As Pajamas Media has been reporting since July, Eric Holder’s Justice Department is only interested in enforcing some parts of Motor Voter, but not the parts that require states to remove dead and felon voters from the rolls. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes told the voting section she is only interested in enforcing the welfare agency voter registration provisions. As a result of her dereliction of her duties, thousands of illegal aliens may have participated in the 2010 elections in New Mexico and Colorado. I reported on an undercover sting operation in Louisiana targeting welfare agency registration. Now Rhode Island is in the crosshairs and has been sued to increase welfare agency voter registration. An outlandish consent decree has been proposed and someone in Rhode Island should immediately file to intervene and block the decree.
Also forced to serve as voter registration offices: disability hospitals, crack house treatment centers, food stamp offices, cash assistance centers, behavioral treatment centers, and utility payment grant offices. At each of these places, under the proposed consent decree, the taxpayers of Rhode Island must pay for a Motor Voter “site coordinator” to ensure the recipients of the welfare are getting their voter registration materials. They will have to make and store paperwork detailing all the instances of when their offers of voter registration material were rejected. These reports must be turned over to the bureaucrats in the Voting Section on demand. These site coordinators must attend training sessions, presumably in Providence, paid for by the taxpayers of Rhode Island. And if welfare services are done through private entities, such as a church charity, those places must “amend” those contracts. Hopefully the private agencies (who will of course receive no extra money for these new burdens) challenge the settlement. Even if they do, Rhode Island has been reduced to the role of serf and “must employ their best efforts to defend” the terms against any challenge. The reporting requirements under the settlement are onerous as possible. The feds can even conduct surprise audits. The feds also get the right to “call or visit local offices providing services covered by NVRA undercover without identifying its staff as investigators.” This is an astonishing part of the decree because the Justice Department used to simply hover outside offices and poll people leaving. That Rhode Island agreed to this speaks to serious problems in that state. Either the people negotiating with the United States don’t understand there are ways to litigate and win these cases, or they are in bed with the federal government – which is not the way the Constitution is supposed to work. Perhaps some patriotic Rhode Islanders will quickly intervene early next week to block the worst provisions of the decree, if such people are to be found and awakened.
UPDATE: Note Paragraph 21 of the decree confesses that terms of the decree exceed the law. h/t to Bill Kenney.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member