Posted on 09/08/2011 7:51:25 PM PDT by seekthetruth
The Disfranchisement of Our Military Voters By Hans A. von Spakovsky and Eric Eversole
Published September 07, 2011 | FoxNews.com
Time and again, Eric Holder’s Justice Department and its Civil Rights Division has shown how highly partisan it is. From its dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case, to its harassment of jurisdictions with voter ID laws, the Division has proven that its far-left liberal ideology determines whether it will enforce (or not enforce) the law. Now it is ignoring the plight of military voters.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
From this Op Ed piece and what is so infuriating:
"The Justice Department filed its first Motor Voter lawsuit against Rhode Island in March. The Division followed up with a lawsuit against Louisiana in July. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Tom Perez justified the lawsuits by stating, “[t]he voting process begins with registration, and it is essential that all citizens have unfettered access to voter-registration opportunities.”
Yet, neither lawsuit attempts to protect “all” citizens. Both cases focus only on the voter services being provided at welfare and other social services offices. In other words, the Division is not trying to protect “all” citizens, but only those who depend on government entitlements -- who overwhelmingly support Democrats."
And:
"DOJ sued Rhode Island because it was concerned that only 707 applications had been received from public assistance offices. But zero applications were received from military recruitment offices in Rhode Island. Similarly, DOJ sued Louisiana, where more than 7,200 applications were received from public assistance and disability services offices. Yet the Department seems unconcerned that only 1,500 applications were received from recruitment offices."
We need your help. We need your assistance in asking the DOJ for an answer to this question:
"Why is DOJ ignoring DOD's clear violations of the law?
It is clear by their "lawsuit" actions they do not seem the least bit concerned about the lack of military votes in some states!"
Please email Rebecca Wertz and Thomas Perez. Their emails are below:
The voting section attorney responsible for military voting is Rebecca Wertz. Her direct email is rebecca.j.wertz@usdoj.gov.
Thomas Perez is the head of the entire civil rights division. His email is Thomas.Perez@usdoj.gov.
My son still has his ballot sent to our house. I overnight it to Pendleton, he overnights it back. I hand deliver it with my own. Of course this only works when he’s stateside.
Cindie
A ping to my Florida friends first! We need to call all our Reps to Congress and tell them we want answers as to what they are going to do about this!
From Beverly Perlson of The Band Of Mothers:
All of us in Illinois understand the serious implications when the DOD and DOJ do nothing to support and enforce the Motor Voter Act with regard to the military vote! Our Brave Men and Women risk their lives to keep us all safe and EVERYTHING possible should be done to assist our Brave Warriors in their right to cast their votes!!!
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/07/disfranchisement-our-military-voters/
Folks, please read this Op Ed by Eric Eversole and Hans A Von Spakovsky. It is another scathing report on the reckless partisan shenanigans of this administration regarding the disenfranchisement of our military voters!
All of us in Illinois understand the serious implications when the DOD and DOJ do nothing to support and enforce the Motor Voter Act with regard to the military vote! Our Brave Men and Women risk their lives to keep us all safe and EVERYTHING possible should be done to assist our Brave Warriors in their right to cast their votes!!!
From this Op Ed piece and what is so infuriating:
“The Justice Department filed its first Motor Voter lawsuit against Rhode Island in March. The Division followed up with a lawsuit against Louisiana in July. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Tom Perez justified the lawsuits by stating, “[t]he voting process begins with registration, and it is essential that all citizens have unfettered access to voter-registration opportunities.”
Yet, neither lawsuit attempts to protect “all” citizens. Both cases focus only on the voter services being provided at welfare and other social services offices. In other words, the Division is not trying to protect “all” citizens, but only those who depend on government entitlements — who overwhelmingly support Democrats.”
And:
“DOJ sued Rhode Island because it was concerned that only 707 applications had been received from public assistance offices. But zero applications were received from military recruitment offices in Rhode Island. Similarly, DOJ sued Louisiana, where more than 7,200 applications were received from public assistance and disability services offices. Yet the Department seems unconcerned that only 1,500 applications were received from recruitment offices.”
We need your help. We need your assistance in asking the DOJ for an answer to this question:
“Why is DOJ ignoring DOD’s clear violations of the law?
It is clear by their “lawsuit” actions they do not seem the least bit concerned about the lack of military votes in some states!”
Please email Rebecca Wertz and Thomas Perez. Their emails are below:
The voting section attorney responsible for military voting is Rebecca Wertz. Her direct email is rebecca.j.wertz@usdoj.gov.
Thomas Perez is the head of the entire civil rights division. His email is Thomas.Perez@usdoj.gov.
Our military, more than any other citizens, deserve the utmost assistance in getting registered to vote and getting their votes counted. If the state of Illinois can hand deliver ballots to inmates in Illinois prisons, we darn sure should be able do EVERYTHING as a nation to assist and accommodate our brave Warriors who risk their lives to keep us safe.
We really need all of you to send an email to Rebecca Wertz and Thomas Perez. The November election is just around the corner and the DOJ needs to answer for their partisan action and assure Americans our military voter’s rights will be protected in this coming election!
Please forward this to all on your email lists. Help us protect our military rights as our brave military protects all of us!
Thank You
Beverly Perlson
The Band of Mothers
Glad you and your son worked out a good way to get his vote in. There are many many cases where our Military members are not getting the help they need.
And God Bless your son, and please thank him for his service. God Bless and thank you too, as I know you are in the service right along with him in a Mom way.
At the end of the article: “Clearly, President Obama and Assistant Attorney General Perez have a different definition of “all” than most Americans do.”
Seems with Clinton the word was “is”, and with Obama it’s “all”, and in both cases the word “balls” is missing with the Republicans.
Our sons and daughters are good enough to be sent overseas and die, but not to ensure their votes are counted in an election. Obama and his minions loathe the Military and do anything they can to dis-enfranchise them. Contact your Republican representatives in Congress and ask for help. It likely won’t do much good to contact a Democrat member of Congress. It sure won’t in my state.
Wouldn’t Col. West be the one to go to? Wasn’t Tom Rooney an Army officer too, or am I remembering wrong? Col. West would be the one to set up the protocol to protect the voting rights of our military IMO, then the rest could follow.
Motor voter is crap. If someone isn’t intelligent and involved enough to get themselves down to the supervisor of elections’ office to register, they don’t deserve to vote.
This includes military members by the way.
My husband was in Iraq in 2008. Knowing McCain would need every last vote (particularly here in FL) he requested an absentee ballot. Two days before the election it arrived at my house. They had the right address but it had been sent back and the SOE had to look up his home address to send it out. So I know first hand about the problem with disenfranchisement of military voters.
I won’t post what I did with it here ;-)
You are exactly right! And I know Congressman West will do everything in his power to make sure attention is brought to this voting rights issue as well as other Military issues.
The report will be out soon from the DOD and we will see more lack of action evident on this issue. The “everything is fine” comment ain’t gonna cut it! It isn’t fine and we are NOT going to allow ANY disfranchisement of our Military voters!
This issue is one of the most infuriating, to me.
No excuse for it.
It is pure evil skullduggery at the highest levels.
Sad to say, there are just too many experiences like your husband’s happening all over.
Military in the field must sign a form requesting a ballot, wait for the ballot, fill it out and send it in. Problem is, often the time periods taken for the forms to be sent and returned do not allow the ballot to be returned on time for election because the soldier didn’t receive the ballot in time.
What about the other offices covered by Motor Voter? Motor Voter requires states to “jointly develop and implement procedures” with the Department of Defense (DOD) to provide voter registration at all military recruitment offices. The MOVE Act of 2009 authorized DOD to similarly designate offices on all military bases as “voter registration agencies.”
But, perhaps not surprisingly, the administration’s concern about the supposedly low number of voter registrations coming out of welfare offices does not extend to the much lower number of registrations received from recruitment or on-base voting assistance offices. This at a time when the latest data on the turnout of eligible military voters show that, in the 2010 elections, only a dismal 4.6 percent cast absentee ballots that were counted.
Nor should there be any doubt that DOD is the worst offender of Motor Voter. In 2010, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) reported that military recruitment offices submitted only 31,712 registration applications to election officials nationwide from approximately 5,000 offices that recruited 281,233 military personnel.
In other words, these military recruitment offices averaged approximately 6 applications per office for the entire year. Compare this to the 1.1 million registration applications from public assistance offices
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/07/disfranchisement-our-military-voters/#ixzz1XQRxIW7n
Seeing AlGore face sure brought back some memories of voter fraud and other problems of our Military. Of course the DEMS only wanted “Certain” counties in Florida re-counted, but the court ruled differently. And of course the DEMS were wanting to make sure if military members signed their names on the form properly, but forgot to print their names on the print line, the ballot should not be counted.
Yes, re-count of the Florida ballots with all the hanging chads. I will never forget!
As always, if you wish off my ping list please just ask through FreepMail. If you asked before and got pinged here, please forgive me as working with an older list as lost all my updated ones. Thanks!
BTTT.
Once again a warning to all overseas military personnel not send back their absentee ballots by friendmail, that is by the next person coming back to the states. During the Florida mess the Dems revealed that if the postmark didn’t match the address they would disqualify the ballot. The reason why is because the Dems are despicable communist who hate America and the military.
This has always been on my outrage list. THose who protect our right to vote have theirs denied? That will be our undoing. These are the kind of things that need wide exposure and FIXING this year (along with voter I.D. legislation), not next year...NOW.
I’ll send to my Senator and also Allen West. He’ll give it a voice and he’s on the Hiuse Armed Service committee.
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