The latest in voter suppression in Pennsylvania today

1) Judge orders partisans to stop asking voters for ID outside Homestead polls

2) Watchdog: Evidence of Unlawful Voter Purge in Pennsylvania

3) Video of 2012 Voting Machines Altering Votes in PA:

Evidence Suggests PA GOP Poll Watchers Targeting African American Precincts

Via an email from SEIU:

Evidence Suggests PA GOP Poll Watchers Systematically Targeting African American Precincts

WASHINGTON, DC – After receiving information indicating that the Pennsylvania Republican Party and the Pittsburgh Tea Party may be systematically sending poll watchers to predominantly African American precincts in Pittsburgh, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Common Cause, The Advancement Project, The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the ACLU, together with a number of local community groups, sent a letter to Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez, who is responsible for enforcing the Voting Rights Act, asking that the Justice Department “make every effort to ensure that voters at these targeted locations are able to cast their ballots freely and fairly” and also to ask the Pennsylvania Republican Party about the source of its lists and the basis of its targeting.

“We have seen their list and it strongly suggests that the Pennsylvania Republican Party is coordinating with the Pittsburgh Tea Party to target African American voters for intimidation at the polls,” said Nicole Berner, SEIU Associate General Counsel. “The Pennsylvania Republican Party has serious questions to answer about where they are putting their poll watchers and why.”

Full text of the letter after the fold.

Geez, They're Still On This?

From Scaife's braintrust at the Trib:

A federal court at last has confirmed what most suspected all along: Political appointees were involved in the Obama Justice Department’s puzzling dismissal of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

The role of politics in Justice’s decision-making was widely questioned after the case was cut loose despite video evidence showing a party member brandishing a nightstick outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008.

Judicial Watch sought answers, filing a Freedom of Information Act request for relevant documents. The Justice Department ignored it. The legal watchdog group then filed a lawsuit to obtain the records.

In a ruling awarding some litigation fees and costs sought by Judicial Watch, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia noted that the group was right about politics’ role — and deception by a senior Justice official:

“The documents reveal that political appointees within DOJ were conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in the days preceding ... (its) dismissal ... which would appear to contradict Assistant Attorney General (Thomas) Perez’s testimony that political leadership was not involved in that decision.”

Ah...Judicial Watch.  Do I need to point out the millions of dollars in support ($8.74 million, much more than any other foundations - indeed more than all the other foundations combined) given to Judicial Watch by the foundations controlled by Trib owner, Richard Mellon Scaife?

I guess I do.

But let's take a look at what Perez said in his testimony.  When asked whether any political appointees were involved in the decision not to pursue the case, he answered:

ASST. ATTY. GEN. PEREZ: No. The decisions were made by Loretta King in consultation with Steve Rosenbaum, who is the Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General.

In this Judicial Watch decision, however, the court said:

The Court finds that the foregoing emails added, at least to some degree, “‘to the fund of information that citizens may use in making vital political choices.’” Cotton, 63 F.3d at 1120 (citation omitted). The documents reveal that political appointees within DOJ were conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in the days preceding the DOJ’s dismissal of claims in that case, which would appear to contradict Assistant Attorney General Perez’s testimony that political leadership was not involved in that decision.

Which is not exactly the same thing.  More investigation is necessary to find out whether the "conferring" crossed the line into "involved" in the decision making."  And that's completely valid.

It's also a far cry from saying that Perez lied.

Did you know that the decision not to prosecute those two New Black Panther Party guys was made by the Bush Administration DOJ?

Bank "activity" apparently a requirement for Wisconsin voter ID card

Not only are they shutting down DMV offices in Democratic and poorer districts in Wisconsin (whose new law requires picture ID), the following video shows that the DMV could refuse to issue an ID card if the voter’s bank account did not show enough "activity."

Via Raw Story:


Apparently, only the well off need apply. What country are we in again? It's getting hard to tell.
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Some Notes On Today's Tribune-Review

It's fun, sometimes, to notice how skewed the reporting (or at least the choice of what to report - which is different and puts the bias-onus on the editors and not the reporters) can be over at Richard Mellon Scaife's Tribune-Review.

Most of the time it's subtle and within bounds.

Today, however, it is not.

An estimated 200,000 people showed up for Jon Stewart's "Restore Sanity and/or Fear" rally at the National Mall yesterday. The estimate comes from the same firm that estimated 87,000 attended Glenn Beck rally in late August. Whether the Beck numbers are too low is beside the point here. The point being that with the same company using the same methodology for the two different events, the Stewart rally racked up more than twice the people attending.

Having written that, I gotta ask what did the Trib go with this morning as the most prominent cover story online?

Of course - a local Tea Party event:

Brian Durbin of Hempfield got up Saturday morning and transformed himself into Benjamin Franklin.

He pulled on brown knickers, a tan vest and ruffled neckpiece, and then covered his hair with a white wig. After pushing wire-rimmed glasses onto his nose, he grabbed a cane, ready to party.

Durbin set off to a Tea Party event in Unity, where physician Bill Hennessey invited several hundred people to a pre-Election Day rally.

Several hundred. Impressive. And no mention (as far as I can tell) of the tens of thousands attending the Stewart/Colbert Rally.

See? Not to subtle today.

Then there's this from the editorial page:

Notes a New York Times headline: "Fraudulent voting re-emerges as a partisan issue." Since when is voter fraud a "partisan" issue? Since it's Republicans complaining about Democrat-orchestrated fraud, you can bet.

But if you were to actually read the Times piece, you'd see what the story is really about:

In 2006, conservative activists repeatedly claimed that the problem of people casting fraudulent votes was so widespread that it was corrupting the political process and possibly costing their candidates victories.

The accusations turned out to be largely false, but they led to a heated debate, with voting rights groups claiming that the accusations were crippling voter registration drives and reducing turnout.

That debate is flaring anew.

Tea Party members have started challenging voter registration applications and have announced plans to question individual voters at the polls whom they suspect of being ineligible.

In response, liberal groups and voting rights advocates are sounding an alarm, claiming that such strategies are scare tactics intended to suppress minority and poor voters. [emphasis added.]

"Democrat-orchestrated fraud"?

While many states have voter registration records riddled with names of dead people, out-of-date addresses and other erroneous information, there is little evidence that such errors lead to fraudulent votes, many experts note.

A report by the public-integrity section of the Justice Department found that from October 2002 to September 2005, the department charged 95 people with “election fraud”; 55 were convicted.

Among those, fewer than 20 people were convicted of casting fraudulent ballots, and only 5 were convicted of registration fraud. Most of the rest were charged with other voting violations, including a scheme meant to help Republicans by blocking the phone lines used by two voting groups that were arranging rides to get voters to the polls.

It's a "partisan issue" when the Republicans are using trumped up charges (myths, really) of "Democrat-orchestrated voter fraud" to suppress the voter registration of members of demographic groups they think will vote against them.

If they truly believed in democracy, they'd be bending over backwards to make sure everyone voted.

Which leads me to one shining moment at the Trib. Joe Mistik's column - stunning defense of the Separation of Church and State:

In truth, God is not mentioned even once in the Constitution. While the Founders all adhered to some form of Christianity or deism, their diverse religious beliefs instilled in them a fear that a theocracy could be established here. And contrary to the religious tests that some political movements impose on candidates, the Constitution says, "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Some extreme candidates even wrap themselves in the flag and argue that the principle requiring the separation of church and state does not appear in the Constitution. But James Madison, "The Father of the Constitution," said, "The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries."

Striking the proper balance, the Constitution does say, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

How long before Joe is branded un-American is anyone's guess.

Dueling Editorials

Every now and then the Braintrust over at the Trib takes on the editorial board at the P-G. Usually with laughingly ridiculous results.

Today is no different.

From the Trib:

Those intellectual relativists at The Toledo, Ohio, Block Bugler label the case of two members of the New Black Panther Party who allegedly intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling place last November as "a silly nonevent by two nobodies." Both were dressed in paramilitary outfits. One wielded a billy club. We can't wait to see how The Bugler characterizes, say, members of the tea party movement showing up at the polls this November with — GASP! — petitions. You can bet it'll be called a "civil rights travesty."

And this is the P-G editorial they found so upsetting. It begins with this:

To hear conservatives complain about the Obama Justice Department these days, you'd think Attorney General Eric Holder had declared war on the civil rights of white Americans.

Recently, J. Christian Adams, a former lawyer for the Bush Justice Department, accused the civil rights division under Mr. Obama and Mr. Holder of scaling down a voter intimidation case in Philadelphia because the accused were black and potential victims white.

Two members of the New Black Panther Party stood outside a North Philly polling place on Election Day 2008 in paramilitary garb. One of the two brandished a billy club looking vaguely menacing, but mostly silly.

And then they offer up some facts:

The men stood outside the predominantly black polling center for a short time before cops sent them on their way. One of the men is alleged to have said something insulting about white people. Neither was arrested.

Whah? The cops showed up? And didn't arrest either?

That proves it. The police department of the city of Philadelphia must be in on the conspiracy - a conspiracy to intimidate white voters at a predominantly black polling center.

Here are some actual facts (via mediamatters.org):

The Bush administration's Justice Department -- not the Obama administration -- made the decision not to pursue criminal charges against members of the New Black Panther Party for alleged voter intimidation at a polling center in Philadelphia in 2008

That's right, my friends. And think about it. Who was the president in November 2008? Whatever the outcome of the election, the inauguration wouldn't take place until about 3 months later.

The Bush DOJ decided there wasn't enough evidence. In his testimony Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said:

After reviewing the matter, the Civil Rights Division determined that the facts did not constitute a prosecutable violation of the criminal statutes. The Department did, however, file a civil action on January 7th, 2009, seeking injunctive and declaratory relief under 11(b) against four defendants.

So the Bush DOJ must also be a part of the criminal conspiracy to intimidate white voters at a predominantly black polling center.

See? The Trib gets silly sometimes.