by Marcia

Addendum to: Is Lady Justice Peeking?

The elective franchise, if guarded as the ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations to subvert a Constitution, dictated by the wisdom, and resting on the will of the people.

Thomas Jefferson

Every year at this time, citizens are urged to vote by political parties, citizen groups and various government entities. In some jurisdictions, voters are considered so important that they are permitted to vote even after they are dead.

In 2008, Minnesota Majority, (a group of conservative activists) using a standard deceased matching service commonly utilized by mailing houses, discovered thousands of apparently deceased individuals still voting.

Under Federal law, states are required to purge their voter rolls of dead people, felons and people who have moved away. Recently, former Department of Justice attorney Christian Adams testified that DOJ is not investigating cases of non-compliance.

Former DOJ Voting Rights Chief Chris Coates, in testimony before the Civil Rights Commission on September 24, not only corroborated what Adams said, he provided more disturbing evidence of racially selective enforcement by the Justice Department.

Coates was there to testify as to his knowledge of DOJ’s refusal to prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party whose voter intimidation efforts were recorded on video. In the course of his testimony, he revealed that DOJ has a policy of not enforcing Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) that requires states to conduct voter registration list maintenance to assure that the names of non-eligible voters are removed.

Coates told the Commissioners, that in June of 2009, the Election Assistance Commission issued its bi-annual report concerning which states appeared not to be enforcing Section 8 of NVRA. In eight states, the most egregious instances, no voters had been removed for two years. Coates sent a request to the Civil Rights Division of DOA seeking approval to initiate an investigation. His request was ignored. Coates said a statement by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes, reported by Adams in his earlier testimony, expressed DOJ policy. Fernandes told a group of Civil Rights Division employees that cases that did not increase minority participation would not be pursued. “We want to increase access to the ballot, not limit it,” she said.

Disagreeing with selective enforcement of the law, when Coates became Chief of the Voting Section, he “began to ask applicants for trial attorney positions in their job interviews whether they would be willing to work on cases that involved claims of racial discrimination against white voters, as well as cases that involved claims of discrimination against minority voters.” When word reached Loretta King, who has been appointed Acting AAG for Civil Rights by the Obama administration, she instructed him to stop asking the question because she did not support equal enforcement of the VRA. If the applicant responded in the negative, “it would not in any way, in her opinion, weigh against hiring that applicant to work in the voting section.”

These are not abstract legal issues of interest only to lawyers. With a seminal midterm election only weeks away, these revelations cast doubt on the very foundation of our system of government, the integrity of the electoral process. Coates pointed out, “A number of the jurisdictions that have bloated voter registration lists, where there are sizable minority populations, are Democratic strongholds.”

Coincidentally, Nov. 2nd is when Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is often celebrated. That is when Mexicans remember and honor their deceased loved ones. The holiday is based on the idea that the spirits return at that time of year.

It is also when the dead return to vote in America.