Civil Rights Division

Spakovsky Subpoenaed in Civil Rights Department Probe

Kate Klonick | August 6, 2008, 3:28PM

Lifting the veil on one of the two remaining Justice Department OIG reports, Murray Waas for the Huffington Post reports that Hans von Spakovsky, among other former Justice Department lawyers, has been subpoenaed by the OIG to testify about politicization of the Civil Rights Division.

Investigators for the Inspector General have also asked whether [Brad] Schlozman, while an interim U.S. attorney in Missouri, brought certain actions and even a voting fraud indictment for political ends, according to witnesses questioned by the investigators. But it is unclear whether the grand jury is going to hear testimony on that issue as well.

One person who has been subpoenaed before the grand jury, sources said, was Hans von Spakovsky, who as a former counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights was a top aide to Schlozman.

As Waas points out in the article, the DOJ forcing former members of its own ranks to testify is an "extraordinary step."

Both Schlozman and Spakovsky are being investigated for violating civil service laws in making hiring decisions based on political affiliation.

Jason Torchinsky is also reported to have been subpoenaed, though sources tell Waas that Torchinsky is not under investigation and has been only asked for witness testimony.

Two previous reports by the OIG have both found that hirings were politicized at various points at the Justice Department. The first report showed the politicization of the Attorney General's Honors Program, while the second, released last week, focused on the politicized hiring surrounding Monica Goodling and others at the DOJ.

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Topics: Bradley Schlozman, Civil Rights Division, DOJ Office Of The Inspector General, Hans von Spakovsky, Justice Department

DOJ Office Of The Inspector General

DOJ Report Shows Partisan Culture Reigned Beyond The Few Names Named

Andrew Tilghman | July 30, 2008, 6:53PM

There are still two more uncompleted inspector general reports pending -- one about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and another about political agendas in the department's Civil Rights Division.

Yet from the IG report Monday on hiring practices, it's already clear that a culture of partisanship prevailed inside the department, and many DOJ officials were playing along, some more actively than others.

"It had a significant effect throughout the department. I think one of the most significant things is people not objecting, people not standing up," Inspector General Glenn Fine told lawmakers today on Capitol Hill.

To be sure, Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson and others appear to have been serious party hacks who violated department policy and federal law by screening out prospective lawyers and judges for partisan reasons. But many others went along, if only more passively.

Take for example what Michael Elston told the IG's investigators. Elston clearly understood how Goodling and others operated and admitted to adopting a go-along, get-along attitude.

For example, Michael Elston, former Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, stated that when he sought attorneys for details to the [Office of the Deputy Attorney General], he would generally look for candidates with the type of experience required by the position, but he also looked for candidates with Republican or conservative credentials in order to get them approved by the [Office of Attorney General].

Elston said that Goodling made it clear to him that she did not want Democrats detailed to the ODAG because she had a "farm system" approach to filling vacancies in the Department, and she wanted to "credential" Republicans so that they could move on to higher political positions.

We saw an example of this in an email sent by Bradley Schlozman, the U.S. Attorney for Missouri's western district. He was sending resumes for three prospective hires to DOJ headquarters. Apparently without any prompting, Schlozman began touting their political credentials.

In his e-mail, Schlozman described the three candidates as "rock-solid Americans" who would be a "hugely positive legacy for this Administration." Schlozman described each candidate in terms of their conservative political credentials. He wrote that the first applicant's "involvement with the Bush/Cheney campaign speaks for itself."

Yes, in some cases, Goodling and others actively screened out prospective lawyers and judges for partisan reasons. But in many situations, they didn't have to. Others did it for them.

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Topics: Bradley Schlozman, Civil Rights Division, DOJ Office Of The Inspector General, Glenn Fine, Kyle Sampson, Michael Elston, Monica Goodling, U.S. Attorneys

Hans von Spakovsky

Hans Says a Final Farewell

David Kurtz | May 20, 2008, 2:14PM

Given our love affair with Hans A. Von Spakovsky, I can't let his op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal go unnoted. Titled "Anatomy of a Beltway Smear Campaign," it is his embittered reaction to being forced, finally, to withdraw his nomination to the FEC last week:

During the past two years, while my nomination to the Federal Election Commission was pending - and before I withdrew last week - friends would call whenever the latest newspaper story or blog post attacking me was planted by political operatives and left-wing advocacy organizations.

They always asked the same question: Why was I putting up with the character assassination that has become the norm in Senate confirmation battles whenever a conservative is nominated for public office? ...

My own hard feelings will pass. But the political system has been damaged once more by the poisonous tactics of the left, and there is no reason to think that the whole sorry spectacle will not be repeated again and again and again. So long as such tactics are accepted and even encouraged by politicians and the media, it will become harder and harder to find ordinary citizens willing to submit to the character assassination that now passes for our confirmation process.

It was a little disappointing not to see TPM mentioned by name, but I couldn't help but think Hans was giving us a nod when he complained about being called a "vote suppressor."

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Hans von Spakovsky

Civil Rights Division

Vote Suppression Guru: I Win I Win I Win!

Paul Kiel | April 29, 2008, 6:28PM

In this morning's writeup of Supreme Court's decision on Indiana's voter ID law, The New York Times quoted someone familiar to TPM readers:

"This decision not only confirms the validity of photo ID laws, but it completely vindicates the Bush Justice Department and refutes those critics who claimed that the department somehow acted improperly when it approved Georgia's photo ID law in 2005," said Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission and a former Justice Department official.

It's a reaction laden with a number of distortions. But the key one has to do with a crucial difference between Georgia's 2005 law and Indiana's law, as Joe Rich, the former chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told me. Rich, who last year opposed Spakovsky' nomination to the FEC along with a group of other former voting section professionals, called Spakovsky's contention that yesterday's ruling vindicated his actions "disingenuous."

"The Georgia law reviewed by the Justice Department required voters seeking the required voter ID to pay a fee that a federal court found created an unconstitutional poll tax," Rich said. "But in Indiana the Supreme Court explicitly noted that photo identification cards 'issued by Indiana's [Bureau of Motor Vehicles] are . . . free' and thus there was no issue of creating an unconstitutional poll tax."

Spakovsky and other political appointees overruled staff attorneys who'd recommended against approving Georgia's voter ID law, because of concerns that the law would discriminate against poor and minority voters. It was just a part of Spakovsky's legacy of ignoring and intimidating section employees, and generally doing what he could to effect policies that would disenfranchise voters.

Under the Voting Rights Act, parts of the country with a history of discrimination must demonstrate to the Justice Department that new legislation does not discriminate against minority voters. In the case of Georgia's law, supporters of the law didn't do much of anything to demonstrate that the law wouldn't discriminate against African-Americans.

In fact, quite the opposite. Georgia state Rep. Sue Burmeister, the sponsor of the bill, told voting section staff that "if there are fewer black voters because of this bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud," and that "when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls."

Indiana's law had not required review by the Justice Department, Rich said. "Therefore, there was no issue in review of the Indiana law concerning whether the state could meet its burden of demonstrating that the law did not hurt minority voters, as is required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. That was the only issue before Justice Department in its review of the Georgia law and career attorneys, in an in-depth memo, found that the law did hurt minority voters and accordingly recommended an objection to the law."

So I think it's fair to say that Spakovsky has yet to be "completely vindicated."

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Hans von Spakovsky

Election 2008

Reid Offers Deal on FEC Deadlock

Paul Kiel | April 29, 2008, 5:55PM

From Roll Call (sub. req.):

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) shipped to the White House on Tuesday a compromise plan on Federal Election Commission nominees, a deal that is likely dead on arrival because it does not meet GOP demands on Hans von Spakovsky.

"You are aware that Mr. von Spakovsky does not have majority support to win confirmation," Reid wrote Tuesday in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. "It is my understanding that you have two additional Republican FEC candidates cleared for nomination.

"One would fill Mr. von Spakovsky's seat should he be defeated or withdrawn, and the other would fill the vacant Republican seat," Reid continued. "You already have the non-controversial re-nomination of sitting commissioner David Mason pending."

You can read Reid's letter to White House chief of staff Josh Bolten here. But as Roll Call says, Republicans have thus far refused to budge on any deal that doesn't include Spakovsky getting packaged in a vote with the other less controversial nominees. And so the FEC remains officially dormant and the complaints against allegedly outlaw campaign activity continue to pile up.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Election 2008, Hans von Spakovsky

Civil Rights Division

Dem FEC Nominee Withdraws, Leading to Further Delay

Paul Kiel | April 14, 2008, 3:04PM

Things were already looking pretty hopeless for the FEC, but they just got bleaker. In a letter to White House chief of staff Josh Bolten today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) says that Robert Lenhard, one of the Democratic nominees for the commission, has withdrawn his name because of the ongoing stalemate.

It will most likely take "several months" to replace Lenhard, Reid writes, meaning that it's sure to be awhile before Democrats and Republicans can agree on a batch of nominees. Not that there have been any signs of hope anyway: Democrats continue to insist that the Senate vote on vote-suppression guru Hans von Spakovsky separately from the other three nominees, and Republicans refuse to allow that.

Meanwhile, the fracas over John McCain's withdrawal from public financing goes unresolved and outside groups are mounting up without worry of any imminent harassment from the FEC.

Update: By way of explanation, Lenhard has landed a gig (sub. req.) at the mega firm Covington & Burling.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Election 2008

Election 2008

Appeals Court Reverses Ruling on Florida Vote Suppression Measure

Paul Kiel | April 4, 2008, 5:54PM

Hans von Spakovsky's legacy is still being felt down in Florida. From the AP:

Florida can temporarily enforce a law that disqualifies any voter registration where the Social Security or driver license numbers on the application can't be matched with government databases, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said a lower court shouldn't have ordered a temporary injunction in December that prevented Florida from enforcing an anti-fraud law that dismissed applications when matches couldn't be made.

As we reported last year, one of Spakovsky's achievements while at the Justice Department was promoting this interpretation of the law: that states ought to reject voter applications if the data did not match driver's license or Social Security records. Civil rights groups, calling the measure "disenfranchisement-by-bureaucracy," sued to halt the law in an attempt to minimize the effect on the 2008 election. A newspaper investigation found that the measure resulted in tens of thousands of voters being rejected, the overwhelming majority of them minorities.

Back in December, a district court agreed with the argument by the groups -- the NAACP, the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, and Southwest Voter Registration Education Project -- that the law ought to be halted from going into effect while the lawsuit was decided. That decision was overturned yesterday.

"Yesterday's ruling by the appellate court represents a setback for all eligible Floridians, particularly voters of color, who wish to register to vote and participate in the upcoming presidential elections," said Elizabeth Westfall of Advancement Project, one of the attorneys for the groups. But Justin Levitt, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, said that the suit would go on and that "the trial court must now consider whether disenfranchising thousands of eligible citizens because of typos, is consistent with the U.S. Constitution."

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Election 2008, Hans von Spakovsky

Civil Rights Division

Hans Spreads The Gospel

Paul Kiel | March 25, 2008, 3:42PM

Last time we checked in on Hans von Spakovsky, the vote suppression guru was doggedly making the case for voter ID laws.

Now Angelenos have a chance to sample his wisdom. On April 2nd, Spakovsky will be speaking to the Los Angeles chapter of the Federalist Society. The title of the lecture is "Litigating Elections: the Campaign Process in 2008" -- characteristic of a man who's shown a genius for using the law to affect elections.

While Spakovsky is spreading the gospel, the White House and Republicans have still refused to back down from his nomination to the Federal Election Commission. The Dems, meanwhile, refuse to allow him to be slipped through with the other FEC nominees. Which is why the FEC remains unable to act.

Thanks to TPM Reader KA for the tip.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Hans von Spakovsky

Civil Rights Division

Spakovsky, out of Government, Still Touting Voter Fraud

Paul Kiel | March 14, 2008, 1:33PM

OK, so Hans von Spakovsky's nomination to the Federal Election Commission has left the Senate hopelessly gridlocked, and the FEC crippled. And he packed his bags and left the building months ago. But the man is still keeping busy.

The vote suppression expert has just released his latest call-to-arms on the voter ID front at the Heritage Foundation. It's called "Stolen Identities, Stolen Votes: A Case Study in Voter Impersonation."

In it, Spakovsky takes on those liberal critics who claim that there's no voter fraud (like, say, The New York Times) by unearthing a 1984 grand jury investigation in Brooklyn, NY during which, he says, numerous episodes of voter fraud dating back to 1968 were uncovered.

Just because the case was 24 years ago and no indictments were issued shouldn't give us pause. The point is that it's evidence that fraud does occur. And therefore there's a strong case for requiring ID at the polls. And if the law disproportionately disenfranchises minority voters, I guess that's just collateral damage. The Supreme Court is expected to decide by late June whether Indiana's voter ID law is unconstitutional.

So you can see that Spakovsky is still on the case, though thankfully not still at the Justice Department, where he took a number of steps that had the effect of making it more difficult for minorities to vote. Bush put Spakovsky on the FEC by a recess appointment in December, 2005.

As voting law expert Rick Hasen points out, the piece is a brazen move for a guy who's been accused of being too partisan. Apparently Spakovsky is not holding out for winning Democrats over.

A recent report (pdf) by the Election Assistance Commission's inspector general served as a reminder for why Spakovsky is so controversial. In it, former Commissioner Paul DeGregorio, a Republican who frequently clashed with Spakovsky when he was at the Justice Department, is quoted as saying that "too many of [von Spakovsky's] decisions are clouded by his partisan thinking" and that Spakovsky thought that DeGregorio should use his position to advance the Republican Party's agenda.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Election 2008, Hans von Spakovsky

Election 2008

Conyers Pushes Bill to Ban GOP Vote Suppression Tactic

Paul Kiel | January 17, 2008, 5:35PM

Anticipating the 2008 election, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) has introduced a bill to ban "vote caging," the term for a time-tested GOP vote suppression technique.

To "cage" voters, operatives send out a mass mailing with "do not forward" labels. Those names attached to addresses that bounce back are put on a challenge list, which is then used to challenge those voters when they come to the polls. GOPers in states all over the country have used the technique for decades, especially targeting mostly African-American areas. Timothy Griffin, the former aide to Karl Rove who replaced one of the fired prosecutors in Arkansas, was forced to defend his role in an alleged 2004 caging scheme when he worked for the Republican National Committee.

A number of powerful senators are backing a similar bill in the Senate, including Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

You can read the text of Conyers' bill here. A bullet point summary provided by his office is below.

Read more »

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Election 2008, Elections

Civil Rights Division

Controversial Voting Section Deps Get Demoted

Paul Kiel | January 11, 2008, 5:48PM

The changes keep on coming in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Less than a month ago, former voting section chief John "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first" Tanner got canned. And today, his replacement, Christopher Coates, a veteran of the section, demoted Tanner's controversial deputy chiefs, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere and Yvette Rivera. The changes were announced in an email to voting section staff.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating whether Lorenzo-Giguere had filed certain lawsuits in order to get paid while living at her Cape Cod beach house. Tanner was under investigating for approving the arrangement. Both were accused by former section lawyers in complaints to OPR and the inspector general of seeking reimbursement for official travel.

Rivera has been accused of discriminating against African-American employees. She oversaw the important Section Five unit, which has the responsibility of reviewing election laws in parts of the country with a history of discrimination. Encouragingly, her replacement is Tim Mellett, one of the staff attorneys who in 2003, found that Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting plan violated the Voting Rights Act, a finding that was overruled by political appointees.

So it seems that the voting section is truly entering a new era. Whether the voting section will reassume its traditional responsibility of protecting African-American voters from discrimination is another question. Only time will tell.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division

Election 2008

Court Appears Split 5-4 on Voter ID

Paul Kiel | January 9, 2008, 2:21PM

Pretty much as expected, with Judge Anthony Kennedy as the key swing vote. From the AP:

The Supreme Court appeared reluctant Wednesday to strike down the nation's strictest requirement that voters show photo identification before being allowed to cast a ballot....

"You want us to invalidate the statute because of minimal inconvenience?" Justice Anthony Kennedy said near the end of an hour-long argument. Kennedy, often a key vote, appeared more willing than some to consider changes to the law....

Chief Justice John Roberts, an Indiana native, and Justice Antonin Scalia indicated strong support for the state law. Justice Clarence Thomas said nothing, but most often votes with his conservative colleagues....

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg focused her questions on the difficulties for indigent voters who lack IDs. Why, she asked, can't the state allow those voters to sign the sworn statement on Election Day, which would eliminate the second trip to the county courthouse?

Told Indiana wants to avoid congestion at the polls, Ginsburg said the state wants to have it both ways because it argues relatively few people are affected by the law. "If there are so few of them, I don't understand why they should be put to the burden," Ginsburg said.

Here's a detailed rundown from SCOTUSblog.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Election 2008, Elections

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | January 9, 2008, 9:43AM

Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments as to whether Indiana's voter ID law breaks the law. If a law disenfranchises thousands of voters (mostly poor and minorities) to prevent a phantom crime, is that ok?

Of course, it's rare to hear the Republican supporters of voter ID laws admit that there's no evidence that voter impersonation, the kind of voter fraud the laws are meant to stop, occurs.

But that's just what happened yesterday when Warren Olney of KCRW's To The Point pressed Todd Rokita (R), Indiana's secretary of state and a named defendant in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board.

Have any cases of voter impersonation been prosecuted in Indiana? was the simple question. And as Olney pressed, Rokita went from one fallback argument to another. It started with this revealing exchange:

Q: ...Have there been cases in Indiana where people represented themselves as somebody else in order to be able to vote?

Rokita: Oh yeah, we suspect it happens all the time.

Q: You suspect?

Rokita: Mm hmm.

Q: Have you got any cases proven?

Rokita: Well, are you saying you want to define whether or not there’s fraud based on whether or not it’s prosecuted? Is that the question?

From there, Rokita argued that there is fraud (it "exists almost on a daily basis"), but that it's nearly impossible to prosecute due to the ephemeral nature of the crime. And it tends not to be a priority for prosecutors due to all the other violent and horrible stuff they need to prosecute. And even if there hasn't been any such voter fraud (and I'm not saying that there isn't), we have a right to protect ourselves from it; "You have the right to build a firehouse before you get burned by the fire."

It bears mentioning here that the Justice Department under George Bush has indeed made prosecuting voter fraud a priority -- and came up empty. That fact hasn't stopped voter ID law proponents from claiming hundreds of demonstrated cases of voter fraud. It's quite a morass of innuendo, but the Brennan Center (which has filed an amicus brief with the law's opponents) undertook the staggering task of disproving every one of those claims one by one. It's a 75 page document (pdf).

The lawyers actually arguing the case before the court today are likely to be more eloquent than Rokita, but the arguments will essentially be the same. So take a look at the relevant excerpts from the interview below.

via Rick Hasen.

Read more »

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Election 2008, Elections, Must Read

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | January 7, 2008, 9:33AM

It's pretty fitting that one day after one of the biggest events this campaign season, the New Hampshire primaries, the Supreme Court will be hearing arguments on a case that could significantly affect the 2008 election: the fight over Indiana's voter ID law.

The issues behind Crawford v. Marion County Election Board are pretty simple to understand. The Indiana law, passed by Republicans, prevents citizens from voting without a picture ID, and they say it will stop voter fraud, though they can't point to a single instance of criminal voter impersonation occurring in the state. It is a solution in search of a problem.

Or rather, it's a solution to a very different problem. In this issue of New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin writes that the voter ID laws, which Republicans have pushed in states throughout the country, are a reminder that, though racism has disappeared from mainstream political discourse, "racial discrimination itself" has not been banished from politics:

“Let’s not beat around the bush,” Terence T. Evans, the dissenting Court of Appeals judge in the Indiana case, slyly wrote. “The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.” He’s not the only one to notice: the three federal judges who approved the Indiana law were appointed by a Republican President; the lone dissenter was appointed by a Democrat. It was also Republican-dominated legislatures that produced the Indiana and Georgia laws, both of which were signed by Republican governors.

Who are the “certain folks,” in Judge Evans’s delicate phrase, that the Indiana law is trying to discourage? The best answer can be found in a friend-of-the-court brief in the case filed by twenty-nine leading historians and scholars of voting rights. They concluded that the Indiana law belongs to a malign tradition in “this nation’s history of disfranchising people of color and poor whites under the banner of ‘reform.’ ” Such measures as the poll tax and literacy tests, they write, were “billed as anti-fraud or anti-corruption devices; yet through detailed provisions within them, they produced a discriminatory effect (often intended) within the particular historical context.” So it will be in Indiana, where the law creates a series of onerous barriers to voting.

And don't forget that the United States government, by way of the Justice Department, has weighed in to support the Republican side of the argument. As election law expert Rick Hasen has pointed out, the fight over voter ID laws has been strictly partisan -- Republicans push and support the laws, Republican-appointed judges uphold them, and recently Republican secretaries of state have written amicus briefs in support of Indiana's law. So the Bush Administration's decision shouldn't surprise.

The court will deliver a decision by late June, in time to affect the November elections. As for what's likely to happen Wednesday, Toobin himself is not optimistic about the outcome of the arguments:

As a general matter, in recent years the Court has been reluctant to find what is charged in this case: a violation of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws. (The notable exception, to belabor the issue, was for a plaintiff named George W. Bush.) In the end, though, it will not be the judiciary that rescues democracy; whatever the obstacles, the problems with the ballot box must be solved at the ballot box. In the end, though, it will not be the judiciary that rescues democracy; whatever the obstacles, the problems with the ballot box must be solved at the ballot box.

Note: Here's The New York Times' rundown of the case.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Elections, Must Read

Civil Rights Division

Hans Has Left The Building

Paul Kiel | January 3, 2008, 10:25AM

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Hans von Spakovsky threw in the towel on New Years Eve, in an e-mail sent out to supporters....

"Today was my last official day as a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission," he wrote. "The Senate officially adjourned today without acting on my nomination... I wanted to thank everyone for their support over the past two years while I was going through this confirmation battle. All of the telephone calls, emails and notes I received from people were great encouragement for me."

Von Spakovsky attached an endorsement by the Wall Street Journal, though he added that "it did not help in the end in convincing the Democrats to vote to confirm me."

I'll guess he'll just have to intimidate federal employees and work to disenfranchise minorities from outside the government now.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Hans von Spakovsky

Civil Rights Division

GOP Blocks Vote on FEC Nominees

Paul Kiel | December 20, 2007, 2:04PM

Is it the end for Hans von Spakovsky?

From what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said on the Senate floor last night, it appears so. Given the ongoing opposition to Spakovsky by Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Russ Feingold (D-WI), Reid called for a vote on the individual nominees to the Federal Election Commission. But the Republican leadership, as they have from the beginning, insisted on voting on the four nominees, both Democratic and Republican, together, thus protecting Spakovsky from being voted down, but also preventing the confirmation of any of the other nominees.

At the end of the year, von Spakovsky's recess appointment to the commission will expire. Of course, that could lead to other problems, but our favorite vote-suppression guru wouldn't be one of them.

Reid's remarks are below.

Read more »

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Hans von Spakovsky

Civil Rights Division

Judge Halts Florida Vote Suppression Measure

Paul Kiel | December 19, 2007, 5:21PM

Jeez. Not only is Hans von Spakovsky's FEC nomination bound up in the Senate, but one of his pet causes, having states reject voter applications if the data does not match driver's license or Social Security records, has hit a snag in Florida.

Civil rights groups argued that the policy amounted to "disenfranchisement-by-bureaucracy." Now a federal judge has agreed:

U.S. District Judge Stephan Mickle on Tuesday sided with the NAACP's request for a preliminary injunction suspending Florida's 2-year-old "voter match" law while courts decide whether it violates federal laws protecting the right to vote....

Lawyers for Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning contended the matching process is required to prevent voter fraud....

But in his order Tuesday, Mickle wrote that Florida's match law "stands as an obstacle" to the objectives of the federal Help America Vote Act, by making it harder to vote.

"Though it is true that prevention of voter fraud and prevention of voter disenfranchisement were both goals of HAVA, the impetus for the Act was to respond to the millions of votes that went uncounted -- not the millions of incidents of voter registration fraud," Mickle wrote.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Hans von Spakovsky

Civil Rights Division

Obama: Tanner Should Have Been Fired, Not Moved

Paul Kiel | December 14, 2007, 5:44PM

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who called on Justice Department officials to fire John Tanner back in October, has a glass-half-empty view of Tanner's resignation. A statement just out:

"It's unacceptable that the Administration is simply shuffling deck chairs by moving Mr. Tanner to another important position in the Justice Department. During his tenure, he made offensive, intolerant comments about minorities in an attempt to defend voter identification laws that threaten voting rights, and that's why I called on him to be fired. It's time we restore confidence in the Department by appointing public servants who are truly committed to upholding our civil rights."

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Topics: Civil Rights Division

Civil Rights Division

Nadler: Tanner Resignation is Chance for "Fresh Start"

Paul Kiel | December 14, 2007, 2:54PM

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) responding to John Tanner's resignation:

“Mr. Tanner had a clear record of undermining the core mission of the section – protecting the right to vote. In October, my subcommittee held an investigation on the Section, where it became clear that Mr. Tanner was actively seeking to curtail that cornerstone of American democracy. The right to vote is the foundation of all our liberties and it must be protected.

“Indeed, under Mr. Tanner’s leadership, the Justice Department essentially took positions that disenfranchised minorities and the elderly. The departure of Mr. Tanner presents an opportunity for a fresh start of the Voting Section. I urge the Bush Administration to take this opportunity to take politics out of voting rights enforcement by appointing a new chief with a commitment to the letter and the spirit of the Voting Rights Act.”

Update: And here's House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI):

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Topics: Civil Rights Division

Civil Rights Division

Voting Chief Tanner Resigns

Paul Kiel | December 14, 2007, 11:43AM

Today, John Tanner resigned from his position effective immediately as chief of the Civil Rights Division's voting section. His resignation email, with the subject line "Moving On" was sent out at approximately 11 AM to voting section staff. He said that he will be moving on to the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices. The email is reproduced below in full.

With Tanner, it had seemed like a matter of not if, but when. As we reported late last month, his travel habits had angered attorneys in the voting section, leading to an investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility.

And that was after his comments about the tendency of minorities to "die first" led Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and others to call for his removal. When he went before the House Judiciary Committee in October, he was lambasted for his tendency of "basing your conclusions on stereotypes" (like, say, claiming that African-Americans have IDs more than whites because they're always going to cash-checking businesses).

But most of all, Tanner's reign is notable for his collusion with the political appointees who oversaw the section, an ongoing effort to reverse the Civil Rights Division's traditional role in protecting minority voters, particularly African-Americans, into one of aiding thinly disguised vote suppression measures (most infamously Georgia's voter ID law). It was an effort that some career DoJ attorneys later described as "institutional sabotage."

Who'll be taking over? We've got a question into DoJ to see.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division

Civil Rights Division

Nadler on DoJ Supreme Court Brief

Paul Kiel | December 11, 2007, 4:41PM

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) responding to today's news that the Justice Department had weighed in with an amicus brief in support of Indiana's voter ID law:

“Once again the Bush Justice Department has gone to court to disenfranchise the poor, the elderly, and minorities. Voter I.D. laws have rightly been struck down in the past. The Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which I chair, recently held a hearing on this very subject. The evidence we obtained clearly demonstrates that these laws do nothing to protect the integrity of elections, but do a great deal to erect a needless barrier to voter participation. The Justice Department is charged under the law with the duty to protect the right to vote. Sadly, the Bush administration has chosen to oppose voting rights.”

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Topics: Civil Rights Division

Civil Rights Division

DoJ Argues for Voter ID Law in Supreme Court Case

Paul Kiel | December 11, 2007, 1:49PM

Signaling that things haven't changed all that much at the Justice Department, the DoJ has filed an amicus brief (pdf) with the Supreme Court in support of Indiana's voter ID law.

The decision to file the brief in and of itself will prove controversial, but beyond that, opponents say that the brief's argument would set a standard that stacks the deck in favor of vote suppression measures and against those who challenge them. Arguments in the case, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, are set to be heard by the Court in January.

In the 42-page brief (pdf), the Department argues that Indiana's law is a "reasonable administrative rule that furthers the State's compelling interest in combating voter fraud." Alleged voter fraud, of course, has been a continual preoccupation of the Department, even leading to the firing of at least two of the nine U.S. attorneys in the Gonzales-era purge, despite overwhelming evidence that such fraud is extremely rare and even then hardly ever intentional.

In a statement, the Brennan Center for Justice, which has filed an amicus brief against the law and calls the case "the most important voting rights case since Bush v. Gore," denounced the Department's argument as an "extreme legal position." If accepted, the group argues, the standard set would mean "that there could be virtually no challenges to laws suppressing the vote before an election....

This means that any law meant to suppress the vote would have already accomplished its goal of disenfranchising voters before it could be challenged in Court. Their position, taken to its logical extent, would allow jurisdictions to suppress the votes of tens of thousands of voters before a single aggrieved voter could get their day in Court."

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Topics: Civil Rights Division

Civil Rights Division

FEC Nominees Still Deadlocked over Spakovsky

Paul Kiel | December 3, 2007, 12:24PM

Ever since September, the nomination for accomplished vote suppression expert Hans von Spakovsky to be a member of the Federal Election Commission has been snagged, stopped by the public opposition of Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) and the somewhat more private opposition of Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

The Republican leadership countered the Democrats by insisting that von Spakovsky's nomination was all or nothing -- either von Spakovsky went through or none of the nominated commissioners did. That means that if no compromise is reached by the end of the year, the FEC, which makes rules governing election spending, might effectively shut down in an election year, since it would be left with only two commissioners out of six seats. As we reported back in October, that could create a situation where outside groups funded by millionaires (like the Swift Boat Vets) could run amok in a campaign year.

Roll Call gives (sub. req.) an update of sorts this morning. The short version: things are still at a standstill, but "various scenarios currently are circulating" to avoid a shutdown. One scenario: von Spakovsky could withdraw and the problem would go away. Another: the White House and Senate could join together to make a new round of nominations. Or another: "the deck of current commission recess appointees may be reshuffled and re-recess appointed, a complicated and likely unprecedented strategy." Stay tuned.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Hans von Spakovsky

Civil Rights Division

Aloha! DoJ Voting Chief is Frequent Flier

Paul Kiel | November 28, 2007, 1:57PM

When John Tanner, chief of the Civil Rights Division's voting section, appeared before a Congressional panel last month, he was upbraided by Democrats for his "ineffectiveness." Little did they know that as the section, probably the most politicized in the Justice Department under the Bush Administration, has done less and less to protect African-American voters from discrimination, Tanner has been seeing the country on the taxpayers' dime.

He even managed to make taxpayer-funded trips to Hawaii in three consecutive years, two of them a week long. One Department lawyer who accompanied Tanner on his first trip took the earliest available flight back after having completed all necessary work in just two business days. But Tanner insisted on staying a full week, despite the lack of apparent Department business. It's a crime for government officials to use public funds for personal travel.

A review of Justice Department documents obtained by TPMmuckraker shows just how extensive Tanner's travel has been. From May of 2005 when Tanner became chief of the section through the end of 2006, he took 36 trips, traveling 97 days over those 19 months. By comparison, Tanner's predecessor Joe Rich took only two trips from 2003 through his retirement in April 2005, a total of six days of taxpayer funded travel over those 28 months.

"It's important for a chief to be in the office to run the office," Rich told me, explaining why he'd traveled so little. Most of his travel was for voting rights conferences and speaking engagements, he said. Chiefs rarely travel for cases, he said.

Voting section lawyers, upset with Tanner's abuse of his authority as chief, have filed at least two complaints in recent months with the Justice Department inspector general concerning Tanner's travel and other issues (you can read one here). Another complaint, which we published last month, dealt with the travel of Tanner's deputy Susana Lorenzo-Giguere. A Department spokesman said then that the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) was investigating whether Lorenzo-Giguere had filed certain lawsuits in order to get paid while living at her Cape Cod beach house. Tanner is also under investigation for approving that arrangement. It's unclear whether OPR is also investigating other trips by Tanner or Lorenzo-Giguere.

In the meantime, according to two sources, both Tanner and acting section deputy Susana Lorenzo-Giguere have been banned indefinitely from any further travel. The Justice Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.

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Civil Rights Division

Vote Suppression Measure Hits the Mark

Paul Kiel | November 20, 2007, 11:40AM

Earlier this month, we reported on a Florida law that requires the state to reject voter registration applications if the data does not match driver's license or Social Security records. The law, first implemented in January, 2006, was based on advice from Hans von Spakovsky -- yet another addition to his legacy of voter suppression at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Civil rights groups, calling the measure "disenfranchisement-by-bureaucracy," have sued to halt the law in an attempt to minimize the effect on the 2008 election.

This weekend, Southwest Florida's News-Press ran an analysis of state records, and, well, the law seems to have had a predictable effect (enjoy the spin from election officials):

County election officials say the number of voters lost through Florida's central registration system is small -- 90 percent of applications get voter cards.

The result is applications from more than 43,000 Floridians hoping to become eligible voters over the past 21 months were rejected by state computer programs and kicked out for special review.

More than 14,000 initially rejected -- three-quarters of them minorities -- didn't make it through that last set of hoops.

Blacks were 6 1/2 times more likely than whites to be rejected at that step.

Hispanics were more than 7 times more likely to be failed.

As for von Spakovsky, his nomination to be a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission remains stuck in the Senate, due to the opposition of Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Russ Feingold (D-WI).

Ed. Note: Thanks to TPMm Reader KH for the catch.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Hans von Spakovsky

Civil Rights Division

Civil Rights Groups Seek to Stop Florida Voter Purge Law

Paul Kiel | November 8, 2007, 2:52PM

Hans von Spakovsky, whose nomination for the Federal Election Commission is currently stalled in the Senate, may have left the Justice Department in 2005, but his influence remains. A prime example is in Florida, where the state legislature, evidently following von Spakovsky's advice, passed a law that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of legitimate voters. Now civil rights groups are trying to stop the law before it affects the 2008 elections.

The law, scheduled to go in effect in January, would require the state to reject voter registrations if the state cannot match the information on registration applications to driver's license or Social Security records. Because such records tend to be riddled with errors, tens of thousands of "perfectly eligible voters" will be knocked off the rolls, the NAACP and other groups charged in a lawsuit this September, resulting in "disenfranchisement-by-bureaucracy." Compounding the problem, the law shortened the number of days that rejected voters have to present evidence that they're a legitimate voter from three to two days.

Florida was just one of a number of states that adopted such a law after von Spakovsky, then a lawyer with the Civil Rights Division, issued a letter to Maryland's attorney general in 2003 advising that the Help American Vote Act required states to reject voter registrations that did not match databases.

Joe Rich, the 40-year veteran of the Civil Rights Division who was then the chief of the voting section, told me that von Spakovsky wrote the letter without consulting him. Rich called it a "very strict reading of the law" which would "disenfranchise a lot of people" and compared it to Florida's disastrous attempt to purge ex-felons from the voter rolls in 2000 (a purge that was also von Spakovsky's brain child.)

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Hans von Spakovsky

Civil Rights Division

Former DoJ Civil Rights Analyst on Why He Left: "It Didn’t Make A Difference"

Paul Kiel | October 30, 2007, 1:38PM

Here's Toby Moore, formerly a redistricting expert under John Tanner in the voting rights section, explaining why he, and so many other career employees left the Civil Rights Division.

Moore explained that he'd left because he'd found there was "no sense" in doing his work "if it didn’t make a difference in the decisions being made." Tanner and the political appointees above him, Moore explained, decided issues "of significance and controversy" (like whether to approve Georgia's voter ID law) based on "political expediency." So Moore, and many other career analysts and attorneys, left.

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Civil Rights Division

Voting Rights Chief: "I Hurt People"

Paul Kiel | October 30, 2007, 12:37PM

After the brutal questioning by Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL), Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) followed up. This time, voting rights section chief John Tanner had a brief reply as to what he was really apologizing for, when he apologized for saying that minorities "die first."

"I hurt people," Tanner said quietly into the microphone.

Eventually, under Ellison's incredulous questioning, Tanner admitted that "people age in the same way." To which Ellison replied: "My dad is almost eighty. He's black."

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Topics: Civil Rights Division

Civil Rights Division

Davis Grills Tanner on Minorities "Die First" Comment

Paul Kiel | October 30, 2007, 12:30PM

If there's been a more brutal examination of a witness in a Congressional hearing since the days of Alberto Gonzales, I haven't seen it.

Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) laid into voting section chief John Tanner during the hearing today over his comment earlier this month that "our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first." Tanner made the remarks as justification for his conviction that voter ID laws actually discriminate against whites. In Tanner's calculus, since minorities don't age "the way white people do," the effect of voter ID laws on the elderly means that whites are disproportionately affected. And since younger African-Americans frequently carry IDs because of racial profiling and the need to cash checks at "a check cashing business," voter ID laws actually favor African-Americans.

Tanner kicked off the hearing by repeating his apology for the comment, regretting that his "explanation of the data came across in a hurtful way."

But Davis wasn't mollified. I'm "not sure what you’re apologizing for," he said. Did he still think the statement was correct? "It is a sad fact..." Tanner began. Is that accurate? Davis pressed. Tanner began to say that he believed census data in Georgia (the subject of the most controversial voter ID law) showed that life expectancy among minorities was lower.

"But that's not what you said," Davis said. Tanner admitted that his was a "very clumsy statement." Davis pressed on: is it "accurate that minorities don't become elderly because white people do?" When you say "'they die first,' who is 'they?'" he asked.

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Civil Rights Division

Voting Chief Defends Overrulling Staff to Approve Georgia Voter ID Law

Paul Kiel | October 30, 2007, 10:45AM

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) kicked off the questioning today by asking John Tanner about his involvement in forcing through an approval of the infamous 2005 Georgia voter ID law (here's the whole sorry story). Tanner overruled the recommendation from Civil Rights Division staff attorneys to reject the law and then made the unprecedented move of silencing their opposition. After Tanner recommended approval of the law (one day after the staff recommended against that), a federal appeals court judge later barred implementation of the law, comparing it to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.

Under questioning today, Tanner avoided discussing his clash with his own staff, who had made their recommendation in a forcefully worded memo. Instead, he put the emphasis on the fact that he'd "made the decision." When Nadler pushed, Tanner replied, " I can't discuss internal deliberations," and made reference to the "confidence of our clients." This apparent invocation of attorney-client privilege seemed to catch Nadler off guard. But isn't that public information? he asked. Tanner declined to elaborate, instead emphasizing again that the decision was his based on "careful analysis."

In the Georgia ID memo, Tanner also made the questionable move of reversing the usual Justice Department practice of including his own contrary opinion when he disagreed with the staff recommendation. Instead of forwarding on his staff's recommendation alongside his own to the Department leadership, Tanner simply removed the staff's dissent. When Nadler asked him if he'd abandoned this "longstanding practice," Tanner replied, "That has not been the uniform practice." But was that the general practice? Nadler countered. "Prior to that time, it had not been done," Tanner admitted.

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Civil Rights Division

House Panel Holds Hearing on Voting Rights Section

Paul Kiel | October 30, 2007, 10:20AM

The hearing, broadcast on C-SPAN 3 and streaming on the House Judiciary Committee's website, just got under way. Voting rights section chief John "They Die First" Tanner is, of course, the star witness.

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) kicked it off with, "We're in a crisis, and it's the duty of this committee to determine what went wrong."

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Civil Rights Division

Voting Rights Chief Apologizes for Comments about Minorities

Paul Kiel | October 29, 2007, 2:10PM

Voting rights section chief John Tanner has apologized for saying earlier this month that "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first."

The apology went out to a number of attendees of the National Latino Congreso, where Tanner made the remarks. You can see one of them, to the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, here. The letter is dated Friday, October 26, a week after Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) publicly called for Tanner to be fired based on those remarks.

In the letter, Tanner does not recant his analysis that voter ID laws actually discriminate against whites, but does apologize that his "explanation of the data came across in a hurtful way." Others who worked in the Justice Department, of course, including Toby Moore, a former redistricting expert in the section who will testifying alongside Tanner tomorrow, disagreed with more than his tone.

The full text of the letter is below:

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Civil Rights Division

In Voting Section, Charges of Discrimination Persist

Paul Kiel | October 29, 2007, 11:50AM

When John Tanner, the chief of the Justice Department's voting rights section, goes before Congress tomorrow, he'll have a lot to answer for.

One of the most uncomfortable topics, to be sure, will be continuing charges of discrimination in the section that is supposed to be the font of civil rights enforcement -- charges that point squarely at Tanner himself. Things became so bad that a 33-year veteran analyst sent out an email to colleagues on her last day last December: "I leave with fond memories of the Voting Section I once knew, and I am gladly escaping the 'Plantation' it has become. For my colleagues still under the 'whip', hold on - 'The Times They are A Changing.'"

In an interview with NPR, that analyst, Teresa Lynn, made clear who was holding the whip in that metaphor. It was "aimed toward the leadership of the section," she said, "both the section chief [Tanner] and the deputy chief of section five [Yvette Rivera]." Lynn told NPR that she got "high fives" from her former colleagues for her parting shot.

We first reported on charges of discrimination in the section -- charges that resulted in at least two Equal Employment Opportunity complaints from African-American employees -- in May. But the same problems still persist today, Carl Goldman, executive director of AFSCME's Council 26, the union that represents non-attorney staff in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told me:

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Civil Rights Division

Kennedy Asks Mukasey for Review of Voting Rights Chief

Paul Kiel | October 26, 2007, 11:57AM

Last week Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) called for the Justice Department's voting rights chief John Tanner to be fired. And in written questions to attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey this week, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) asked Mukasey to review Tanner's record and consider whether he ought to be canned.

In the question, Kennedy noted Tanner's reasoning that voter ID laws actually discriminate against whites because "'minorities don't become elderly the way white people do.'" The "remarks display a shameful lack of understanding and sensitivity that is unacceptable in the person charged with enforcing the nation’s laws against voting discrimination," he wrote.

Tanner will appear before a House judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday, where he's sure to be questioned about those remarks, others where he said that African-Americans tend to carry picture ID because of racial profiling, and his role in whitewashing a Justice Department review of Columbus, Ohio voting problems in the 2004 election and forcing through approval of a controversial voter ID law in Georgia -- among other things. It's not going to be a fun hearing for Tanner. The chairman of that subcommittee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), called on Tanner to resign yesterday.

"The Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division has failed miserably in its responsibility to enforce the Voting Rights Act during this Administration," Sen. Kennedy said in a statement. "The latest shameful revelations from the Section drive home the urgent need for the next Attorney General to install strong leadership to allow the Voting Section to return to its historic role in ensuring access to the ballot."

Kennedy's question to Mukasey is below.

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Topics: Civil Rights Division, Michael Mukasey

Civil Rights Division

Fighting Discrimination: It's A Day at The Beach

Paul Kiel | October 24, 2007, 3:17PM

You're used to the usual humdrum charges that the Justice Department's voting rights section has been turned to the aim of voter suppression, rather than voter protection. So count this as a new variety of alleged corruption.

As reported by Al Kamen in The Washington Post today, "the acting deputy director of the section, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere, has been accused of collecting a $64 per diem, including on weekends and the Fourth of July, while spending half of June and most of July and August with her husband and kids at their beach house on Cape Cod."

You can read the referenced complaint here, which is addressed to the Justice Department's inspector general. The most sensational accusation, to be sure, is not that Lorenzo-Giguere managed to get paid while staying at her beach house, but that the Department "files lawsuits not because of the merits of the underlying claims but because the venue of the targeted defendant allows Ms. Lorenzo-Giguere to compel taxpayer funding of her annual summer retreat to Cape Cod."

The author of the complaint (redacted in the version TPMmuckraker obtained) notes that certain motions by Lorenzo-Giguere raised arguments "the United States had never raised in similar circumstances in any other litigation." Both lawsuits referenced in the complaint dealt with alleged discrimination against Spanish-speaking voters; the section has pursued a large number of such cases, while virtually abandoning the section's traditional emphasis on protecting African-American voters.

A Department spokesman told Kamen, "The Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating the allegations, and upon conclusion of the investigation the Department will take appropriate action."

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Civil Rights Division

Obama: Fire Voting Rights Chief

Paul Kiel | October 19, 2007, 10:45AM

In a letter today, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) urged the acting attorney general to fire voting rights section chief John Tanner. Citing Tanner's remarks earlier this month that "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first," Obama wrote that "Through his inexcusable comments, Mr. Tanner has clearly demonstrated that he possesses neither the character nor the judgment to be heading the Voting Rights Section." He concluded: "For that reason, I respectfully request that you remove him from his position."

Tanner made the comments as justification for his decision to overrule Justice Department staff attorneys and approve a Georgia voter ID law that was subsequently halted by a federal appeals court. Tanner made the novel argument that such laws actually discriminate against whites.

Things are only getting worse for Tanner. In a couple weeks, he'll appear before the House Judiciary Committee, where he'll get to explain personally to its 78 year-old African-American chairman that minorities don't "become elderly." He'll also have to explain why he took the unprecedented step of publicly assuring officials in Columbus, Ohio that there had been no discrimination against African-Americans in the allocation of voting machines for the 2004 election. The fact that African-Americans had to wait in long lines deep into the night, he said, was due to "the tendency" for "white voters to cast ballots in the morning" and "for black voters to cast ballots in the afternoon."

This is second time this month that Obama has come out hard against a controversial figure from the Civil Rights Division. Earlier, he joined with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) in blocking the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission.

Obama's letter is below.

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Civil Rights Division

Conyers Has More Questions For DOJ's Tanner

dkurtz | October 12, 2007, 5:54PM

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has issued a statement in in response to Paul Kiel's reporting earlier today on the unprecedented written public assurance that DOJ voting rights chief John Tanner gave to election officials in Ohio that the Justice Department had found no evidence of intentional African-American voter disenfranchisement in the 2004 election.

As Paul reported, Tanner wrote a June 2005 letter to election officials in Columbus, Ohio, offering a lengthy explanation for why the Department had not discovered sufficient evidence of discrimination, the effect of which was to "poison the well" for future litigation or investigation of the alleged election improprieties.

In his statement, Conyers says:

"I am concerned about the extreme lengths Mr. Tanner went to in order to justify the reasons African-Americans were not treated equally in the 2004 Ohio election. The committee needs to consider this matter. I am aware of no precedent for the Department acting in this capacity in the past.

Tanner has been asked to testify before Conyers' committee, though no date for his testimony has been set.

The full text of Conyers' statement appears below the fold:

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Civil Rights Division

Bush's Legacy on Voting Rights: A Story from Ohio

Paul Kiel | October 12, 2007, 10:32AM

In June of 2005, John Tanner, the chief of the voting rights section, wrote Columbus, Ohio's election officials to publicly assure them that the Justice Department had found no evidence of intentional African-American voter disenfranchisement in the 2004 election.

Not only was that an unprecedented move, former Department lawyers say, but the letter is another, and particularly galling, example of Tanner using the force of the Department to further Republican aims -- in this case, to hamper future lawsuits or investigations concerning the problems in Columbus.

"It really looked like the Civil Rights Division was used to run interference for Republican election officials in Ohio," former voting rights section deputy chief Bob Kengle told me.

At issue was the experience of thousands of voters in Franklin County, Ohio, in the 2004 election. Voters in mostly African-American precincts were forced to wait hours in long lines to vote. An investigation by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) found that voters often waited as many as four to five hours, some as many as seven, deep into the night. The Washington Post reported that "bipartisan estimates say that 5,000 to 15,000 frustrated voters turned away without casting ballots." The culprit, of course, was a scarcity of voting machines in those districts, one that seemed to follow a suspicious trend: "27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush" and "six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry."

But Tanner, who's due to appear in a Congressional hearing, launched an investigation (more on that below) and found that "Franklin County assigned voting machines in a non-discriminatory manner," as he wrote in a detailed 4-page letter to a local official. But if the distribution of the machines was non-discriminatory, why then were polling places in predominantly African-American areas forced to remain open for hours after the normal 7:30 PM closing time in order to accommodate the long lines?

Tanner explained that African-Americans simply vote later in the day:

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Civil Rights Division

Straight-Talkin' Voting Rights Chief to Appear before House Panel

Paul Kiel | October 11, 2007, 1:54PM

Fresh off his candid appearance at a California panel on minority voter disenfranchisement last week, Voting Rights Section chief John Tanner will get to air his views to Congress.

After initially rebuffing a request for Tanner to appear, the Justice Department has agreed to send him along for a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. A date for the hearing hasn't yet been set.

There will be plenty to ask Tanner about, and not only his view that voter ID laws don't significantly hurt minorities because "they die first." The focus of the hearing is likely to be his role in forcing through an approval of a controversial, and ultimately halted, Georgia ID law in 2005 over the objections of the career lawyers and analysts on his staff.

“I’m pleased that the administration has finally reversed course and agreed to allow Mr. Tanner to testify,” said the subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). “I hope that he will be as willing to provide lawmakers with the same candid views he has been providing at various public venues.... This hearing will also offer lawmakers the ability to address the serious concerns about the many controversial positions the Voting Rights Section has taken in the last few years.”

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Civil Rights Division

DoJ Vote Chief Argues Voter ID Laws Discriminate against Whites

Paul Kiel | October 9, 2007, 12:48PM

When Justice Department lawyers and analysts found in 2005 that a Georgia law requiring voters to have photo ID would disproportionately discriminate against African-Americans, they were overruled by John Tanner, the chief of the Civil Rights Divisions' voting rights section. The law was subsequently halted by a federal appeals judge, who compared it to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.

This past weekend, Tanner showcased his own analytical skills, telling an audience that voter ID requirements actually disproportionately affect whites.

Tanner explained that "primarily elderly persons" are the ones affected by such laws, but "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first." So anything that "disproportionately impacts the elderly, has the opposite impact on minorities," he added. "Just the math is such as that." Video of Tanner's remarks were posted yesterday by The Brad Blog. We've supplied a transcript below.

According to former Department employees, Tanner's comments were not only wrong, but way off, and typical of the type of decision making in the section. “In trying to defend his decision in the Georgia case, he’s saying things that are frankly ludicrous,” Joe Rich, a forty-year veteran of the Department and Tanner's predecessor in the voting rights section, told me.

"This is the kind of analysis that the voting section has been doing: seat of the pants generalizations and suppositions instead of hard numbers and analysis," said Toby Moore, a redistricting expert who worked as an analyst for the section until the spring of 2006. "It's false." Tanner's conclusions, he added, were "always in support of what his Republican appointee bosses wanted him to say, which is why he got to where he is."

Tanner made the remarks this past Friday during a panel on voter disenfranchisement held by the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles.

He'd recently made similar comments when addressing the Georgia NAACP about the 2005 Georgia law last week. There, Tanner told the group that minorities were actually "slightly more likely" than non-minorities to have a photo ID," according to the AP.

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