VOTING RIGHTS DISTORTIONS

...The VRS has traditionally been populated by liberal activists, a number of whom have donated to and worked on Democratic campaigns...

...Such information requests can be onerous, and often precede lawsuits...

...They were told instead that the VRS would focus efforts on another section of the Voting Rights Act requiring that voting material be available at welfare and other government assistance offices...

...In the 1990s, however, the Voting Rights Section was itself out of control...

...He also ordered that an information request be sent to Florida concerning its voter ID law...

...Career attorneys attempted to come up with statistical evidence showing such requirements had a retrogressive impact on African-American voters...

...Steve King (R-Iowa), who sits on the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties and has been instrumental in voting rights enforcement as a state representative, says, “I have no sense they have enforced it in the way I envisioned it...

...For example, when Framer’s Branch, Texas, passed a local ordinance prohibiting landlords from renting to illegal aliens, Hispanic groups were outraged and the VRS, making no distinction between measures to combat illegal immigration and violations of the voting rights of citizens, leapt into action...

...MoveOn.org posters declaring “Regime change begins at home” are openly displayed in the offices of these apolitical staff attorneys...

...The law contains a requirement that jurisdictions periodically review their voting rolls to remove voters who have died, left the jurisdiction, or are otherwise ineligible to vote...

...Then there were the frivolous lawsuits...

...King says these measures were based on a “false hope and flawed premise” that this will earn Republicans political credit with Hispanic voters...

...Current and former employees of that department tell a story far different story from the popular media narrative...

...From John Ashcroft to Alberto Gonzales to Michael Mukasey, Bush Justice appointees are cast as ideological crusaders who want to wiretap Sunday school teachers, prosecute magazines for showing women’s navels, and set Civil Rights back 40 years...

...There were, at least, some attempts to challenge the status quo...

...In seven cases during the tenure of VRS head Joe Rich, a career civil servant, the Department of Justice was fined more than $4 million for bringing frivolous and abusive enforcement actions against local jurisdictions...

...Tanner could identify ment action of some type following efforts to deal At a recent hearing Rep...

...tration “bought into the entire diversity rationale” and was never committed to the ideals of “colorblind jurisprudence...

...Attorneys involved in the matters allege that the VRS did so after LULAC and other liberal Hispanic civil rights groups responded to these illegal alien ordinances by threatening to file private lawsuits and by contacting the VRS to add federal pressure on the jurisdictions...

...Then abruptly on December 14, 2007—just days after Rep...

...They also allege that, far from trying to check the ideological excesses of the VRS, the Bush administration seems resigned to the whims of activists bent on distorting voting rights laws and bullying local...

...It also sent in election monitors, filed lawsuits, and extracted settlement agreements...

...Under the Voting Rights Act, only certain jurisdictions with sufficient numbers of foreign language speakers can be required to provide ballot materials in certain foreign languages and provide foreign language assistance from poll workers...

...Voting Rights Distortions The Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section is full of career lawyers pushing abusive policies...

...That’s the generic headline we’ve seen hundreds of times, shoehorned into one situation after another...

...The jurisdiction caved and entered into a settlement agreement...

...King’s written with illegal immigration...

...VRS employees who challenged this practice received bad reviews and faced retaliation and interference with the use of administrative benefits such as leave and flexible work schedules...

...Attorneys trying to prepare cases were dissuaded from filing and/or flatly told not to pursue the cases...

...f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 2 5...

...A similar approach was followed in Boston and in San Diego to force settlements where no jurisdiction existed...

...Attorney General Mukasey now has the opportunity to correct course and leave a different civil rights legacy for the Bush administration...

...The whole mess ended up in federal court, where the preclearance was finally allowed...

...Similarly, the outcry about attempts to enforce requirements of the Voting Rights Act led Tanner to halt efforts to clean up voting rolls...

...The picture is contrary to the hundreds of stories at the time that cast him as a scourge of civil liberties and a coverer-up of nude statues...

...Nevertheless with the prospect of having to produce reams of information and incur expensive litigation, the municipalities agreed to the settlements in all five cases...

...passed ordinances to address illegal immigration, Rep...

...In one instance attorneys were instructed to file five frivo2 4 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 J e n n I f e R R U b I n lous cases on a single day in Texas, which provided a splash just days after Tanner spoke before the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a liberal Hispanic civil rights organization...

...He was grilled before Congress for saying ID requirements that may be a greater burden on the elderly who do not have driver’s licenses would not harm racial minorities because “minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do—they die first...

...Likewise, some career employees of the Justice Department are starting to look decidedly less heroic...

...A great case in point is the staff of the Voting Rights Section (VRS) of the Civil Rights Division...

...Soon thereafter the VRS filed a lawsuit against Kane County under Section 203, absent any indication that voting rights were being abridged or that any voter had complained about voting materials...

...In fact, he requested information in Michigan seeking to delay implementation of its voter ID law...

...In the village of Carpentersville in Kane County, Illinois, a debate concerning an ordinance to prohibit renting to illegal immigrants and to make English the official language created a firestorm with Hispanic activist groups...

...The good guys in this story are the career employees of the Justice Department, who are willing to blow loud whistles and stand their ground in the face of blatant politicization...

...The Bush administration stands accused of the mortal sin of “politicizing the process,” of firing federal attorneys who were not sufficiently deferential to its whims, of weeding out top brass who weren’t willing to go along with its right-wing, laissez-faire, protorture agenda...

...King says this left him to conclude that “the the VRS charged in, demanding documentation...

...Under Schlozman’s leadership, the VRS precleared a Georgia statute requiring voters to present picture IDs at voting places...

...They can unnerve jurisdictions so that controversial measures are dropped...

...Jennifer Rubin is a writer living in northern Virginia...

...These and other settlement agreements went well beyond the only legal requirements to provide bilingual voting materials and foreign language poll assistance and extended to such matters as the composition of language advisory committees staffed with Hispanic activists, the method of distributing materials to the media, the hiring of bilingual election officials, and ongoing reporting and documentation requirements...

...Why is the Bush administration offering no resistance...

...As one former VRS attorney put it, “Tanner’s only success is that he brought both conservatives and liberals together...

...The result, says Blum, is that the VRS was “handed a sword to do whatever they want...

...Tgroups for departing from “fair” and “aggres rights civil liberal press the by cas he tigated bush administration and has been routinely - sive enforcement” of civil rights laws...

...After local governments in Farmers Branch, Texas, Pima County, Arizona, Carpentersville and Kane County, Illinois, Dallas County, Texas, and Prince William County, Virginia, questions...

...Even worse, the Voting Rights Section seemed to be in league with Hispanic special interest groups to vastly extend the role of the federal government in election oversight...

...A former VRS attorney suggests these moves were an effort to “pump up” the VRS enforcement numbers and disguise the absence of virtually any enforcement actions on behalf of African-American voters...

...Tanner proved to be as ineffective as he was controversial, which is saying something...

...Acting assistant attorney general for civil rights Brad Schlozman did try to change some policies of the VRS, and encountered massive resistance...

...An internal complaint filed on September 26, 2007, by a VRS attorney with the Inspector General alleged that the VRS sent election monitors to observe language requirements in one district even though it knew that there were not enough Vietnamese-speaking voters to give it jurisdiction...

...In one case, for example, there was in fact no error in the Spanish translation as the VRS had alleged, only in the English text...

...In the case of Miller v. Johnson, the department was fined and severely reprimanded for essentially acting at the behest of ACLU and civil rights groups...

...P VRS than the fact that John Tanner, a career attor- language sections of the Voting Rights A d e r not jurisdictions Bush administration to the activists better expertise and resources to object...

...as to the nature of and basis for the VRS actions and whether there has been any none and never responded to Rep...

...Attorneys who used “enhanced review” techniques were praised, given department accommodations, and allowed extensive time off to vacation spots without using leave time...

...King grilled Tanner Department of Justice was acting to intimidate local jurisdictions” in order to “prevent or intimidate them” from taking actions against illegal aliens, having nothing to do with violations of citizens’ voting rights...

...The response, from within Justice and from outside pressure groups, was fierce...

...They strongly hinted that this portion of the Voting Rights Act should not be enforced, and eventually won...

...They talk instead of ideologically corrupt career attorneys pursuing a highly results-oriented agenda and misusing federal power...

...It helped in devising voting redistricting lines to maximize minority voting power, and then misrepresenting to the courts the extent of that cooperation...

...The problem with larger media narratives is that, even when they contain some truth, they often stand in the place of serious reporting or analysis...

...Many of the section’s attorneys move on to work at liberal interest groups or are hired from these organizations...

...Conservatives saw this as an attempt by Tanner to curry favor with Hispanic activists...

...It is unclear whether his departure represents a new turn in the Bush administration...

...However, VRS attorneys received training in using the muscle of the federal government to scrutinize and supervise foreign language requirements even where the government lacks authority...

...Edward Blum, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an expert in voting rights law, explains that from the onset the Bush adminisFor example, even before the Voting Rights Act expired, the Bush administration committed to reauthorizing the statute that gives immense power to the federal government to oversee and approve essentially all voting changes in nine states and other jurisdictions...

...One former attorney characterizes this as nothing less attorneys demanded reams of information, threatened litigation, sent in federal observers, and forced settlement actions that placed the federal government as election monitor over minutiae of voting operations of many major municipalities...

...Democrats in Congress, liberal interest groups, and media reports portrayed inquiries about compliance as nefarious attempts to suppress voting...

...Tanner’s statements about minorities enraged Democrats, but he did not pursue a conservative agenda or make any real efforts to reduce voter fraud...

...P s e r d d a t a trying to pass measures th jurisdictions intimidate to tatutes v e oting rhaps s most troubling is the V RS used s jurisdiction that did not face voting rights enforceillegal immigration...

...In the slow rollout of the history of the post-9/11 Bush administration, former Attorney General Ashcroft 2 2 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 J e n n I f e R R U b I n is emerging as a principled defender of Americans going about their business without the government listening in...

...King’s office inquired about the status of Tanner’s responses— Tanner resigned...

...by Jennifer Rubin Bush appointees politicize Justice Department...

...Rep...

...f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 2 3 v o T I n G R I G H T s d I s T o R T I o n s For a time the Bush administration also attempted to enforce a provision of the 1993 National Voting Rights Act...

...Activists charged that the requirement amounted to a “poll tax,” because it could cost money to procure government-issued ID...

...That cooperation should not have been too surprising...

...erhaps nothing shows the capitulation of the than In a “shakedown” of local cove governments by the that ct, fore lack ign ney, became VRS head in 2005...

...Certainly conservative activists and lawmakers would welcome an end to VRS’s acquiescence to the demands of certain liberal special interest groups and an end to efforts to bludgeon local jurisdictions...

...Tanner, according to his subordinates, referred to these illegal alien measures as “anti-immigrant ordinances” and treated them accordingly...

...According to conservative activists, the Bush administration quickly capitulated to the whims of the liberals in Congress and in civil rights organizations...

...Although inaccurate voting lists create a risk of voting fraud and place a burden on jurisdictions that must allocate voting machines and poll workers, Democrats in Congress, liberal interest groups, and media reports portrayed attempts to inquire about jurisdictions’ compliance with this requirement as nefarious attempts to suppress voting...

...Federal monitors were dispatched to gather information about potential foreign language voting requirements —absent any complaint or indication a violation of voting laws had occurred...