Over a year ago, I first warned that the Obama administration adopted a policy of refusing to enforce federal laws which require states to purge dead and ineligible voters from the rolls. I discuss at length the details of this policy as revealed to me when I worked at the Justice Department in my book Injustice. Today we learn that American voter rolls are infested with millions of dead and ineligible voters heading into the presidential election.
Eric Holder and his Leftist political appointees at the Justice Department have gotten exactly what they wanted.
The Pew Center on the States estimates nearly 2,000,000 dead voters are on the rolls, and 2,800,000 people are registered in more than one state. This is precisely the mess that the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) was designed to prevent.
Last Thursday, Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, announced that it is teaming up with me and True the Vote for an election integrity project to get the voter rolls cleaned up before November. We will do what Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez refuse to do.
The Justice Department refuses to enforce Section 8 of the NVRA because, as political appointee Julie Fernandes revealed in a Voting Section meeting in 2009 that I attended, removing dead people from the rolls “doesn’t increase turnout. It stops people from voting.” Seriously.
In the meantime, DOJ has vigorously enforced Section 7 of NVRA, the welfare agency voter registration provision. Judicial Watch has determined through FOIA litigation that the aggressive Section 7 enforcement policy at DOJ had its genesis in the lobbying of Estelle Rogers, of ACORN fame. (Read her emails at the link.) One wonders if Rogers was registered as a lobbyist, or if she just lobbied the White House without registering.
Rogers also made ACORN-blessed job recommendations for attorneys applying to the Voting Section. DOJ refuses to release the names of the lawyers Rogers pushed, and whether or not they were hired to enforce election law this fall.
Instead of enforcing Section 8 and cleaning up the voter rolls, the Justice Department is shaking down states to wring out every possible welfare agency voter registrant before November.
In doing so, it has resorted to unprecedented investigative tactics that no media outlet has yet reported before today.
Justice Department sources familiar with Voting Section tactics tell me that DOJ has been sending investigators wearing wires and electronic surveillance equipment into state welfare and food stamp offices across the country to see if state officials are pushing voter registration on investigators posing as recipients. They have stung Louisiana, Georgia, Rhode Island, and potentially more states with these tactics.
Based on evidence collected, DOJ has sued Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s administration and Secretary of State Tom Schedler under the welfare agency provisions of NVRA. If the defendants have not already done so, they need to request in discovery all of the recordings and transcripts of these sting operations. Other states should immediately inform Eric Holder in writing that they consider their public welfare agency employees represented by counsel and that any interviews must be approved by state attorneys generals. Then report any DOJ lawyers who oversee clandestine electronic surveillance to their bar associations and to the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility. The states that don’t might be secretly stung next.
These tactics represent a significant development in several ways. Of course DOJ is allowed to engage in these sorts of investigations by law, but the Voting Section has never used electronic surveillance to gather evidence for a civil case before. One former Bush era Voting Section manger told me, “had the Bush administration used wires in a civil voting case, we would have been accused of Gestapo tactics.” Indeed.
The second reason that these tactics are significant is they demonstrate the frenzied priorities of the Obama political appointees before November’s elections. Because of heavy lobbying by Acorn’s Project Vote, the DOJ is now engaged in an effort to stuff the voter rolls with the maximum number of welfare and food stamp recipients, and even public methadone treatment center users. Eric Holder is fighting to fill the voter rolls with these voters before November.
At the same time, deliberate decisions have been made to ignore Section 8 of NVRA. Not a single case has been brought to clean up voter rolls during the Obama administration. Ironically, Holder, in his confirmation hearings, criticized the Bush Justice Department for “cherry picking” which voting laws they want to enforce and which they didn’t. Like so much from Eric Holder’s mouth, the statement has been shown to be a devious misdirection. Holder blames his political opponents for conduct in which he engages.
And what of Congress? Usually, the action or inaction of Congressional oversight committees is a topic I leave to others. But we face a potential electoral calamity because of corrupted voter rolls, a situation encouraged by Acorn-style groups. Ironically, Eric Holder just this week asked for millions more dollars for the Voting Section. No doubt, he wishes to flood the unit with more ACORN-approved lawyers prior to the election, lawyers eager to sue states to increase welfare agency voter registration while ignoring millions of dead voters on the rolls.
What will Congress do in response to the Pew data showing that Eric Holder and Tom Perez have failed to faithfully execute the laws of the United States? Will Holder get millions more for the corrupt Voting Section? I doubt Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va), who oversees the DOJ budget in the House, has much tolerance for Holder’s games. If anything, Congress should see to it that the Voting Section’s budget is halved, and a sizeable portion of the new lawyers hired under the questionable circumstances PJ Media has reported on should be reintroduced to the private sector.
What of the House Administration Committee which ostensibly has oversight over NVRA enforcement? Surely corrupted voter rolls and misplaced DOJ priorities are enough to awaken aggressive oversight. What could be more important than the integrity of our elections? Let’s hope somebody with Constitutional authority over DOJ steps up before we witness an electoral debacle in less than nine months.
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