AS A FORMER community organizer who later taught classes in voting rights at the University of Chicago, President Barack Obama should be a fierce protector of the integrity of our electoral system. Indeed, as a U.S. senator from Illinois, he introduced a bill in 2007 to increase the criminal penalty for voter intimidation. Both parties at different periods in our history have been guilty in different regions of preventing people from voting for a tactical advantage, he said at the time. We should be beyond that.
He was right to be concerned. A Rasmussen Reports survey in 2008 found that 17 percent of Americans believe that large numbers of legitimate voters are prevented from voting. A slightly larger number, 23 percent, believe that large numbers of ineligible people are allowed to vote. That means two out of five Americans effectively believe our elections arent free and fair.
Such cynicism is borne out by the widespread evidence that has accumulated over the past few years proving that the basic fairness of our elections is under assault from all sides:
The radical organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and other voter-registration groups have been frequently caught putting fraudulent names on voter rolls.
A growing number of residents in states such as New York and New Jersey have homes in Florida and other states with milder climates and wind up registering and voting in both places.
Legitimate and longtime voters sometimes find their names removed from registration lists by inaccurate purging.
Mickey Mouse, Mary Poppins and Dick Tracy are just some of the names showing up on registration lists along with many real individuals who are not eligible to vote.
Arbitrary decision-making is on the increase in very close elections, as the Florida 2000 presidential recount and the 2008 Senate race in Minnesota demonstrate. There is growing uncertainty as to who is entitled to cast ballots and whose ballots should be counted.
These and other problems cry out for repair. But now that he is in the White House, President Obama, far from using his new powers to restore Americans faith in their elections, has moved in exactly the opposite direction. The full story of how this presidency has further undermined our election processes provides a disturbing look into one of the most significant threats our democracy faces today.
JUSTICE LETS THE NEW BLACK PANTHERS WALK
Bartle Bull couldnt believe his eyes. The former civil-rights lawyer had been arrested in the South during the 1960s.He once forced local officials in Mississippi to remove nooses that were hanging from tree branches outside polling places. But until election day 2008 in Philadelphia, he had never seen a man brandishing a weapon blocking the entrance to a polling place. And now, he cant understand why the Obama Department of Justice has dropped its case against the New Black Panther Party, the hate group (according to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League) whose thugs he saw threatening potential voters with truncheons when they tried to vote.
Bull, who was once Robert Kennedys New York presidential campaign manager and is a former publisher of the left-wing Village Voice, has moderated his politics, going as far as to join Democrats for McCain in 2008. It was in that capacity that he traveled to Philadelphia on election day. When he visited a polling place at 12 th and Fairmount, he found two men dressed in black combat boots, black berets and black uniforms, blocking the door. One was brandishing a large police-style nightstick.
McCain volunteers called the police, and media filmed the whole incident. The police ordered the armed man to leave but did not take away his weapon. But one of his colleagues didnt go quietly. Minister King Samir Shabazz, head of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, yelled at onlookers, You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!
In March 2009, Bull got a call from Christian Adams, an attorney with the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division, who asked him to provide an affidavit about the incident to support a civil-rights lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and three of its supporters, one of whom, Jerry Jackson, is an elected member of Philadelphias 14 th Ward Democratic Committee and, as recently as spring 2009, has served as an official poll watcher in a local election. Bull said he would, provided that the Justice Department follow through on the lawsuit to the very end.
The lawsuit was filed, and when none of the defendants answered it, a federal court in Philadelphia rendered a default judgment against the defendants. Bull was astonished, therefore, when the government reacted by suddenly dropping charges against the New Black Panther Party and the two defendants. Another defendant was given only the mild sanction of being barred from displaying a weapon near a polling place for the next three years.
A Justice Department spokesman issued a terse statement saying only that the department made its decision based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law. Career Justice Department attorneys told Bull that they were appalled by this inexplicable failure to enforce the Voting Rights Act. Those near the case believe that the decision was politically motivated a signal sent, according to Bull, that intimidation against poll watchers challenging the fraudulent voters registered by ACORN may be permissible.
Hans von Spakovsky, a former official in the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division under President George W. Bush, told me he was shocked by the departments turnaround in the Philadelphia case: Imagine if the defendants had been white and been intimidating voters and Justice had dropped the case. There would have been a political earthquake. In the wake of the Justice Departments action, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted on Aug. 7, 2009, to send a letter to the department expanding its own investigation and demanding more complete answers. We believe the Departments defense of its actions thus far undermines respect for rule of law, its letter stated.
Bull plans to keep the issue alive. When he took office, Attorney General Eric Holder stated that America was a nation of cowards when it comes to race and that he was going to make civil-rights cases a top priority, he told me. But who are todays cowards on race? This kind of double standard is not what Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy fought for.
