Free Republic

The Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Board of Elections today can stare down the increasingly rogue voting rights section of the U.S. Department of Justice, which continues to play ethnic politics nationwide. The state of Georgia recently forced the department to back off from its bullying tactics, and this Buckeye county should do the same. Justice officials have threatened legal action against the county board unless it prints all its ballots in bilingual fashion. "With additional requirements for translators, community outreach, additional staffing and printing, the demand potentially would double the county's election costs," board member Rob Frost told Jennifer Rubin of...

The Justice Department should file suit this week against dozens of states that appear not to be in compliance with a 2009 law to ensure voting rights for military personnel stationed abroad. Failure to file suit will expose the Obama administration's lack of commitment to military voting. On Friday, after consultation with Justice, the Department of Defense granted waivers exempting five states from the law's requirement that absentee ballots be mailed to personnel abroad at least 45 days before the Nov. 2 election. Waivers may be granted only if a state can explain how it can absolutely guarantee the timely...

Protecting the rights of active duty military to have their vote counted is apparently not a priority for this administration. In Washington, politicians always like to release bad news on a Friday, as fewer people notice. Today, the Pentagon announced that it had granted the waiver requests of five states seeking to escape requirements to protect military voters. I have written previously here at PJM that all waiver requests should be denied. Unfortunately, if you are an overseas servicemember from Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, or Washington, the protections in the MOVE Act aren’t going to apply to you...

Sens. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Michael Bennet of Colorado are just two incumbents locked in tight re-election races in states where local officials have warned they will likely not be able to ship out general election ballots to overseas military voters by the Sept. 18 deadline. Both Democrats' race are listed as "toss-ups" by RealClearPolitics.com, and military ballots could make the difference. But Wisconsin and Colorado are among 10 states where local officials say they may not be able to comply with Move Act provisions that call for ballots to be mailed out at least 45 days before the...

Twelve states want waivers from having to send ballots to overseas military on time. Call the Pentagon and the DOJ today, and demand they say no. Decisions by Washington bureaucrats over the next four weeks will have a profound impact on the upcoming November elections. These bureaucrats will decide whether or not those serving in the military from twelve states will have a full and effective opportunity to participate. If they choose to do anything other than aggressively enforce federal laws protecting military voters, many of those serving our nation won’t have a voice.Every American can do something about it.As...

Military voting rights still aren't protected. That's the message from former Justice Department official M. Eric Eversole, who argues in a column at the front of this section that his former employer is undermining the new law requiring states to mail ballots to military voters at least 45 days before the November elections. If anything, the situation might be even worse than Mr. Eversole suggests. The Obama administration refuses to release the waiver requests filed by a dozen states and territories claiming an inability to meet the legal deadline. Mr. Eversole and 17 members of Congress led by Rep. Robert...

The Department of Justice denied accusations by former voting section attorneys who say states are being encouraged to use waivers to bypass the new federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. The accusations prompted Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to write a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, dated July 26, demanding answers and requesting specific information about how the agency was going to enforce the MOVE Act provision that requires states to send military and overseas voters absentee ballots 45 days prior to elections. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich responded with a letter dated July 30. "The Department of...

Obama Justice Department outrages never cease. The politically charged gang led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is more interested in helping felons vote than in helping the military to vote. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, has put a legislative hold on the already troubled nomination of James M. Cole to be deputy attorney general until the attorney general ensures full protection for voting rights of our military (and associated civilian personnel) stationed abroad. The senator is right to raise a ruckus. Mr. Cornyn co-authored a 2009 law mandating that states mail absentee ballots to military voters at least...

The Department of Justice is ignoring a new law aimed at protecting the right of American soldiers to vote, according to two former DOJ attorneys who say states are being encouraged to use waivers to bypass the new federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. The MOVE Act, enacted last October, ensures that servicemen and women serving overseas have ample time to get in their absentee ballots. The result of the DOJ's alleged inaction in enforcing the act, say Eric Eversole and J. Christian Adams — both former litigation attorneys for the DOJ’s Voting Section — could be that...

About four brigades' worth of American military personnel lost the right to have their votes count in the 2008 elections. It now appears that the Justice Department is willing to allow many of the same 17,000 Americans fighting for us overseas to be disenfranchised once again in November. Congress and the Defense Department need to step in to ensure this doesn't happen. Military Voter Protection Project Director M. Eric Eversole accused his former employer, the Justice Department's Voting Section, of encouraging states to use waivers to get around a law Congress passed last year to address the problems with overseas...

A black civil rights leader recently told an assembly at Michigan State University that American democracy was only decades old rather than centuries – that not until the 1965 Voting Rights Act when blacks could vote did democracy truly begin. [1]Such a declaration does not accurately portray the history of black voting in America nor does it honor the thousands of blacks who sacrificed their lives obtaining the right to vote and who exercised that right as long as two centuries ago. In fact, most today are completely unaware that it was not Democrats but was actually Republicans – like...

Whistleblower J. Christian Adams says the DOJ has a mandate not to enforce the law that ineligible voters must be taken off registration rolls. VIDEO

Civil Rights: The Justice Department explains that it dropped a Black Panther voter-intimidation case because of lack of evidence. Pay no attention to the thugs outside the polling place. Yet another reason Eric Holder must go. On Election Day 2008, New Black Panther Party members King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Sha-bazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint with civil violations by "allegedly" violating the Voting Rights Act through intimidation, threats and coercion as they stood outside a Philadelphia polling place. It was what Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the left-wing Village Voice,...

On Monday April 19th, DC residents seeking a vote in Congress were on the verge of achieving what they had worked for over 50 years to accomplish. Both houses of Congress were willing to grant DC a voting seat in Congress. The catch? In order to get the voting seat, they had to accept an easing of DC’s draconian gun laws.

According to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., research organization, nearly half of U.S. households will pay no federal income taxes for 2009. That's up from the Tax Foundation's 2006 estimate that 41% of the American population, or 121 million Americans, were completely outside the federal income tax system. These Americans pay no federal income tax either because their incomes are too low or they have higher income but credits, deductions and exemptions that relieve them of tax liability. This lack of income tax liability stands in stark contrast to the top 10% of earners, those households earning an...

Obama pushes D.C. voting rights bill ASSOCIATED PRESSWASHINGTON | President Barack Obama urged lawmakers Friday to give the District of Columbia a voting member of Congress. A bill to give the city just that is expected to be brought for a vote in the House next week. Many advocates for D.C. voting rights believe this year could be their last opportunity in a long time if Democrats lose their majority in Congress in the fall. Obama made the push in a statement in honor of Emancipation Day, a D.C. holiday commemorating President Abraham Lincoln's freeing of the slaves in Washington,...

The more the Obama administration fights the subpoenas from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and denies congressmen’s requests for answers concerning the inexplicable dismissal of the voter-intimidation case in Philadelphia against the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), the more reasonable people wonder what the administration has to hide. And so it is appropriate now to ask: What did the White House know and when did it know it? Perhaps the single most important question that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the White House are refusing to answer in the growing scandal (for the stonewalling and subpoena violations make...

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A federal judge imposed an unusual election system on a suburban village Friday, nearly two years after finding that the existing system was unfair to Hispanics. The village, Port Chester, is run by a mayor and six trustees. Under the new system, called cumulative voting, residents will be allowed to cast as many as six votes for one trustee candidate. No Hispanic had ever been elected trustee or mayor in the village 25 miles northeast of New York City, although the population of 28,000 is about half Hispanic. The ruling is likely to mean that the...

The "straw-dog" that comes out of the liberal circles is that asking people if they are in the US Legally during the census is a horrible act of racism. In actuality it is simply an attempt to guarantee all US Citizens the right to equal representation in congress and equal access to congressional funds and programs. As set up by the constitution, the purpose of the US Census is to determine the amount of congressional representatives each state receives Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their...

Despite the fact that there have not been any complaints, the Justice Department (DOJ) will be monitoring today’s municipal elections in – are you ready for this - Springfield, Mass., and Newburgh, N.Y., to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act. Forget about reams of evidence of voting rights violations in Philadelphia, no Eric Holder's Justice Department would rather spend the taxpayers' money investigating a place where there is no problem. According to the DOJ press statement, federal observers will be assigned to monitor polling place activities in Springfield and Newburgh. The observers will ....