John Tanner's Erosion Of Voting Rights
John K. Tanner, head of the Voting Rights Section of the
Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, will testify
this morning
before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil
Rights, and Civil Liberties about the erosion
of civil rights and the politicization
of justice that has marked the division during the Bush administration.
Tanner, whose testimony
was originally blocked by the Justice Department, will enter the
hearing room under a cloud of
controversy. Earlier this month, while speaking to National Latino
Congreso in Los Angeles, Tanner infuriated progressives and civil
rights activists by claiming that voter ID laws actually discriminate
against whites because "minorities...die
first." Veteran career attorneys from the voting rights section,
including Tanner's predecessor Joe Rich, disputed Tanner's analysis,
calling it "ludicrous" and "false." Now several members of
Congress, including subcommittee chairman Rep.
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), are calling on
the Justice Department to consider disciplinary action against Tanner,
which could include firing him. Tanner apologized for his comments
recently, saying that his "explanation of
the data came across in a hurtful way," but he refused to recant
his claim that voter ID laws actually discriminate against whites.
During today's hearing, Tanner will be forced to explain himself and
defend his department's diminished
credibility over the past six years.
POLITICS OVER JUSTICE IN OHIO: On
election day 2004, "5,000
to 15,000 frustrated voters" in mostly African-American precincts
were estimated to have been "turned away" from voting centers in Ohio's
Franklin County "without casting ballots" because of lines that lasted
up to seven hours. The main reason for the long lines was a
shortage of voting machines, a phenomenon that
appeared
to heavily benefit President Bush as "27 of the 30
wards with the most machines per registered voter showed
majorities for Bush" while "six of the seven wards with the fewest
machines delivered large margins for Kerry." John Tanner was tasked
with investigating the matter, but conducted it in a manner that
appeared to intentionally "hamper future
lawsuits or investigations concerning the problems" in Ohio. After
concluding that "Franklin County assigned voting machines in a
non-discriminatory manner" and the extended waits at predominantly
African-American polling places were a result of "the tendency...for
black voters to cast ballots in the afternoon (i.e., after work),"
Tanner wrote a
detailed letter to Columbus, OH officials to inform them of his
conclusion. Career voting rights section attorneys told TPM Muckraker
that not only was Tanner's analysis faulty, but such a letter was
an "unprecedented" move that would "poison the well"
for future investigations. "Tanner bent over backwards to rule that
black voters did not have a
right to the same number of machines as white registered voters, and
then went out of his way to make that ruling public," said David
Becker, a former attorney with the section.
APPROVING A 'MODERN DAY POLL TAX': In
2005, a team of Justice Department lawyers and analysts who reviewed
a Georgia voter-identification law recommended rejecting it because it
was likely to discriminate against black voters. Critics of the law
called it "a modern
day poll tax." One of the reasons cited for recommending rejection
of the law was that Georgia state Rep. Sue Burmeister (R), the
sponsor of the bill, appeared to
have racially-tinged motivations, telling the
section staff that "if there are fewer black voters because of this
bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud," and
that "when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote,
they do not go to the polls." But the career attorneys were
overruled by political appointees, including John Tanner, and the law
was approved the next day. A few weeks after the decision was made, the
four attorneys who had argued against the law "were called in
one by one to speak" to Tanner, who subsequently criticized them
for their work on the Georgia ID memo. They were also criticized for
disagreeing with the fresh-out-of-law-school Republican-hired attorney
who worked with them. Instead of meeting with Tanner, the conservative
lawyer, Joshua Rogers, was "called over to main Justice and commended
for his work on the case." The career attorneys' analysis of the law
was vindicated, however, when a federal appeals court judge eventually
issued an injunction against the law, likening
it to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.
THE NEED FOR ACCOUNTABILITY:
Today's hearing
is a first step towards righting the wrongs that have occurred in the
Justice Department's Voting Rights Section under John Tanner, but more
is needed. In written questions to attorney general nominee Michael
Mukasey last week, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) asked Mukasey
to review Tanner's record and to consider whether he should
continue in his position. Kennedy said that
Tanner's remarks -- "minorities don't become elderly the way white
people do" -- "display a shameful lack of understanding and sensitivity
that
is
unacceptable in the person charged with enforcing the nation's
laws
against voting discrimination." Though Mukasey said in his confirmation
hearing "that career attorneys in the Justice Department's Civil Rights
Division will know their
job is to enforce anti-discrimination laws designed to overcome past
injustices," his answers to Kennedy's concerns about Tanner will be
another important factor in considering whether he should
ultimately be confirmed.
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EDUCATION:
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THINK
PROGRESS: Afghan President Hamid Karzai to President Bush: 'roll
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NO COMMENT:
Career prosecutors in the Justice Department opposed pursuing the case
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EDITOR
& PUBLISHER: As he did with Salon's
Glenn Greenwald, Gen. David Petraeus's spokesman also had bizarre,
heated e-mail exchanges with Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell.
EZRA KLEIN:
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani misrepresents the facts in
order to attack
universal health care.
"He's not the type to dis the press."
-- Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, 10/28/07,
on President Bush
VERSUS
"Bush has three enemies: foreign adversaries, the Democrat Congress and
the mainstream media."
-- Washington Examiner's Bill Sammon,
in his new biography of Bush
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