Thread: MI:NAACP files complaint about ID law; OUTLANDISH!

NAACP files complaint about ID law

October 26, 2007

BY RUBY L. BAILEY

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The NAACP Detroit chapter has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice challenging the legality of a state law requiring voters to show identification at the polls beginning Nov. 6, the group announced Thursday.

The chapter also is preparing an amicus curiae or so-called friend of the court brief in connection with a U.S. Supreme Court challenge.

The Justice Department complaint filed by the NAACP claims Michigan's voter identification law violates the 1964 Voting Rights Act and will decrease voting by minorities. The civil rights organization also plans to file a friend of the court brief by December in a U.S. Supreme Court appeal of a similar law in Indiana, said Melvin Butch Hollowell, the Detroit chapter's general counsel.

Hollowell made the announcement Thursday during a media tour of the organization's new 16,000-square foot facility at 8220 Second Ave. in Detroit.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Detroit Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, will chair a subcommittee hearing Tuesday on the issue.

Conyers subpoenaed John Tanner, chief of the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

Tanner, who is overseeing the NAACP's complaint, has been quoted as telling a Hispanic group in Los Angeles this month that while some minority voters did not have identification, it was not a problem because "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first."

Contact RUBY L. BAILEY at 313-222-6651 or rbailey@freepress.com

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Well . . . . they are ramping up the possibility of Election fraud all over the country. Time to start reving up the fax machines.

Friday, October 26, 2007
NAACP to challenge voter law
Local chapter digs in its heels, calls Mich. ID requirements a 'poll tax.'
Santiago Esparza / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- The Detroit Branch of the NAACP announced Thursday that it will continue to fight a controversial new state law requiring Michigan voters to show photo identification or sign an affidavit in order to cast a ballot, while fighting a similar measure in Indiana.

"We view this voter identification as another version of a poll tax," the Rev. Wendell Anthony, head of Detroit's NAACP, said Thursday. "It is just intimidation."

Already, attorneys for the national NAACP and its Detroit branch have filed a challenge to the law with the state on the grounds the law was not properly implemented because there were no public hearings. They also have sent a letter to the Department of Justice outlining their concerns and reminding officials that election law for Clyde and Buena Vista townships can not be changed without federal approval under the Voting Rights Act.

Anthony told members of the media that the NAACP's Detroit branch is preparing a brief to support those who oppose a similar law in Indiana. That law requires picture identification to cast a vote. People who are indigent, object on religious grounds or live in state facilities that serve as their precinct's polling site are exempt from the law, according to the Indiana secretary of state's Web site.

The U.S. Supreme Court in September agreed to hear the Indiana case, and oral arguments could be heard by the end of this year, said Melvin Butch Hollowell, the Detroit NAACP's lead attorney.

The NAACP Detroit staff and volunteers spend many hours a week on the case, he said.

"We will fight until we win," Hollowell said.

Courts have upheld voter ID laws in Arizona, Michigan and Georgia.

The law was passed in Michigan in 1996 but former State Attorney General Frank Kelley believed it violated the 14th Amendment and refused to allow its implementation. The Michigan Supreme Court ruled it was legal in July, paving the way for it to go into effect Nov. 6

The law, which requires photo identification or for voters without identification to sign an affidavit, is aimed at keeping African-Americans from the polls, Anthony said.

In 2004, about 69 percent of black adults were registered to vote compared with 75 percent of whites, according to U.S. census data. About 87 percent of registered blacks and 89 percent of registered whites voted in the last presidential election.

Anthony said he has asked Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land for a meeting, but she declined.

Land's office on Friday afternoon confirmed that Anthony requested a meeting, but said the time frame for it conflicted with Land's schedule. Land offered to have the state's director of elections and her chief operations officer meet with Anthony in Lansing as an alternative, said Land's spokeswoman, Kelly Chesney.

Anthony said he deserved to speak to Land and not someone who reports to her.

University of Detroit-Mercy law professor Lawrence Dubin said the NAACP is right to question whether photo identification is needed to vote. But he wonders if the NAACP is going to be able to do anything about the laws in Michigan and Indiana.

"The reality of the situation makes it an uphill battle," Dubin said.

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This is ridiculous considering the fact that if you work you need identification to cash your check. If you collect welfare you need an ID to cash that check. If you have a bank account you need an ID. If you drive you need a license which is a form of identification. Overall everyone in this country needs to have some form of identification to function in everyday society wether they want to or not. So to say that minorities don't have access to forms of identificaton is ludicrous. If that's the case why don't they argue that having car insurance is a hardship as paying to take the test so that would mean they should just be able to drive whenever where ever. Voting is to be protected at all costs as it is the very foundation of our country, so much is determined by our elections that to not protect it and have safe guards as in presenting a photo id is both reckless and idiotic. Plain and simple. And to use minorities as an excuse to not enforce that every peson present at a voting poll has a right ot be there to cast a ballot is not only morally wrong but it continues to threaten our democracy and sovereignty when any person can show up and cast a ballot as though they are a US citizen, helping to decide the fate of this nation.

Oh geez......not this "poll tax" nonsense again!!!

The special interests tried that here in AZ when they sued trying to stop our voter ID Law.

They left court like shamed puppies.

Laraza is instructing illegals to register to vote......

Even my 90 year old aunt....that never left her home...had an ID card....gees

And they wonder why their membership continues to decline, and why their organization is all but defunct. They and the Congressional Black Caucus are nothing but showboating social clubs.

Rev. Anthony, stop pandering and do something constructive like planning the annual NAACP fashion show.

LaRaza and the illegals are playing the leaders of the NAACP like a fiddle. It's pathetic.