Lawless Administration: Voter Registration Legitimacy and the Department of Justice

Georgia is still covered under the outdated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires the state to submit any "change" in voting to the Justice Department for preclearance to assure it is not "discriminatory." On May 29, the department vetoed the state's verification program based on the spurious claim that it would have a "disparate" impact on minority voters -- particularly Asians and Hispanics, who are supposedly "twice as likely to appear on the list" of potential noncitizens than whites. Never mind that only 35% of Hispanics and 58% of Asians in Georgia are citizens. Or that not one eligible individual has come forward to claim this program prevented him from voting in the November election...Justice's objection defies common sense, manipulates federal law, and shows a complete disregard for the integrity of our election process...But that's apparently too much for the current administration, which is trying to stop verification of voter registration information...All of these decisions seriously undermine confidence in the rule of law and our election process....On ballot integrity, the Justice Department is taking us backward, Hans A. Von Spakovsky, Wall Street Journal, 6/9/2009

You should read all of this on the Wall Street Journal's site. It is clear that the present administration's Department of Justice is contemptuous of the law, the electorate, and the constitution. At some point, should Congress begin to doubt the wisdom of rubber-stamping this administration's behavior, "contemptuous" may be changed to “crimes and misdemeanors.”

Luther