Thread: JW - Obama White House Coordination with Department of Justice on Voting Rights Enfor

New Records Obtained by Judicial Watch Show Obama White House Coordination with Department of Justice on Voting Rights Enforcement

January 19, 2012 | No Comments

ACORN Partner Project Vote Working with Officials from White House and DOJ to Use National Voting Rights Act to Increase Registration of Voters on Public Assistance

Interest Group Urges Justice Official to “make some headway” with Attorney General Holder

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch, the organization that investigates and fights government corruption, announced today that it has received additional documents about meetings held between Estelle Rogers, Director of Advocacy for the ACORN-affiliated organization Project Vote, and officials from the Obama White House and the Department of Justice (DOJ). Judicial Watch is investigating the extent to which Project Vote, which once employed Barack Obama, has been working with the Obama administration to use voter registration laws to register greater numbers of low-income voters, widely considered to be an important voting demographic for the Obama presidential campaign.

The additional documents, provided in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch on August 19, 2011, detail email communications between Rogers and high ranking officials from the Obama White House and DOJ. The following are highlights from the records:

• On April 27, 2009, Estelle Rogers wrote to Deputy Assistant Attorney General Sam Hirsh regarding an upcoming meeting on April 30, 2009. In addition to Rogers and Hirsh, other attendees included: Nicole Kovite, Director of Public Agency Project for Project Vote; Spencer Overton, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy; and two officials from the Obama White House: Celia Muñoz, then-Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and recently promoted to Director of the Domestic Policy Council; and Tino Cuellar, Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy.

In her email, Rogers references documents she forwarded in preparation for the upcoming meeting on the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), to which Hirsch replies that he looks forward to “reading these materials” and to “seeing everyone on Thursday.”

• On February 23, 2011, Rogers wrote to Associate Deputy Attorney General Robert Weiner, asking him to “make some headway with Attorney General [Eric] Holder in enforcing Section 7 of the NVRA.” The email notes that the DOJ had not yet filed any Section 7 lawsuits, which Rogers dubbed “deeply disappointing.” The first such DOJ lawsuit (against Rhode Island) was filed on March 18, 2011, less than one month later. Of particular note, is Rogers’ comment that “We have received oral assurances from [Assistant Attorney General Thomas] Perez on several occasions that enforcement action was imminent,” suggesting that Rogers was privy to internal discussions inside the DOJ regarding pending legal action.

• On March 29, 2011, Rogers wrote to Associate Attorney General [Thomas] Perrelli, urging him to review and “make improvements” to a document she was sending following another meeting held on March 17, 2011 between Project Vote and the DOJ on Section 7 compliance with the NRVA. Accompanying the document was a previous letter she had sent to the Civil Rights Division plus “additional comments on the Q and A.”

On December 14, 2011, Judicial Watch released a separate batch of documents which also detail the partnership between the Obama DOJ and Project Vote.

As Director of Advocacy for Project Vote, Estelle Rogers ‒ a former attorney for ACORN, which was besieged with charges of corruption before declaring bankruptcy in November 2010 ‒ is a primary contact person on policy matters at Project Vote on both state and federal levels and has been actively involved in voter registration issues. Using the threat of a lawsuit under the NVRA, Project Vote has aggressively sought to manipulate voter registration laws in various states to increase the registration of people receiving public assistance.

On August 4, 2011, Judicial Watch released documents obtained from the Colorado Department of State showing that ACORN and Project Vote successfully pressured Colorado officials into implementing new policies for increasing the registration of public assistance recipients during the 2008 and 2010 election seasons. Following the policy changes, the percentage of invalid voter registration forms from Colorado public assistance agencies was four times the national average. Project Vote also sought a “legislative fix” to allow people without a driver’s license or state identification to register to vote online.

In addition to pursuing public agency registration cases in Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia and New Mexico, Project Vote and the NAACP filed a lawsuit on April 19, 2011, against the State of Louisiana alleging violations of the NVRA. Less than three months later, on July 12, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division/Voting Section sued Louisiana on the same grounds, claiming that “Louisiana officials have not routinely offered voter registration forms, assistance and services to the state’s eligible citizens who apply, recertify or provide a change address for public assistance or disability services.”

The DOJ’s March 11, 2011, lawsuit against Rhode Island led to policy changes intended to increase the number of voter registration applications processed by “public assistance and disability service officers.” These two lawsuits, filed within five months of each other, are the first such lawsuits filed by the DOJ since 2007.

Project Vote and ACORN have both been linked to massive voter registration fraud. A total of 70 ACORN employees in 12 states have been convicted of voter registration fraud. And as documented in a July 2009 report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, of the 1.3 million registrations Project Vote/ACORN submitted in the 2008 election cycle, more than one-third were invalid.

“These documents raise fundamental questions about the politicization of the Justice Department under Eric Holder and demonstrate that the ACORN-connected Project Vote is throwing its weight around the Justice Department and driving the agency’s voting rights agenda. And evidently the Obama White House is now directly implicated in this growing scandal,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “It is now clear that Project Vote and the Obama/Holder Justice Department are conspiring to file Justice Department lawsuits to help re-elect Barack Obama. This collusion between Project Vote and the Obama administration is a significant threat to the integrity of the 2012 elections. To have Project Vote involved in the Justice voting rights enforcement is like having the Mafia run the FBI.”
Judcial Watch

See Also:
ACORN GEARING UP FOR 2012 OBAMA CAMPAIGN
http://www.alipac.us/f19/acorn-geari...mpaign-235850/

Justice Department coordinates suits with ACORN's Project Vote

By:Examiner Editorial | 01/19/12 8:05 PM





Steve Kest, Executive Director of ACORN, talks to a reporter after a news conference October 29, 2008 in Washington DC.(Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)



Remember ACORN, the far-left activist community organizing group that filed for bankruptcy a couple of years ago? That followed revelations that some members were advising pimps and prostitutes on tax evasion, not to mention operating houses of prostitution and smuggling underage girls into the country to work in the sex industry.
The Democratic-dominated Congress voted in 2009 to ban ACORN from receiving federal funds. After ACORN's bankruptcy filing, many of its local chapters remained intact by the simple expedient of reorganizing under different names. It's the same tactic used by fly-by-night rug merchants and disreputable used car dealers to stay one step ahead of the law.
Readers will also recall that ACORN activists have long been involved in voter registration fraud, either directly or through its Project Vote affiliate. At least 70 ACORN/Project Vote employees have been convicted of voter registration fraud in a dozen states since 2006.
According to a 2009 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report, approximately a third of the 1.2 million new registrations turned in by the two groups in 2008 were fraudulent.

Despite all this, documents obtained recently by Judicial Watch via the Freedom of Information Act suggest that President Obama -- who was employed by Project Vote as a community organizer early in his career -- and Attorney General Eric Holder have no qualms about working closely with present and former ACORN and Project Vote operatives on voter registration drives aimed at people on public assistance. Take, for example, an April 2009 letter to deputy assistant attorney general Sam Hirsh from former ACORN attorney and current Project Vote director of advocacy Estelle Rogers. She described preparations for a subsequent meeting about Department of Justice plans concerning National Voter Registration Act litigation in states deemed not being sufficiently aggressive in registering public assistance recipients.

Among those to be included in the meeting, according to the Rogers letter, were Nicole Kovite, director of the public agency project for Project Vote; Spencer Overton, deputy assistant attorney general for legal policy; Cecilia Munoz, then-director of intergovernmental affairs in the Obama White House; and Tino Cuellar, special assistant to the president for justice and regulatory policy. Munoz was recently promoted to chief domestic advisor to Obama.

Other letters obtained by Judicial Watch from Rogers to high-ranking Justice Department officials include a March 2011 missive to associate attorney general Thomas Perrelli, about a document she forwarded to him "for improvement" after a previous meeting on NVRA litigation. The letters also show that during the 2010 election cycle Project Vote used the threat of NVRA suits by the DOJ to pressure officials in Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia and New Mexico to change policies and procedures to facilitate voter registration among public assistance recipients. Federal NVRA suits were filed last year by the DOJ against Rhode Island and Louisiana after officials there balked at changing their registration policies and procedures.

Given ACORN/Project Vote's extensive links to voter registration fraud schemes across the country, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa of California might want to ask Holder about these matters on Feb. 2 when the attorney general appears before the panel.



Read more at the Washington Examiner:

Holder decries states' efforts to
restrict ease of voting

by William Douglas
McClatchy Newspapers


Posted: 01/16/2012 07:35:23 PM PST


COLUMBIA, S.C. -- In his bluntest comments to date, Attorney
General Eric Holder said Monday that voting rights, particularly for minorities, are under assault in some states.

Speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday event in Columbia, Holder said some states had sued to challenge provisions of the Voting Rights Act and had approved new laws that would make it difficult for some minorities to register and vote this year. "

Each of these lawsuits claims that we've attained a new era of electoral
equality, that America in 2012 has moved beyond the challenges of 1965," Holder told a crowd outside the Capitol. "I wish that were the case. But the reality is that -- in jurisdictions across the country -- both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain all too common."

He added: "Protecting the right to vote, ensuring meaningful access, and combating discrimination must be viewed not only as a legal issue but as a moral imperative."

South Carolina is one of 13 mostly Republican-controlled states that have approved new voting laws that include requiring government-approved photo ID to register or vote and curtailing voter registration efforts by third-party groups such as the League of Women Voters or the NAACP.
Mercury News

The only discrimination I am seeing is that against legal citizen voters of all ethnic backgrounds that are in jeapordy of having their vote canceled through voter fraud. What a bunch of horse hocky.JMO