by Jeremy Leaming
U.S. Attorne
y General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice has launched investigations of efforts by a string of state governors to make voting a major difficulty for potential voters, especially minorities, the poor, students and the elderly.
Today, before the NAACP Annual Convention, Holder delved into his commitment to safeguard the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in the process tore into the tawdry efforts by states, such as Texas, to limit the right to vote.
In prepared text of his speech, Holder focused on the onerous Texas voter ID law, which the DOJ has not granted approval of. “After close review, the Department found that this law would be harmful to minority voters – and we rejected its implementation,” Holder said.
He continued, “Under the proposed law, concealed handgun licenses would be an acceptable form of photo ID – but student IDs would not. Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them – and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them.”
According to the AP, Holder veered off script and said, “We call those poll taxes,” which are unconstitutional.
Holder added, “let me be clear: we will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right.”
Other Republican-controlled states like Wisconsin, Florida, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania are also working to implement harsh voter ID laws, all with the potential impact of discouraging voter turnout among minorities, students, and the elderly. Civil rights groups, such as the Brennan Center for Justice, the NAACP, the ACLU and others are working to defeat those efforts.
A recent ACS Issue Brief by Loyola Law School Professor Justin Levitt examines the Florida voter ID law, calling it bad public policy and constitutionally suspect.
Sometimes it is so hard to
Sometimes it is so hard to find good and useful posts out there when doing research. Now I will send it to my colleagues as well. Thank you for being one of them.
Alex
Attorney General's Race Baiting
Calling anti-fraud voter ID requirements the equivalent of Jim Crow poll taxes shows how low AG Holder will stoop in his race baiting. Either Holder is profoundly lacking in understanding of the law (which seems very unlikely), or he is an unapologetic, wear-it-on-his-sleeves, ideological race baiter. He has determined for reasons known perhaps only to himself and maybe his brother-in-race-baiting Barack Obama, that it is better to keep blacks down, ignorant of history, and riled up about the 'white man' (and now, Asian man) who are -- accordingly to Holder's false presentation of the facts -- trying to keep the black man down. Holder is an embarrassment to his office and to his profession -- which at its core requires the pursuit of truth and justice, not the purveying of untruths and avoidance of justice. Shame on you General Holder. Shame on you.
Post new comment