and America takes another one in the........
Posted on 07/08/2010 3:35:20 PM PDT by jazusamo
Complete title:
Lawlessness at the DOJ: Voting Section Told Not To Enforce Purging the Dead or Ineligible from Voting Rolls
It's not just the New Black Panther case: in November 2009, political appointee Julie Fernandes told a packed room of Voting Section employees to simply ignore this provision of the "Motor Voter" law.
I was at the Voting Section of the Justice Department for over five years. This office is responsible for enforcing most federal election laws which do not involve criminal matters. My previous articles at Pajamas Media have spoken of the DOJ’s lawless abandonment of race-neutral enforcement of voting laws, and other outrageous conduct. I will continue to publish here at Pajamas Media more instances of failure to enforce the law equally by the Department.
One such instance relates to the Motor Voter law, and will shock Americans who care about integrity in the electoral process.
The “Motor Voter” law was passed in 1993 to promote greater voter registration in the United States. It did this — most Americans now know from visits to the DMV — by requiring states to offer voter registration materials whenever someone had contact with a variety of state offices. These included welfare offices, social service agencies, and motor vehicle departments.
A lesser-known provision also obliged the states to ensure that no ineligible voters were on the rolls — including dead people, felons, and people who had moved. Our current Department of Justice is anxious to encourage the obligations to get everyone registered, but explicitly unwilling to enforce federal law requiring states to remove the dead or ineligible from the rolls.
In November 2009, the entire Voting Section was invited to a meeting with Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes, a political employee serving at the pleasure of the attorney general. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Motor Voter enforcement decisions.
The room was packed with dozens of Voting Section employees when she made her announcement regarding the provisions related to voter list integrity:
We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law. It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.
Jaws dropped around the room.
It is one thing to silently adopt a lawless policy of refusing to enforce a provision of federal law designed to bring integrity to elections. It is quite another to announce the lawlessness to a room full of people who have sworn an oath to fairly enforce the law.
Worse yet, it is a broken campaign promise by Barack Obama, and I’m sure he would not be happy to have heard the announcement. After all, his Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez has been traveling around the country bashing the Bush-era Department of Justice. Perez says as often as he can:
Those who had been entrusted with the keys to the division treated it like a buffet line at the cafeteria, cherry-picking which laws to enforce.
Yet at this meeting, Ms. Fernandes openly relished her time at the buffet line in the Voting Section cafeteria.
The problem with this sort of lawlessness, apart from the fact that it is becoming a trend in this administration, is that it nullifies the important compromise that Congress reached in 1993. Greater access to registration came by turning welfare agencies into voter registration offices, but the law also included provisions to ensure greater integrity. It is a dangerous development for our electoral system when one part of that compromise is tossed overboard by a bureaucrat.
It will be impossible for this purportedly transparent administration to deny this direction was given. There were dozens of good people in the room that I know care more about the truth than about saving Ms. Fernandes’ career.
Plus, the cases the Justice Department has brought — or not brought — corroborate the account: the Department has not filed a single case under the Motor Voter provision where there are problems.
Are there problems with list integrity? Yes, but that’s a story for another article. Even worse than not bringing cases, the Holder Justice Department has dismissed a case against Missouri that the previous administration had started. In many places in Missouri, there are more voters than humans with a heartbeat old enough to vote. Instead of fully litigating the case to a favorable outcome, the DOJ made it go away, nicely, quietly, completely. Sound familiar?
The blame-Bush instincts of this administration will no doubt lead to talk about all the cases the Bush DOJ didn’t bring to open up public welfare agencies to voter registration. Good luck. I’d suggest citizens go online and see the Section 7 NVRA, or “Motor Voter,” cases that were commenced under the Bush administration. Bush brought voter registration cases under Motor Voter against Arizona and Illinois.
This Justice Department, in contrast, has “cherry picked” which parts of Motor Voter law they will enforce. You wouldn’t think it has anything to do with politics or the upcoming elections, would you?
J. Christian Adams is an election lawyer who served in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice. His website is www.electionlawcenter.com.
Sigh.
and America takes another one in the........
Isn't that tantamount to a political appointee overriding Congress and making up law by fiat? And wouldn't that be considered a criminal action in itself?
I suspect we’ll be hearing more from Chris Adams about Holder’s DOJ.
Whatever happened to that Holder KSM NY thingie?
I would think so and as Adams pointed out, “It is quite another to announce the lawlessness to a room full of people who have sworn an oath to fairly enforce the law.”
He’s still not decided on it last I read.
Thanks for posting the link, I check it daily.
I can see them when I click the RSS 2.0 comments link but with the code mixed in. Can't pull them up on his main page.
No I don’t. I haven’t signed up, I just check the site for possible articles.
bump
I'm not naive, I realize Obama's Injustice Department isn't going to arrest and prosecute a criminal that is working to advance their agenda, but one wonders what the general response was in a room full of, as you say, people who are sworn to uphold the law and the constitution to be instructed to override and violate the laws and the constitution.
I've mentioned occasionally in other posts that I believe the cancer in the US is too far advanced to save the patient, and it's items like this one that wasn't met with a standing denunciation by all those attending that lead me to arrive at that conclusion.
If there is no hope for justice in the US than the nation is a failed experiment.
Thank you.
Figured it out....there weren’t any comments on the first few articles on the page...down before there are...DUH.....
He does, understandably, preview comments so I guess it takes a while for them to appear.
It seems though like a lot of popular anger about this isn’t evident.
Ping.
I hear you.
When you really think about what she told them it’s a sad thing that there wasn’t a loud uproar. Of course the political appointees who fill the higher slots are making the policy decisions of each administration but to out and out flaunt the law is not acceptable.
Ms. Fernandes should explain her statement and maybe she will be made to if the USCCR is successful with their subpoena.
Julie Fernandes has never had a job outside the progressive/soros/dem world. She is a Chicago thugette from way back.
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