AG John Ashcroft pushed out the apolitical and involved federal prosecutors in election supervision

[seafan]

Poll Position

Is the Justice Department poised to stop voter fraud-or to keep voters from voting?


By Jeffrey Toobin
September 20, 2004

.....

It is a vacuum that the Justice Department, under John Ashcroft, has moved quickly to fill. As 2007 approaches and liberal activists cautiously explore their options (re: renewal of 1965 Voting Rights Act), conservatives—including those in the Justice Department—are using the traditional language of voting rights to recast the issues, invariably in ways that help Republican candidates. The results of this quiet rightward revolution within the Justice Department may be apparent as soon as the November (2004) election.


On October 8, 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft stood before an invited audience in the Great Hall of the Justice Department to outline his vision of voting rights, .... to launch the Voting Access and Integrity Initiative, whose name refers to the two main traditions in voting-rights law. Voter-access efforts, which have long been associated with Democrats, seek to remove barriers that discourage poor and minority voters; the Voting Rights Act itself is the paradigmatic voter-access policy. The voting-integrity movement, which has traditionally been favored by Republicans, targets fraud in the voting process, from voter registration to voting and ballot counting. Despite the title, Ashcroft’s proposal favored the “integrity” side of the ledger, mainly by assigning a federal prosecutor to watch for election crimes in each judicial district. These lawyers, Ashcroft said, would “deter and detect discrimination, prevent electoral corruption, and bring violators to justice.”


Federal law gives the Justice Department the flexibility to focus on either voter access or voting integrity under the broad heading of voting rights, but such shifts of emphasis may have a profound impact on how votes are cast and counted. In the abstract, no one questions the goal of eliminating voting fraud, but the idea of involving federal prosecutors in election supervision troubles many civil-rights advocates, because few assistant United States attorneys have much familiarity with the laws protecting voter access. That has traditionally been the province of the lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, whose role is defined by the Voting Rights Act. In a subtle way, the Ashcroft initiative nudged some of these career civil-rights lawyers toward the sidelines.

.....


The person in over-all charge of the Administration’s voting-rights portfolio is R. Alexander Acosta, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. On May 4th (2004), Acosta invited representatives of many leading traditional civil-rights organizations, such as the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, to the seventh-floor conference room in the Justice Department Building to talk about his plans for the upcoming election. Acosta, who is a thirty-five-year-old Cuban-American from Miami, served first as a top political appointee in the Civil Rights Division, where he was known for his close attention to the rights of Spanish-speaking minorities.
The May 4th meeting addressed issues that related more to the traditional voting-rights concerns of African-Americans than to those of Latinos. Acosta opened the session with an unusual request: that no one take notes on what he had to say. The meeting was a courtesy, he said, but he didn’t want to have his exact words thrown back at him later. (Acosta has declined repeated requests to be interviewed.) According to several people present at the meeting, Acosta described how Voting Section lawyers will monitor ballot access at the polls while federal prosecutors will be on call to respond to allegations of fraud. He informed the group that ninety-three federal prosecutors would travel to Washington in July for a two-day training session, and that they would all be on duty on Election Day. Acosta said that the changes were being made in good faith and asked those assembled to keep an open mind.

The idea of placing prosecutors on call on Election Day created misgivings both inside and outside the Voting Section. “A lot of assistant U.S. attorneys are going to be more interested in voting integrity than in voter protection,” Jon Greenbaum, a lawyer who recently left the Voting Section, after nearly seven years, to join the progressive Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told me.

.....


Hans A. von Spakovsky, a counsel to Acosta and the main Justice Department interpreter of hava, ..... During the thirty-six-day recount in Florida, von Spakovsky worked there as a volunteer for the Bush campaign. After the Inauguration, he was hired as an attorney in the Voting Section and was soon promoted to be counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, in what is known as the “front office” of the Civil Rights Division. In that position, von Spakovsky, who is forty-five years old, has become an important voice in the Voting Section. (Von Spakovsky, citing Justice Department policy, has also declined repeated requests to be interviewed.)

.....

And on November 9, 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft resigned, after unprecedented politicizing of the United States Justice Department in favor of one political party that never again intended to be out of power.

[librechik]

1. isn't that a lot like "caging?"

"Acosta described how Voting Section lawyers will monitor ballot access at the polls while federal prosecutors will be on call to respond to allegations of fraud. He informed the group that ninety-three federal prosecutors would travel to Washington in July for a two-day training session, and that they would all be on duty on Election Day. Acosta said that the changes were being made in good faith and asked those assembled to keep an open mind. "

[seafan]

2. Ashcroft also changed the method of hiring lawyers at the DOJ

From the Toobin piece:

(United States Commission on Civil Rights member Christopher) Edley recognizes that control of the Justice Department may matter as much as the precise words of the laws on the books. “Obviously, the effectiveness of it is going to be greatly diminished if enforcement takes on a pronounced ideological tilt,” he says.


Under Ashcroft, the Justice Department has also changed its method of hiring lawyers, who are supposed to be apolitical, and often go on to spend their careers working for the government. The department, which employs close to four thousand attorneys, hires junior-level lawyers through a program known as the Attorney General’s Honors Program, which brings in about a hundred and fifty new lawyers each year. In the past, the program was run by mid-level career officials, who were known for their political independence. Since 2002, the Honors Program has been run by political appointees. “It’s called the Attorney General’s Honors Program, and when Attorney General Ashcroft signed the first batch of appointments he said, ‘I’m the Attorney General. How come I don’t know anything about this?’ ” Mark Corallo, Ashcroft’s spokesman, says. “He said he wanted the top people in the department getting involved. He said he wanted greater outreach, different law schools approached, reaching out not just for racial minorities but for economic minorities as well.” Corallo dismisses complaints about the changes as coming from malcontents. “A bunch of mid-level people here had their boondoggle taken away from them, going on these recruiting trips for weeks at a time, wining and dining at great hotels on the government’s dime,” he said.


Lawyers inside and outside the department say that the change in the Honors Program has already had an effect, especially in politically sensitive places like the Voting Section. “The front office disbanded the hiring committee and took over all hiring,” one lawyer who recently left the Voting Section told me. “That was a huge deal. Under previous Republican Administrations, that hadn’t happened. They even took it over for summer volunteer clerks.” Thanks to these changes, some in the department believe, it’s only a matter of time before tensions in the Voting Section disappear. As a current employee puts it, “Soon, there won’t be any difference between the career people and the political people. The front office is replicating itself. Everyone here will be on the same page.”

[loudsue]

3. A lot of people don't understand what happened in the 2006 election.

I attended the American Association for the Advancement of Science forum entitled "Are We A Democracy Yet?" in February 2007 (in San Francisco -- it was the annual convention of that association).

In that forum, a panel of 5 scientists, from different fields (statistics, mathematics) discussed the probability that the 2006 elections were fraudulent. They concluded that the Dems would have (statistically and mathematically) won +/- 20 more seats if the electronic voting machines hadn't been "programmed" to favor republican candidates, and if the purging of voters and the allotment of voting machines hadn't been deliberately tampered with.

These distinguished scientists had graphs, and probability and statistical studies that showed there was NO WAY that certain districts had the outcomes that they did.

A voter who is inclined to commit fraud, by registering in more than one district, or who votes for someone who is dead or simply an "invented" person, can cause a blip on the screen. But someone who programs the voting machines can switch tens or hundreds of thousands of votes with a simple key stroke.

It's the same with "welfare queens" (supposedly democrats) versus "corporate welfare" (traditionally republican). Welfare queens may steal a couple of million taxpayer dollars across the country. Corporate welfare queens (Halliburton, Blackwater, Lockheed, Bechtel, etc.) can, AND DO, steal TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars.

Of course, NEITHER form of fraud should be allowed, which goes without saying. But the republicans send out the troops to squash an ant, while the real problem is the elephant (snicker ;) ) in the living room. The problem the republicans keep trying to get people to focus on is actually a mole-hill, while the problem the republicans CREATE is a mountain.

:kick::kick::kick: