http://conservativeactionalerts.com/blog_post/show/1189SAN FRANCISCO — What is the quietest spot in Washington, D.C.? The Rose Garden? The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? Actually, it’s the Justice Department’s Voting Section.
Justice’s unit that allegedly fights disenfranchisement lately has been caught dozing while at least nine states too slowly deliver absentee ballots to overseas GIs. Too many military votes thus may go uncounted in November.
In yet another outrage, the Voting Section is static while the rolls of at least 16 states evidently list ineligible voters, including non-residents, disqualified felons, and – yes – dead people. Justice’s response? “ZZZZZZzzzzzz......”
Even worse, the Big Sleep at Justice seems totally deliberate.
As former Voting Section prosecutor J. Christian Adams testified under oath July 6 before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, he attended a November 2009 meeting in which Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes discussed the federal law that requires that local officials purge illegitimate names from their voter rolls. Adams swore that Fernandes told Voting Section prosecutors: “We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law. It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.”
As Adams later wrote in an August 4 pajamasmedia.com article:
Upon hearing this lawless announcement, seasoned Voting Section veterans and managers had a look on their faces as if someone announced without shame they were planning to steal box loads of office supplies. I was there to hear the corrupt announcement firsthand. I saw the reactions.
So far, the Voting Section is living down to Fernandes’ low expectations. If not willful disregard for federal statutes, only powerful sedatives could explain how federal prosecutors could rest comfortably through these simmering examples of voter-roll adulteration.
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission reports that Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Tennessee expunged precisely zero dead voters from their rolls between 2006 and 2008. The same applies to numerous counties in Alabama, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Either these places are experiencing an explosion in immortality, or they are violating federal law.
•Several Iowa and North Carolina counties feature more registered voters than live, voting-age adults. This condition plagues at least a dozen counties each in Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Texas. Registered voters equal 104 percent of Baltimore County, Maryland’s voting-adult population; and, according to documents that Adams filed, 113 percent in Lincoln County, West Virginia. Alaska’s and Michigan’s statewide figures are 102 percent.
•As Adams explains, July alone featured vote-fraud investigations, indictments, and convictions in: Atlantic City, New Jersey; Troy, New York; Canton, Mississippi; Brooks County, Georgia; Independence, Louisiana; Dillon County, South Carolina; Adair County, Oklahoma; Muncie, Indiana; and especially Minnesota, “where there have been dozens of felon voting indictments arising out of the closely contested 2008 elections.”
•Duplicate registration plagues metropolitan areas that straddle state lines. In such spots, people may reside in one state and work or study in another. Greater St. Louis, Kansas City, Memphis, and Cincinnati occupy this category, as do New York and Florida — to which tax-burdened New Yorkers often escape.
•Tarrell Campbell pleaded guilty in July for his actions in November 2008. He voted in Illinois (where he was in college), drove across the Mississippi River, and then voted again in St. Louis, his hometown. Campbell claimed that when he voted in Missouri, he had forgotten his vote in Illinois.
•Anne Enochs, a 69-year-old Memphis art teacher, was arrested in July for double voting — by accident, she claimed.
Such unacceptable electoral conditions could help candidates win, thanks to graveyard landslides. But even barring that, America should leave disheveled voter rolls to banana republics.