Former US Department of Justice official J. Christian Adams testified before the US House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution today. Adams, who has blown the whistle on voter fraud and DoJ wrongdoing from the New Black Panthers voter intimidation in Philadelphia to the politicized hiring practices of the Holder era, testified on “Voting Wrongs: Oversight of the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Enforcement.” Adams’ full prepared testimony is downloadable here. What follows is an excerpt of Adams’ testimony.
One of the most unfortunate circumstances relating to the 2012 elections is the absence of DOJ enforcement of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act. Voter rolls nationwide are filled with ineligible and dead voters. Yet the Department of Justice is deliberately refusing to enforce Section 8 and require states to purge rolls because of philosophical disagreement with the purging statute. Failure to enforce Section 8 to require states and localities to clean up voter rolls presents a troubling circumstance prior to the November 2012 elections.
Some counties in the United States have outrageous and implausible percentages of voting age citizens registered to vote. Consider just a few. Noxubee County, where widespread voter fraud was proven in the case I litigated of United States v. Ike Brown, has 113% of voting age citizens eligible to vote.4 In the case, the United States presented evidence of in-person voter impersonation. But Noxubee isn’t even the worst county in Mississippi. Ten counties have higher percentages than 113%, including Tunica where 2011 saw multiple voter fraud convictions, and Claiborne County, Mississippi, where 162% of eligible voting age population is on the rolls. Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann has begged these counties to clean up their corrupted rolls, but Mississippi law provides him no statutory weaponry, except begging. The Justice Department has the power to step in and sue states and counties to clean up their rolls, but it deliberately refuses to act.
Unfortunately, the Justice Department has not brought a single case under Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act. Indeed, when I was at the Voting Section, political appointees expressed open and outright hostility to enforcing Section 8. Former Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates testified under oath that he recommended eight Section 8 investigations into various states, but that the political appointees overseeing the Voting Section simply said the Obama administration would not enforce Section 8 to require the removal of ineligible voters.5 Coates also testified that political appointees announced to the entire Voting Section in November 2009 that the Obama administration would never enforce Section 8 to require states to purge ineligible voters. Coates’ testimony was given under oath, and I can corroborate his account because I was also an eyewitness. Dozens of other eyewitnesses to these instructions exist.
With over 150 counties across the nation with more voters on the rolls than could possibly be eligible to vote, the outright refusal to enforce Section 8, a provision that was part of a carefully crafted compromise by Congress in 1993, threatens the integrity of the elections in November 2012.
Adams is PJ Media’s legal editor, and blogs at Rule of Law.
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