
Katrina to excuse so many bad numbers."

Since the DOJ refuses to enforce Section 8, Adams announced that he intends
to pursue a "private right of action" against states and localities that
have people listed as voters who may not be ineligible.

Adams also said an emerging "industry of vote fraud deniers" has taken root
in the U.S. He identified the Brennan Center, Project Vote, Demos and the
National Association of the Advancement of Colored People  (NAACP) as some
of the key players within the industry. Each organization is devoted  to the
elimination of voter identification requirements, he explains in his book.

Some of the major financial backers supporting the "vote fraud denier
industry" are George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation,
the Carnegie Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and Pew Charitable
Trusts, according to "Injustice."

The NAACP has filed its own separate "motor voter" suit against Louisiana
officials with the support of Project Vote. The DOJ suit was filed in July
just a few days after a federal court dismissed a challenge from state
officials who questioned the NAACP's legal standing to bring suit.

The "tight connection" and the collusion "between left-wing groups and the
DOJ" is a major point of discussion in Adams's book. "The DOJ's aggressive
hiring of left-wing activists is tantamount to providing a taxpayer subsidy
to their movement," he argues.

Adams resigned from the DOJ after the department declined to pursue a voter
intimidation case from the 2008 elections against members of the New Black
Panther Party (NBPR) in Philadelphia. He now works as a private election
lawyer and writes for Pajamas Media.

Kevin Mooney is the Capitol Bureau Reporter with the Pelican Institute for
Public Policy. He can be reached at kmooney at pelicaninstitute.org and
followed on twitter.