Last night’s Republican presidential debate raised the issue of felon voting. Rick Santorum was challenged over his vote for federal legislation that would automatically restore the voting rights to felons as soon as they are released from prison and have completed any required probation or parole. As I testified nearly two years ago before the House Judiciary Committee, a federal statute of this nature would appear to be both unconstitutional and poor public policy. Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment specifically provides that states may abridge the right to vote …
A career employee in the Voting Section of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has confessed to committing perjury, sources say. The employee, Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi, reportedly told investigators from the Inspector General’s Office that she perjured herself during an inquiry into Justice Department leaks during the previous administration. Despite the admission, she has not been fired for criminal malfeasance. Indeed, it appears she has not been disciplined in any meaningful way at all. The genesis of Ms. Gyamfi’s perjury is apparently rooted in political attacks on the Bush Justice Department. Throughout …
In June 2010, J. Christian Adams resigned his post as a career attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Adams cited DOJ’s decision to abandon prosecution of two members of the New Black Panther Party who had brandished weapons outside of a Philadelphia polling station in 2008, shouting racial slurs at passers-by. Adams called it “the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career.” The decision to drop the case – made by top officials at the Civil Rights Division – was …
The left is in an uproar over new voter-ID laws passed by states including Texas, Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island. Their complaint? That requiring someone to authenticate his or her identity at the polling place amounts to racial discrimination. The Heritage Foundation’s Hans Von Spakovsky writes in this week’s National Review that, in truth, the vast majority of Americans of all racial and ethnic backgrounds support voter-ID laws. And he breaks apart liberals’ arguments against the requirements: Once you get past the race-baiting, you will find that opponents of voter ID …
Millions of Afghans yesterday risked their lives to vote in a presidential election despite blood-curdling Taliban threats to kill or chop off the ears, noses, or fingers of anyone that dared to vote. Despite at least 135 attacks that killed 26 people, the elections proceeded as scheduled, in defiance of Taliban threats. Voter turnout was dampened in areas where Taliban forces were strong enough to make good on their threats, primarily in southern areas that voted heavily in favor of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in 2004. This could prevent Karzai …
Ed Whelan has a strong column in yesterday’s Washington Post on the Attorney General’s attempt to suppress an Office of Legal Counsel opinion concluding that the pending D.C. “voting rights” bill is unconstitutional. (We share that view.) This is not, as the Post had put it previously, a case of different parts of DOJ having different opinions, but an end-run around the Department’s usual clearance process: Now, it’s legitimate, if exceedingly rare, for an attorney general to contest OLC’s advice…. But there’s a right way to overrule OLC, and then …
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States … No Person shall be a Representative who shall not … when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen. – Article I of the United States Constitution The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, …
There have been various incidents over the past few years of anonymous flyers being sent to voters giving them the wrong date of an upcoming election. These cause great concern (as they should), but as Soren Dayton at RedState points out, usually Republicans are accused of engaging in these types of tactics with no evidence whatsoever that any Republican candidate had anything to do with it. There is now actual video of a new Virginia Democratic Congressman, Gerry Connolly, recommending that Republicans be given the wrong date of the special …
Prior to the November election, the media was full of stories and claims that John McCain and those terrible Republicans would be trying to intimidate voters in order to win the election. Barack Obama’s lawyer even wrote a letter to the Justice Department demanding that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate McCain and other Republican officials for talking about voter fraud because it was an obvious attempt to “suppress” the vote of minorities. All of these claims, of course, were composed of nothing more substantial than moonshine. The only …
