Dismantling Voting Rights Enforcement

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http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2007/20070510_decimating_civil_rights.html

Dismantling Voting Rights Enforcement
A collaborative effort by ePluribus Staff Writers: Publius Revolts, Cho, Standingup, Aaron Barlow & Roxy
11 May 2007

As ePluribus Media recently reported, since the replacement of long-time Voting Rights Section Chief Joseph D. Rich by John K. Tanner (promoted by former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights R. Alexander Acosta) there has been an exodus of unprecedented proportions of experienced voting rights personnel from DoJ's Civil Rights Division. TPM Muckraker's Paul Kiel has referred to this exodus as a purge, and it has stretched from the top to the bottom of the Voting Section's ranks. Acosta has been implicated in the plummeting number of voting rights cases filed to protect the rights of African-Americans. Since then, he has received three interim appointments from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida prior to being confirmed by the Senate. Tanner, however, remains Voting Section chief.

Former Section Chief Rich noted, in testimony before a House Judiciary subcommittee in March of this year, that:

(...) of the five persons in section leadership at the beginning of 2005 (the chief and four deputy chiefs), only one deputy chief remains in the section today.

The most striking feature of the exodus has been the hue of the professional staff members who have left and the hue and political affiliations of the individuals who have replaced them. Since mid-2004, when political appointees began the purge by forcing career staff to downgrade the performance appraisals of employees who did not toe the Bush line, knowledgeable sources tell ePluribus Media, nine of 13 African-American professional staff members (attorneys and analysts) have left __ eight of them on Tanner's watch __ while only one African-American professional staff member has been hired. The Section, which has already come under fire for filing only two lawsuits on behalf of African-American voters during the Bush years (one of which was prepared under the Clinton administration) and filing the first reverse discrimination suit against African-Americans ever filed by the Federal Government under the Voting Rights Act, which had been passed specifically to protect African-American voting rights, does not seem to be any more attuned to the needs of its own African-American staff members than it is to the rights of African-American voters.

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The attorney staff has been similarly dismantled. At least 17 attorneys, nearly half the staff, have departed just since Tanner's elevation to the section chief position in April of 2005, representing over 150 years of civil rights experience, employees who left the Section report. Many of their replacements have been members of the Republican National Lawyers Association or the ultra-conservative Federalist Society. This turnaround in the composition of the Section's staff has coincided with a shift, noted by McClatchy, from traditional voting rights enforcement to litigation aimed at suppressing the minority vote.

Recent news coverage of the Justice Department has focused on the firing of nine U.S. Attorneys, some apparently for refusing to push doubtful allegations of "voter fraud." Those who have witnessed the administration's efforts to utilize the Justice Department to favor Republican candidates firsthand feel that the bigger picture of politicization and internal management problems deserves equal attention. As Toby Moore told us when asked about the purge of career Voting Section staff:

The politicization of the civil rights division and especially the Voting Section has really damaged day-to-day management. Even if you remove the politicization of the decision making you still have internal problems that need to be addressed by (Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights) Wan Kim and others in the Justice Department. Someone needs to take responsibility, hopefully it will be Wan Kim, and investigate the problems and make the management accountable for the mistakes they have made. The people are still suffering and a lot of analysts are working under difficult circumstances.