Conyers: Why Did DoJer Justify Bad Ohio Vote?

[babylonsister]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004452.php

Conyers Has More Questions For DOJ's Tanner
By David Kurtz - October 12, 2007, 5:54PM

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has issued a statement in in response to Paul Kiel's reporting earlier today on the unprecedented written public assurance that DOJ voting rights chief John Tanner gave to election officials in Ohio that the Justice Department had found no evidence of intentional African-American voter disenfranchisement in the 2004 election.

As Paul reported, Tanner wrote a June 2005 letter to election officials in Columbus, Ohio, offering a lengthy explanation for why the Department had not discovered sufficient evidence of discrimination, the effect of which was to "poison the well" for future litigation or investigation of the alleged election improprieties.

In his statement, Conyers says:

"I am concerned about the extreme lengths Mr. Tanner went to in order to justify the reasons African-Americans were not treated equally in the 2004 Ohio election. The committee needs to consider this matter. I am aware of no precedent for the Department acting in this capacity in the past.

Tanner has been asked to testify before Conyers' committee, though no date for his testimony has been set.

The full text of Conyers' statement appears below the fold:

Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) released a statement in response to news reports that Department of Justice (DOJ) Voting Section Chief John Tanner's investigation of the 2004 election in Ohio concluded that long lines and late voting precincts were due to the fact that white voters tend to cast ballots in the morning (i.e., before work) and black voters cast ballots in the afternoon (i.e., after work). The news report appeared online at the popular blog, TPMmuckraker.com.

"I am concerned about the extreme lengths Mr. Tanner went to in order to justify the reasons African-Americans were not treated equally in the 2004 Ohio election. The committee neds to consider this matter. I am aware of no precedent for the Department acting in this capacity in the past.

"The Department of Justice – since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – has a responsibility to thoroughly investigate allegations of voter suppression and discrimination, like those made in Ohio in 2004. I look forward to hearing more from Mr. Tanner in our committee later this month as he testifies about his work as chief of the voting section. The 2004 election exposed serious deficiencies in this section's failure to adequately investigate and prosecute voter suppression efforts nationwide and I hope he is prepared to address this issue head on."

Conyers issued a comprehensive report on voting discrepancies in Ohio in 2004, titled, What Went Wrong in Ohio, and found huge racial disparities in how voting machines were distributed in white and black precincts, among other findings. Tanner, in contrast, in a 2005 letter detailing his findings, says he found no discrepancies in the number of voting machines and attributed the long lines to the tendency of African-American voters to vote after work, as opposed to in the morning hours.

The full story is available at: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004438.php.

[mod mom]

1. OH PLEASE let Chairman Conyers finally address this injustice! Thanks Babylonsister

Conyers attention to this makes my weekend.

[babylonsister]

2. Conyers is going after Tanner, as he should. Have a GREAT weekend!

:toast:

[mod mom]

3. Franklin Co OH BOE Election 2004: A Report to the Community

JUST UP-HAVEN'T HAD TIME TO LOOK IT OVER:
Franklin Co Ohio


ELECTION 2004:
A Report to the Community

http://centralohiovoters.home.att.net/elect2004.htm#1.0%20VOTING%20MACHINE%20ALLOCATION

[mod mom]

4. already found an ERROR:

From the Franklin co BOE:

ERROR! On page 17 of POST ELECTION VOTING MACHINE ASSIGNMENT EVALUATION, which I received from Chris XXXXXX in November 2004, shows only 2798 Machines were placed by the close of the polls.

[L. Coyote]

6. How did voter purging interplay with machine allocations?

Was there any impact on allocation from stripping voters off the rolls in a selective manner?
Were any precincts stripped of voters to reduce the machine number? That part is left out!

From the report:
=================
1.3 Voting Machine Allocation Formula

When determining voting machine allocation, the Franklin County Board of Elections considers the number of active voters per precinct as the primary measure, and supplements this data with precinct registration change, past turnout, and the relative political interest in candidates and issues on the ballot for the Election in question within any given precinct. These are both objective and subjective measures making allocation decisions a little bit of math and a little bit of art.

For Election 2004, Board staff began its voting machine assignment process in July in order to prepare for the programming, printing, and set-up processes that began in late August. To begin with, the Board allocates a minimum of two machines to each precinct, regardless of any indicator. Starting with two machines per precinct as the baseline, or 1,576 machines, staff began allocating the remaining 1,165 initially available machines based upon active voters and the other indicators. Because the number of voting machines available for use was fixed, staff had to continually increase the threshold of active registered voters required for adding a machine, until all of the 2,741 initially available machines were allocated.

Accusations have been made that partisanship or bigotry played a role in voting machine allocation. This is untrue and baseless. However, the Board recognizes that with the partially subjective nature of the allocation decision it opens itself to potential criticism and skepticism.

[L. Coyote]

5. From the Conyers Report = "...intentional misconduct and illegal behavior..."

From the Conyers Report: "... we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior...."

"... it is imperative that we examine any and all factors that may have led to
voting irregularities and any failure of votes to be properly counted."

Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio
Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff, Jan. 2005.

http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohiostatusrept1505.pdf

[Truth2Tell]

7. This deserves a K & R. n/t

[L. Coyote]

14. Ditto that. K&R

[L. Coyote]

8. TPM: Bush's Legacy on Voting Rights: A Story from Ohio

Bush's Legacy on Voting Rights: A Story from Ohio
By Paul Kiel - Oct 12, 2007
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004438.php


In June of 2005, John Tanner, the chief of the voting rights section, wrote Columbus, Ohio's election officials to publicly assure them that the Justice Department had found no evidence of intentional African-American voter disenfranchisement in the 2004 election.

Not only was that an unprecedented move, former Department lawyers say, but the letter is another, and particularly galling, example of Tanner using the force of the Department to further Republican aims -- in this case, to hamper future lawsuits or investigations concerning the problems in Columbus.

"It really looked like the Civil Rights Division was used to run interference for Republican election officials in Ohio," former voting rights section deputy chief Bob Kengle told me.

At issue was the experience of thousands of voters in Franklin County .......

[L. Coyote]

10. Straight-Talkin' Voting Rights Chief to Appear before House Panel

Straight-Talkin' Voting Rights Chief to Appear before House Panel
By Paul Kiel - Oct 11, 2007
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004437.php


Fresh off his candid appearance (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004414.php) at a California panel on minority voter disenfranchisement last week, Voting Rights Section chief John Tanner will get to air his views to Congress.

After initially rebuffing a request for Tanner to appear, the Justice Department has agreed to send him along for a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. .....

There will be plenty to ask Tanner about, and not only his view that voter ID laws don't significantly hurt minorities because "they die first." The focus of the hearing is likely to be his role in forcing through an approval of a controversial, and ultimately halted, Georgia ID law in 2005 over the objections of the career lawyers and analysts on his staff. (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002989.php)

......

[babylonsister]

13. You are great, L. Coyote! Thanks for combining all this info!

:hi: :thumbsup:

[deacon]

9. This needs a recommend n/t

[L. Coyote]

11. The CONSPIRACY includes ACVR's OHIO Report, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH, Prisoner No. 28882-016)

FROM: ACVR's OHIO Report, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH, Prisoner No. 28882-016), & Jive F. Turkey, Sr.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1159656#1163192

OHIO ELECTION ACTIVITIES AND OBSERVATIONS
Report to the United States House of Representatives
Committee on House Administration, Representative Robert W. Ney, Chairman
Submitted by The American Center for Voting Rights, March 21, 2005
http://web.archive.org/web/20060209215847/www.ac4vr.com/reports/032405/OhioElectionReport.pdf

Contributors (aka Felonious Bob's Jive Turkey List):
Mark F. (Thor) Hearne, II, William M. Todd, Mary C. Mertz, James E. Burke, Patrick F. Fischer, R. Patrick DeWine, Charles H. Gerhardt, III, Drew M. Hicks, Douglas G. Haynam, Mark R. Weaver, Mark Landes, Jeffrey Stankunas, Jack Morrison, Jr., Thomas M. Saxer, Thomas R. Houlihan, Tim A. Greenwood, James P. Silk, Jr.

The American Center for Voting Rights, in association with various law firms and legal
counsel involved in the conduct of the Ohio presidential election, has assembled this report of
events that occurred during the 2004 election. This investigation found the following:

Third party organizations, especially ACT, ACORN, and NAACP engaged in a
coordinated “Get Out The Vote” effort. A significant component of this effort appears to be
registering individuals who would cast ballots for the candidate supported by these
organizations. This voter registration effort was not limited to registration of legal voters but,
criminal investigations and news reports suggest, that this voter registration effort also involved
the registration of thousands of fictional voters such as the, now infamous, Jive F. Turkey, Sr.,
Dick Tracy and Mary Poppins. Those individuals registering these fictional voters were
reportedly paid not just money to do so but were, in at least one instance, paid in crack cocaine.

The fraudulent voter registrations, however, appear to be only part of the effort of these
organizations to influence the election. There was an apparently coordinated national litigation
strategy to manipulate election laws in battleground states and, specifically, to eliminate the
provisions of election law that would prevent vote fraud. ....

[L. Coyote]

12. Fraudulent Fraud Squad, The incredible, disappearing American Center for Voting Rights.

The Fraudulent Fraud Squad, The incredible, disappearing American Center for Voting Rights.
By Richard L. Hasen
Posted Friday, May 18, 2007
http://www.slate.com/id/2166589


Imagine the National Rifle Association's Web site suddenly disappeared, along with all the data and reports the group had ever posted on gun issues. Imagine Planned Parenthood inexplicably closed its doors one day, without comment from its former leaders. The scenarios are unthinkable, given how established these organizations have become. But even if something did happen to the NRA or Planned Parenthood, no doubt other gun or abortion groups would quickly fill the vacuum and push the ideas they'd pushed for years.

Not so for the American Center for Voting Rights, a group that has literally just disappeared as an organization, and for which it seems no replacement group will rise up. With no notice and little comment, ACVR—the only prominent nongovernmental organization claiming that voter fraud is a major problem, a problem warranting strict rules such as voter-ID laws—simply stopped appearing at government panels and conferences. Its Web domain name has suddenly expired, its reports are all gone (except where they have been preserved by its opponents), and its general counsel, Mark "Thor" Hearne, has cleansed his résumé of affiliation with the group. Hearne won't speak to the press about ACVR's demise. No other group has taken up the "voter fraud" mantra.

The death of ACVR says a lot about the Republican strategy of raising voter fraud as a crisis in American elections. Presidential adviser Karl Rove and his allies, who have been ghostbusting illusory dead and fictional voters since the contested 2000 election, apparently mounted a two-pronged attack. One part of that attack, at the heart of the current Justice Department scandals, involved getting the DoJ and various U.S. attorneys in battleground states to vigorously prosecute cases of voter fraud. That prong has failed. After exhaustive effort, the Department of Justice discovered virtually no polling-place voter fraud, and its efforts to fire the U.S. attorneys in battleground states who did not push the voter-fraud line enough has backfired. Even if Attorney General Gonzales declines to resign his position, his reputation has been irreparably damaged., ....

..........