Florida Governor Rick Scott’s voting case against the Holder Justice Department has taken a strange but predictable turn. Recall that radical lawyers in the DOJ Voting Section filed a lawsuit against Florida seeking to prevent the removal of foreigners from the voter rolls. Justice has now turned to the print media for “expert” statistical analysis on the racial impacts of Florida’s policies.
It turns out at least 50 of these foreigners have voted in Florida elections. If done in a federal election, this constitutes a federal crime. Yet why has the Justice Department not charged these individuals?
Of course we all know the answer – preventing the removal of the foreigners is more important to Eric Holder than prosecuting the ones who voted illegally.
Now comes the Justice Department’s attempt to obtain an injunction against Florida from proceeding with the removal of the foreigners. DOJ claimed that removal of foreigners would have a racially discriminatory impact. That is, more Hispanics would be removed than whites as a percentage of the population.
Well, so what?
Florida has punched back in this memo:
The fact that a program to remove non-citizen voters affects a large percentage of minorities is neither surprising, nor remotely indicative of impermissible discrimination. Any program that removes non-citizens from the rolls in Florida, even if 100% accurate, will undoubtedly have this result. But DOJ cannot and does not argue that the accurate removal of non-citizens has any impermissible disparate impact.
Translation: of course there will be a disparate racial impact when illegal foreigners are removed from the voter rolls. What else would you expect? That alone doesn’t make it illegal.
DOJ’s purist and radical argument on this point would surprise nobody who has read my book Injustice. This species of radical racialism, where any difference in outcomes with a statistical correlation, justifies the flexing of federal power.
But then the DOJ goes where I didn’t think possible – the Voting Section lawyers cite a newspaper report for statistical evidence of racially discriminatory impact. Florida hits back:
DOJ crosses even further into the realm of conclusory and unsubstantiated speculation by asserting that the Secretary’s use of MDAVE data is “discriminatory.” DOJ cites a single source to support this claim: a news report “indicat[ing] that the program may have a disproportionate impact on minority voters” because “87 percent of those on the 2,600-person list are minorities.” U.S. Mem. 17 & n.6 (emphasis added). As a threshold matter, a single media report speculating that the MDAVE data “may” have a disparate impact is obviously not competent evidence to support any judgment or relief.
During the Bush administration, such evidentiary nonsense would not have occurred. The voting section chiefs at the time would never tolerate such flimsy lawyering. In fact, current section chief Chris Herren would not have supported such flimsy lawyering before January 20, 2009. But with radicals in power, the rules of evidence matter less than the exercise of power to achieve politically transformational ends. It is the story as old as time, the sacrifice of principle in the quest for power or the favor of superiors.
Unfortunately for the nation, and the Rule of Law, principles are in short supply in Holder’s corrupted Department of Justice.
Thumbnail image courtesy shutterstock / Nomad_Soul
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