Weekly Voting Rights News Update
This an entry in a series of blogs to keep people informed on current election reform and voting rights issues in the news.
Featured Stories of the Week:
Embattled Attorney General Resigns – New York Times
Opinion: A Rigged Report on U.S. Voting? – Washington Post
Even some Republicans happy about Gonzales resignation – CNN
Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation as U.S. attorney general Monday. Effective Sept. 17, his departure follows numerous resignations in recent weeks, further fueling demands for more answers surrounding the politicization of the Justice Department and the quest for a “nonpolitical successor.”
“Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job,” said Senator Harry Reid, D-Nevada in this New York Times report. “He lacked independence, he lacked judgment and he lacked the spine to say ‘no’ to Karl Rove.”
Rove, who recently stepped down from being President Bush’s political adviser, was subpoenaed by the U.S. Senate in July as part of an investigation on the controversial firings of eight federal prosecutors. However, he was ordered by President Bush not to testify due to “executive privilege.” Rove is known to be a driving force behind prosecutions of election law violations, namely voter fraud, which purportedly played a role in the attorney dismissals.
Tova Wang, one of two authors hired to write a report on voter fraud and intimidation for the Election Assistance Commission, was recently released from a gag order to speak about her findings in this Washington Post opinion piece. The EAC released a product that “completely stood our own work on its head,” by calling voter fraud a matter of “considerable debate” rather than a “greatly exaggerated” issue, which Wang and her Republican co-author Joe Serebrov found.
“We also raised questions about the way the Justice Department was handling complaints of fraud and intimidations. The commission excised all references to the department that might be construed as critical – or that Justice officials later took issue with.”
Moreover, Wang pointed out that “during the time the commission was holding our draft, claims about voter fraud and efforts to advance the cause of strict voter identification laws were at a fever pitch in Congress and the states. And it has been reported that some U.S. attorneys were being fired because they failed to pursue weakly supported voter fraud cases without sufficient zeal.”
“’Too many questions have remained unanswered, too many civil rights laws have not been enforced and too many officials have resigned to evade the accountability that is to come for the disastrously flawed policies of this administration,’” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding another DOJ resignation in this Associated Press/National Law Journal article Monday.
The article focused on the August 23 resignation of Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim, who quickly followed the resignation of former voting rights chief, Bradley Schlozman. “In June, Kim testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the transfer of three minority female lawyers from his office’s voting rights sections,” a move directed by Schlozman. During his testimony, Kim expressed concern about the move “and said remarks by Schlozman that appeared to question the women’s patriotism ‘were intemperate and inopportune.’” These descriptions closely resemble the recent handling of dismissals in the Justice Department, where loyalty is rewarded “over all else,” said former voting section chief, Joe Rich in March.
“Revelations about the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys who were seen by the administration as insufficiently political in their investigations and prosecutions opened up an investigation that has begun to confirm a broad scheme to politicize the Justice Department’s work in the area of voting rights – a scheme apparently designed by Rove to suppress turnout by minorities and other who might vote Democratic,” blogged John Nichols for the Nation.
Gonzales, who said he “’served at the pleasure of the president,’ made it his business as White House Counsel and Attorney General to do just that,” Nichols wrote. “The important thing now is to make sure that the administration does not succeed in using high-profile departures to shut down – or, at the very least, to diminish the seriousness and the extent of – those inquires.”
Presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York offer similar comments that the next attorney general should serve the people, not the president as Gonzales has shown, according to this CNN report. Across the country, several papers ran editorials along the same [head]lines this week: “Cronyism bows out at Justice,” by the Boston Globe; “Restore integrity to Justice Dept: Bush must choose a nonpolitical successor” by the Fresno Bee; “Gonzales failed Americans” by the Merced Sun Star; and “Give Justice a lawyer, not a Bush surrogate” by the Palm Beach Post, to name a few.
In response to Gonzales’ resignation, President Bush said it was “’sad’” and that the attorney general’s name had been “’dragged through the mud for political reasons,’” according to the New York Times. This was something that he did not do when the eight U.S. attorneys were fired last year, despite “glowing performance appraisals,” said former U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden in this Las Vegas Sun report. After being given contradictory explanations for his firing and hearing of Justice officials “using political litmus tests in hiring,” Bogden realized that “’I didn’t want to work under the leadership.’”
With the presidential primaries around the corner, it is imperative that Americans are aware of their voting rights and how those rights have been manipulated by a politicized Justice Department. Above all, restoration of the Justice Department and American confidence in elections is crucial to a fair democracy. We’ve provided links below on Gonzales and related voting issues.
Quick Links:
“Remarks of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales Announcing His Resignation.” DOJ. August 27, 2007.
“Alberto Gonzales: A timeline of events.” USA Today. August 27, 2007.
“The Politics of Voter Fraud.” Project Vote. March 2007.
In Other News:
Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirement to register and vote has been ruled constitutional, despite claims that the law is, in effect, an illegal poll tax that discriminates against minority groups. Read more in the Arizona Daily Star and at Project Vote’s website.
In other Arizona news, Solicitor General Mary O’Grady is defending the state’s rigorous felon disenfranchisement law, which the ACLU contends to be improper. The state requires one-time felons to complete their sentence and pay a restitution to regain voting rights. Those who are convicted of at least two felonies are automatically. About 4.3% of the state is disenfranchised as a result of Arizona law. Read more in the Arizona Daily Sun.
Erin Ferns is a Research and Policy Analyst with Project Vote’s Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD).
