HOUSTON, TX. -- True the Vote (TTV), the nation's leading voters’ rights and election integrity organization, today issued a statement following the announcement of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s eventual resignation from the Department of Justice.
"It is our hope that Mr. Holder's announcement marks an end to the radical, racialist assault on voters' rights across America," True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said. “Mr. Holder's legacy of selective law enforcement for partisan gain has cost taxpayers millions of dollars and galvanized citizen demand for improved election integrity protections.
“Our Republic is at a crossroads,” Engelbrecht continued. “We can promote leadership that embraces smart voting policies designed to encourage voter confidence and participation, or, we can continue to be bullied by radical activists whose primary interest is the perpetuation of their own power. The process by which citizens select representation is directly tied to the efficacy of the public policymaking process. Radical interpretations and approaches to law enforcement breed distrust and disengagement for the individual voter. When selecting General Holder’s successor, True the Vote hopes the incumbent Administration will listen to the American people, promote equal rights for all voters, and in so doing change the current course of operation in the Department of Justice.”
Background
Shortly after President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, the DOJ dropped pending litigation to clean Missouri’s voter rolls and announced a freeze on enforcing federal voter roll maintenance law. “[A] new political appointee with supervisory authority over the Voting Section told the author, who was working in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the time, and other staff lawyers that the new Administration had ‘no interest’ in enforcing the list maintenance requirements of Section 8 [of the National Voter Registration Act] because it supposedly created a ‘barrier to the ballot box’.” (The Heritage Foundation, September 25, 2014)
South Carolina prevailed over the Holder Justice Department in seeking to enforce a photo voter identification requirement in 2012. “[A] three-member federal panel ruled Wednesday that the law’s ‘expansive ‘reasonable impediment’ provision’ made it unlikely that any voters lacking a photo ID would be turned away at the polls. Those voters still can vote ‘so long as they state the reason for not having obtained’ a photo ID, the ruling noted.” (The State, October 10, 2012)
The Holder DOJ was rejected when seeking to block North Carolina’s election reforms to include voter ID, early voting period adjustments and terminating a troubled same-day voter registration program ahead of the 2014 Election. “As Judge Schroeder pointed out, the plaintiffs’ ‘historical evidence in these cases focuses largely on racial discrimination that occurred between a quarter of a century to over a century ago. However, as the Supreme Court recently stated, ‘history did not end in 1965’ when the Voting Rights Act was passed…Schroeder cited the testimony of DOJ’s own experts against it. This included one expert who admitted that black turnout in North Carolina is on par with that of whites, and another DOJ expert who acknowledged that the black registration rate is higher than that of whites’.” (National Review Online, August 11, 2014)
The Holder DOJ failed to block Wisconsin’s voter ID law ahead of the 2014 Election. “In their order, the [7th Circuit Court of Appeals] described Wisconsin’s requirement as ‘materially identical’ to a statute in Indiana, which was upheld in 2008 by the Supreme Court. The panel also noted that Wisconsin had introduced new procedures to make it easier to obtain photo identification cards, reducing concerns raised months ago by a federal court judge who had blocked Wisconsin’s law, saying that it disproportionately affected blacks and Latinos.” (The New York Times, September 12, 2014)
True the Vote (TTV) is an IRS-designated 501(c)(3) voters’ rights organization, founded to inspire and equip voters for involvement at every stage of our electoral process. TTV empowers organizations and individuals across the nation to actively protect the rights of legitimate voters, regardless of their political party affiliation. For more information, please visit www.truethevote.org.
