Wuerker editorial cartoon from Politico.com
It's not going away. Evidence of the link between attempts to weaken laws that protect voters, create new laws that make it harder for some groups to vote, or practice blatant voter suppression tactics and the Bush administration's judicial activities grows stronger every day.
In the
New Yorker Magazine this week, Jane Mayer spotlights Tim Griffin, a Rove protege who was brought in to replace H.E. Higgins as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Mayer reports that
Mark Pryor, a Democratic senator from Arkansas, raised concerns about
newspaper accounts of Griffin's political work, which, he said, has
"been characterized as `caging' African-American votes. This arises
from allegations that Mr. Griffin and others in the R.N.C. were
targeting African-Americans in Florida for voter challenges during the
2004 Presidential campaign."
"Caging" refers to the practice of sending mail to a particular list of voters and then striking those from the list whose mail is returned with "addressee unknown." The problem is that many voter lists are not updated and include old addresses. The same thing would happen if you were to send the mailing to any group of voters. It is extremely distressing to think that someone who learned dirty tricks like caging under Rove's tutelage was appointed a U.S. Attorney.
The second document I'd like to draw attention to is the
testimony of Joseph Rich at yesterday's hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Joe Rich now works for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, but prior to this he worked for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division for almost 37 years. From 1999 to 2005, he was Chief of the Division's Voting Section. Here is an excerpt from his riveting testimony:
Most disturbing has been the brazen insertion of partisan politics into the decision-making under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 decisions in the Mississippi and Texas redistricting matters in 2002 and 2003 and the Georgia voter ID matter in 2005 were made for clear partisan political reasons over the strong recommendations of career staff.
This is not really news -- Congress has been aware of it for a number of years. But now that it's out in the open and the electorate is getting mad, let's hope something is done. This behavior undermines our entire system of government.
