HEARING TOMORROW: Voting Rights Section, Charges of Discrimination Persist = OHIO 2004

[L. Coyote]

"DoJ's John 'Minorities Die First' Tanner to Testify to House Judiciary Sub-Committee Tuesday.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5158

Hearings May Also Focus - Finally - on the Disenfranchisement That Occurred in Ohio During the 2004 Presidential Election Debacle, According to MUST READ TPM Muckraker Report...

===========================
Bush's Legacy on Voting Rights: A Story from Ohio
By Paul Kiel - October 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, Ohio, in the 2004 election. ...........

===========================
In Voting Section, Charges of Discrimination Persist
By Paul Kiel - Oct 29, 2007
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004582.php

When John Tanner, the chief of the Justice Department's voting rights section, goes before Congress tomorrow, he'll have a lot to answer for (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004570.php).

One of the most uncomfortable topics, to be sure, will be continuing charges of discrimination in the section that is supposed to be the font of civil rights enforcement -- charges that point squarely at Tanner himself. Things became so bad that a 33-year veteran analyst sent out an email to colleagues on her last day last December: "I leave with fond memories of the Voting Section I once knew, and I am gladly escaping the 'Plantation' it has become. For my colleagues still under the 'whip', hold on - 'The Times They are A Changing.'"

In an interview (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10191080) with NPR, that analyst, Teresa Lynn, made clear who was holding the whip in that metaphor. It was "aimed toward the leadership of the section," she said, "both the section chief and the deputy chief of section five ." Lynn told NPR that she got "high fives" from her former colleagues for her parting shot.

We first reported (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003205.php) on charges of discrimination ............

===============================
Kennedy Asks Mukasey for Review of Voting Rights Chief
By Paul Kiel - Oct 26, 2007
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004570.php

Last week Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) called (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004507.php) for the Justice Department's voting rights chief John Tanner to be fired. And in written questions to attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey this week, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) asked Mukasey to review Tanner's record and consider whether he ought to be canned.

In the question, Kennedy noted Tanner's reasoning (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004414.php) that voter ID laws actually discriminate against whites ......

=================================
NAACP files Justice Department complaint challenging voter ID law
10/26/2007 - AP -
http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/michigan/index.ssf?/base/news-47/1193396070316160.xml&storylist=newsmichigan

DETROIT (AP) — The Detroit chapter of the NAACP continues to fight a new state law requiring Michigan voters to show identification at the polls.

The civil rights group says the voter ID law wasn't properly implemented because there were no public hearings. The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press report a Justice Department complaint claims the law violates the Voting Rights Act and will decrease minority voting.

State elections officials say voters will have to show photo ID or sign a statement saying they don't have one before they can get a ballot on November 6th.

[L. Coyote]

1. WA POST: And Now We Return to 'Dead Men Suffer No Bias' . . .

And Now We Return to 'Dead Men Suffer No Bias' . . .
By Al Kamen - Oct 12, 2007; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/11/AR2007101102146.html

Back in 2005, when last we checked with John K. Tanner, chief of the voting rights section in the Justice Department's civil rights division, he was rippin' about the leak of a document that showed most of the section's lawyers -- but not Tanner -- thought a Georgia voter-ID law discriminated against black voters.

"Despicable," "clear breach of ethics," "unprofessional" and so forth, he railed in his e-mail -- which was promptly leaked. Anyway, the courts in effect struck down that law as -- whaddaya know? -- discriminatory.

Last week, the Brad Blog posted a video of Tanner's more recent musings on voter-ID laws -- laws needed to combat the endemic and growing problem of illegal voting, apparently by vote-deprived Canadians sneaking across the border.

These laws, Tanner told the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles, do not, in fact, discriminate against minorities.

.............

[nashville_brook]

2. k n r -- big k n r, actually. can't wait to see this!

[Trillo]

3. Thanks.

Through all of this I keep wondering how far back the election fraud goes, historically speaking.

[mod mom]

8. Here's an interesting piece of the '88 bush I win:

In the 1988 Republican primary in New Hampshire, there was no
panel of computer experts who worked for the people and thoroughly
examined the source codes before and after the voting. It is likely that
a notoriously riggable collection of "Shouptronic" computers
"preordained" voting results to give George Bush his "Hail Mary"
victory in New Hampshire.

Nobody save a small group of computer engineers, like John Sununu,
the state's Republican governor, would be the wiser.

If you think back carefully to November 8, 1988, it may strike you
that your belief in who won at the polls was not formed as the result of
openly voiced "ayes" or "nays" in a public forum.
-snip

http://www.constitution.org/vote/votescam01.txt

(I have heard from a former republican campaign attorney that Sununu helped his buddie HW beat out Dole in NH in '88)

[L. Coyote]

10. In Ohio, I suspect it goes back a long ways, and especially with punch cards.

Ohio law required rotating the candidates to the top of the list. So, voting the wrong precinct, OR switching ballots between precincts, alters the vote outcome. This needs to be analyzed statistically for all past Ohio punch card voting. A method, probability sorting, is proposed here:

http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html
The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes

"In a subset of 166,953 votes, one of every 34 Ohio voters, the Kerry-Bush margin
shifts 6.15% when the population is sorted by outcomes of wrong-precinct voting."

[mod mom]

4. Freepress circa 2005: "An Open Letter to John Tanner, Chief Voting Section, DoJ":

An Open Letter to John Tanner, Chief, Voting Section, U.S. Department of Justice
July 2, 2005

An Open Letter to John Tanner, Chief, Voting Section, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Section in response to his June 29, 2005 letter to Nick A. Soulas, Jr., Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, Civil Division, Franklin County:

Dear Mr. Tanner:

I was curious to find that you had “conducted an investigation into the November 2, 2004 general election in Franklin County, prompted by allegations that Franklin County systematically assigned fewer voting machines in polling places serving predominantly black communities as compared to its assignment of machines in predominantly white communities.”

Let me begin by suggesting the word “contrasted” would be more appropriate than “compared.” Indeed, the difference is literally black and white.

You praise the bipartisan nature of the Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE). But you fail to mention that the Director, Matt Damschroder, is the former Chair of the Franklin County Republican Party, and that J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio’s Secretary of State and the Co-Chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-election Committee appoints all board members as well as officers, and they serve at his pleasure. Blackwell’s actions throughout the election year were openly partisan and obviously unethical.

For example, I was at a meeting prior to the election where Mr. Damschroder informed a delegation of esteemed international election observers that he would have them arrested based on the orders of Blackwell if they crossed the 100-foot line outside the polls to observe closer to the voting site. Is that what you mean by “the spirit of cooperation?”

-snip
http://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2005/1158

[L. Coyote]

11. ALSO, Damschroder, Franklin County Republican Chair and BOE chair purged voters and

it would be easy to alter the voting machine distribution by first altering the number of voters in some precincts. First, create the formula, and then you know how many to purge to delete a machine and still conform to the formula.

[mod mom]

5. Charges of Discrimination Persist (from TPM Muck) here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=485122&mesg_id=485122

[bleever]

6. K&R.

:thumbsup:

[CitizenLeft]

7. FINALLY

And while this is finally getting some attention, what's forgotten are the long looooong lines and shortages of voting machines in the black precints of Cuyahoga County (Cleveland). At the time, it was well-documented, but ignored because it didn't get TV exposure like in Columbus. Another big difference: the voters in Cleveland were not students, and could not possibly stand in line for 10 hours, they had children to pick up, families to feed. But it was just as bad in Cleveland. I hope that gets attention.

[L. Coyote]

12. There has been a consideraqble effort to take attention anywhere except to Cleveland

for the obvious reason, to steal Kerry votes for Bush, you have to have lots of votes to steal in the first instance. That is why the fraud was concentrated in Cuyahoga County. Efforts to distract include the e-vote issue, a practical false-flag, non-issue in Ohio due the the low percentage of e-votes and lack of significant switch in voting pattern from previous elections in e-voting counties. Also, in Cuyahoga, there is a concentration of uncounted votes in the inner city precincts with highest Kerry support.

Again, see this article for more on Cuyahoga:

The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html

Of course, a scientific study matters little with the current Bushco Justice department.
Both the FBI and the No Ohio USA have been informed of the evidence, and they do not even respond to communications.

[CitizenLeft]

20. so true

The problem in Cleveland was, as in Flordia in 2000, chads. "Broken" punch card machines all over the county - in one precinct, all 7 machines were broken. Now you tell me how that can happen? My guess is that the chads were deliberately left in the machines, built up - or tampered with - so that styluses snapped, or chads were unable to be punched through the holes. The proof was in some precincts that had clumps of ballots with no presidential vote cast at all. Classic, easily accomplished, and totally ignored.

I'm getting pissed off just typing that.

[helderheid]

9. is it too late to get rid of the machines by 2008

[L. Coyote]

13. Not if we have the political will to do so. PDF ballots can be printed by voters.

Precinct hand counted and county machine verified paper ballots could be printed anywhere by everyone, so long as the ballot box is secure on election day at each precinct.

[mod mom]

15. don't forget a strict chain of custody for ballot boxes and publicly viewed (with

filming allowed) of hand counting.

[L. Coyote]

16. They can even be marked counted by precincts. To introduce more security, add precinct reportinq of

tallies directly to public, rather than counting at counties after transporting.

[mod mom]

17. clear chained (2 opposing sets of keys) ballot boxes.

One of the hopes of doing it at the precinct level is to build a sense of community as well as getting people involved in protecting their own democracy.

[L. Coyote]

14. BREAKING: Voting Rights Chief Apologizes for Comments about Minorities

Voting Rights Chief Apologizes for Comments about Minorities
By Paul Kiel - Oct 29, 2007
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004586.php


Voting rights section chief John Tanner has apologized for saying (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004414.php) earlier this month that "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first."

The apology went out to a number of attendees of the National Latino Congreso, where Tanner made the remarks. You can see one of them, to the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, here (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/tanner-apology/). The letter is dated Friday, October 26, a week after Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) publicly called (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004507.php) for Tanner to be fired based on those remarks.

In the letter, Tanner does not recant his analysis ........

[L. Coyote]

18. DNC Calls for 'Immediate Firing' of DoJ Voting Chief in Wake of 'Outrageous Comments'

DNC Calls for 'Immediate Firing' of DoJ Voting Chief in Wake of 'Outrageous Comments', 'Outright Attack on Voting Rights'
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5219

In advance of tomorrow morning's House Judiciary Committee hearing to feature testimony by DoJ Civil Rights Division Voting Section chief, John "Minorities Die First" Tanner, DNC Chair Howard Dean and Donna Brazile of the DNC Voting Rights Institute have issued a statement calling for Tanner to be "immediately fired."

"In their latest scheme, the Republican Administration has manipulated the mission of the Department of Justice, firing US Attorneys who were unwilling to pursue phony 'voter fraud' cases, and politicized the Civil Rights Division," the statement (posted in full at the end of this article) reads.

The release goes on to decry the politicization of the Bush Department of Justice, and what is described as their "outright assault" on the right to vote.

"Tanner's outrageous comments underscore the GOP's utter disregard for the integrity of our nation's election system and are an affront to the spirit of the Voting Rights Act,"

.............

[L. Coyote]

19. HOUSE JUDICIARY: Oversight Hearing on the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division

Tuesday 10/30/2007 - 10:00 AM
2141 Rayburn House Office Building
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties
Oversight Hearing on the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.


WITNESS LIST:

John K. Tanner, Chief, Voting Right Section, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division

Toby Moore, Former Geographer/Social Science, analyst, CRT Voting Section

Laughlin McDonald, Director, ACLU Voting Rights Project, ACLU Southern Regional Office

Robert N. Driscoll, Alston and Bird

Julie Fernandes, Senior Policy Analyst & Special Counsel, Leadership Conference for Civil Rights