Justice Dept voting rights division is conducting voter outreach for GOP

QUOTE

Earlier this month, the Department of Justice's top official overseeing

voting rights, John Tanner, made some insensitive comments about elderly and

minority voters at a Latino forum in Los Angeles, raising eyebrows in the

voting rights community and prompting Democratic presidential candidate Sen.

Barack Obama to call for his ouster on Friday.

But the greater outrage, according to civil rights lawyers across the

country, is how the Department's Voting Section has turned away from

defending minorities that are seen as supporting Democrats -- African

Americans and Native Americans -- while instead focusing on another minority

that is seen as a Republican swing vote -- Latinos.

"It may be cynical, but it may also be true," said Julie Fernandes, senior

policy analyst and special counsel for the Leadership Conference on Civil

Rights, "that the enforcement for Latinos has been more vigorous because

they see it as more in their political interest -- their partisan interest."

Next week, the House Judiciary Committee will hold an oversight hearing on

the Voting Section, whose duty is to implement the nation's voting rights

laws. While the firing of several federal prosecutors who did not pursue

partisan voter fraud cases has garnered national headlines, the Voting

Section's enforcement record has had far less scrutiny.

The Voting Section "did not file any cases on behalf of African-American

voters during a five-year period between 2001 and 2006, and no cases have

been brought on behalf of Native-American voters for the entire

administration," Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership

Conference on Civil Rights told the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on

June 21, 2007.

This summer and fall, Voting Section Chief John Tanner and other top

attorneys have been reaching out to civil rights groups -- particularly

Latinos -- with appearances to tout the Section's record since Tanner became

chief in mid-2005. Their message, which will no doubt be repeated before the

House Judiciary Committee next week, is under Tanner the Section has doubled

the lawsuits filed -- most notably to enforce laws concerning bilingual

election materials and assistance for Hispanic and Asian voters.

It was during an appearance at the National Latino Congresso in Los Angeles

in early October where Tanner, after being challenged by voting rights

activists such as Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com, said minority voters are

less likely to be impacted than senior citizens by voter I.D. laws because

they tend to have shorter life spans. That remark prompted Sen. Obama to

call for Tanner's ouster on Friday.

"Such comments are patently erroneous, offensive, and dangerous and they are

especially troubling coming from the federal official charged with

protecting voting rights," Obama said in a letter to Acting Attorney General

Peter Keisler.

"John Tanner ... is a dedicated career civil servant who has worked for

decades to protect voting rights," said Justice Department Spokesman Brian

Roehrkasse, responding to Sen. Obama on Friday. "Under Mr. Tanner's

leadership, the Voting Section has doubled its production in lawsuits, from

an average of eight new cases a year to 16 new cases. It has brought over

twice as many lawsuits under the minority language provisions of the Voting

Rights Act in five years as in the previous 32 years combined... including

the first cases in history on behalf of Filipino, Vietnamese and Korean

voters."

This past Thursday -- a day before Obama's letter became public -- Tanner

and a Voting Section associate spoke at the University of California

Berkeley at an event sponsored by Center for Latino Policy Research and the

Election Administration Research Center. He spoke of his background fighting

for the rights of African-Americans in Alabama in the 1960s and touted the

Voting Section's current record on minority language lawsuits -- especially

on behalf of Latino voters.

"There is nothing in the world that is better than making an election

process open and fair to more people," Tanner said, ending an hour-long talk

where he encouraged students and others to pursue careers in election

administration and voting rights law. Tanner outlined his agency's historic

mission, saying "the current focus has changed once again, and it is much

more focused on the treatment of voters on Election Day." He said the

Section has worked on behalf of Native Americans, citing a 1993 suit that

was amended in January.

"We are in the midst of the most vigorous minority language enforcement

program in the history of the Voting Rights Act," Susana Lorenzo-Giguere,

said Voting Section Acting Deputy Chief. During the past five years, the

Section has brought 26 such suits on behalf of Latino voters, she said,

compared to a total of three suits in the previous 25 years.

But civil rights attorneys -- especially those who work with Latino

voters -- are troubled by the Voting Section's record on enforcing minority

rights, including those populations helped by the Department's lawsuits to

provide bilingual materials and assistance.

The administration has placed tremendous resources into enforcing the

minority language requirements of law, these attorneys say, especially as it

affects Hispanic and Asian voters. While those actions are important and

have been shown in recent academic studies to increase Latino registration

by 17 percent and voter turnout by 10-to-14 percent, these attorneys say

language barriers are not the most significant election problem facing their

communities.

Moreover, when the minority language suits are contrasted with the

Administration's sparse record of suing on behalf of African-American and

Native-American voters, it looks like the Voting Section is selectively

enforcing laws with partisan overtones -- because Latinos are seen as a

constituency that increasingly is voting for the GOP.

In 2000, the nation's six million Latino voters were mostly concentrated in

California, Texas and other Southwestern states and split their presidential

votes between Al Gore and George W. Bush. In 2004, those numbers had grown

and President Bush received more Latino votes than any previous Republican

presidential candidate. GOP political strategists hailed that shift as a

major achievement. Meanwhile, the number of elected Latino officials has

grown during the past decade, including in states like Illinois and New

Jersey where African-Americans have long held office. Latinos now comprise 5

percent or more of the electorate in 30 states, and various surveys have

found that the constituency is split between Democratic and Republican

leanings.

"Not all Latino voters are limited English proficient," said Nina Perales,

Southwest Regional Counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and

Education Fund, where she directs MALDEF's litigation in Texas, New Mexico,

Colorado and six other western and southern states. "That is not the whole

story for Latino voters."

"Perhaps they see a greater political advantage to these cases," she said,

"or they would rather do this than challenge election structures in Section

2 dilution litigation."

Perales is referring to part of the Voting Rights Act prohibiting election

practices that discriminate against minorities. She says there are many

counties and cities where an expanding Latino electorate has been blocked

from electing candidates or achieving majorities because of discriminatory

election practices. Those include voting district boundaries that have been

redrawn to lessen the impact of Latino voters, or at-large elections that

stop minorities from achieving political majorities. The Department of

Justice has not filed suits in those instances, Perales said, despite

authority to do so.

Moreover, the Voting Section recently has supported harsh voter I.D. laws --

such as in Arizona where registrants must provide proof of citizenship --

that have disqualified tens of thousands of new voters before casting their

first ballot. "That's a lot of people who spent time to fill out a voter

registration form," she said.

Other experts on Latino voting issues said it was ironic that the Justice

Department would be touting its record on enfranchising these voters.

"Despite a very few examples, the Department of Justice has not taken Latino

voting rights very seriously," said Matt A. Barreto, an Assistant Professor

of Political Science at the University of Washington who writes and teaches

on the Voting Rights Act and Latino politics. "The creation of

majority-Latino districts have been repeatedly thwarted, racially polarized

voting against Latino candidates continues, and Section 203 [lawsuits]

related to bilingual materials is not evenly enforced throughout the

country."

Barreto said that after the 2000 census, when congressional district

boundaries were redrawn, state legislatures could have created "at least

five additional seats in the U.S. House that would have been

majority-Latino, however the DOJ repeatedly declined to get involved." More

recently, in Washington, he said, "we have over a dozen cities in central or

east Washington that are 50-60-70 percent Latino, and they have zero Latinos

on the city council ... The DOJ has declined to get involved in any of these

cases."

When Tanner testifies before the House Judiciary Committee next week, voting

rights attorneys hope the committee will look at the big picture concerning

the Voting Section's record during the Bush Administration's second term.

"People are wondering why aren't you bring cases with voting and

African-Americans -- what is the issue," said Julie Fernandes of the

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "How can it be that the biggest case

involving discrimination in Mississippi [united States v. Ike Brown and

Noxubee County] was brought on behalf of white voters ... The law was

written to protect black people."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/65749/

END QUOTE