Lily Tomlin once said about Hollywood, “No matter how cynical you get, you never can keep up.” The same sentiment applies to the Obama administration. Few of its harshest detractors could even imagine the depths to which this government has stooped to remain in power. Very few would have imagined that the President’s administration would encourage lawbreaking to disenfranchise Americans in uniform. Yet, according to two Department of Justice officials, that is now official policy.
The Military Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act was passed last October to ensure that Americans serving abroad would have their votes counted. Specifically, MOVE requires states to send absentee ballots to citizens serving overseas 45 days before any election. But according to Eric Eversole and J. Christian Adams, two former attorneys for the DOJ’s voting section, Eric Holder’s justice officials are going to great lengths to subvert this law and prevent members of the American military from voting.
Rebecca Wertz, deputy chief of DOJ’s voting section, has met with various state attorneys general to let them know that litigation against states that violate MOVE regulations would be a “last resort” and to suggest that states take advantage of ambiguous language in the MOVE act that allows “waivers” for requirements that produce “undue hardship.” Basically, the DOJ is encouraging states to seek loopholes in the MOVE act and promising not to investigate states that avail themselves of such loopholes.
Additionally, the DOJ web site does not mention the MOVE act, and in fact refers to the previous regulation, now superceded, of a non-binding recommendation to send out absentee ballots a month in advance. This can only be a deliberate attempt to further subvert the new law.
Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice is very selective about the laws it enforces. It does not prosecute New Black Panthers for voter intimidation. And now it encourages states to prevent their citizens serving in the military from voting.
There is only one reason for the DOJ to follow this course. The Obama administration knows it cannot retain its grip on power if a free election is held in November. Only by manipulating the outcome, suppressing the votes of some Americans, and subverting the law do the Democrats have a chance of winning. It is easy to identify the votes Obama and Holder wish to suppress by observing which violators they protect. New Black Panthers brandishing weapons at polling places suppress the white vote. States that avoid, with the endorsement of the Justice Department, the regulations of the MOVE act suppress military voters. Thus, Obama and Holder obviously believe that white voters and military voters are a threat to their power.
Judging from the recent Real Clear Politics average of national polls showing Obama underwater by four points, white voters and military voters aren’t the only ones disenchanted with the Commander in Chief. All citizens must not only assert their right to vote, but protect the rights of those the government seeks to intimidate or suppress. No group deserves this protection more than the men and women who fight and die to give us those rights in the first place.
