The Military Voter Protection Project held a forum on military voting today with the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. A great group of speakers appeared including Senator John Cornyn from Texas, Secretaries of State Natalie Tennant (WV) and Beth Chapman (AL), and Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani. I appeared on a panel with PJM’s Hans von Spakovsky and Christopher Coates. Heritage is expected to have an archived stream shortly.
Senator Cornyn made it clear he will be a bulldog over the next year to protect military voting rights. Servicemembers frustrated with the performance of the federal bureaucracy clearly have a friend in the Senator from Texas. From his speech:
I can tell you that I will keep the pressure on both DOJ and the Pentagon to implement and enforce the MOVE Act. I have already begun my letter-writing campaign to the Attorney General for the 2012 cycle. I have reminded him that the first presidential primary elections will be in mid-February, which means the 45-day deadline is less than 6 months away for some of them. So I have asked him to make sure every state knows its responsibilities under the MOVE Act, and to confirm that DOJ intends to enforce the law – with litigation where necessary.
Just today, Cornyn hit Eric Holder with another letter, describing the DOJ Voting Section’s efforts in 2010 as “grossly inadequate.” These letters make a huge difference in protecting service members. Cornyn held up the nomination of James Cole to be Deputy Attorney General for months in 2010, causing frustration and panic within DOJ over the Voting Section’s Keystone Kops act. If the DOJ Voting Section blows it in 2012 like they blew it in 2010 in states like Illinois and New York, they may well find more DOJ nominees held up with another Cornyn hold.
I won’t be holding my breath until Nov 6, 2012, waiting for Steadman, I mean “Holder”, to do anything on this one.
oooo, he hit him with a letter. Big deal. How many times has Holder ignored the requests of Congress in various hearings? How many times has Salazar ignore a judge’s ruling on drilling requests? Do you really think that Obama and Cronies will obey any of the laws that will put them in a weaker position??? If you do then you must be smoking some really good stuff.
It actually is a big deal David. The letter puts Holder on notice that Cornyn will be leveraging his power if things don’t improve. It’s how the world works, and is a signal that the performance of DOJ will be at issue.
I fully agree with you, Mr. Adams. This letter from Senator Cornyn *IS* a big deal, however, the mainstream media have buried the story, once again.
Slightly off topic, but thought Christian Adams might have some insight into this.
I work for the US Government, stationed overseas, and I NEVER got any 2010 Census forms, nor do I know of anyone at my posting who did. Did the military folks stationed overseas get counted?
I know from some online reporting that some Census workers were EXTREMELY efficient in their counting efforts, how could it be that there were no provisions to count government workers?
As for overseas voting for non-military, I vote in Calif, and I understand that in national elections like 2000 and 2004, if the popular vote results is larger than the number of absentee ballots sent in, Calif didn’t even count them, since it wouldn’t have made a difference. That is the origin of the myth that Al Gore “won the popular vote.” We can never know what the popular vote totals actually were if tens/hundreds of thousands of ballots were never counted.
Holder is a criminal, there is no two ways about it. He’s a slimy pol who should face jail time for his evil ways. We have an affirmative action President and an affirmative action AG, pathetic.