By Doug Book
In yet another testament to the corrupt if inventive workings of the liberal mind, Attorney General Eric Holder recently decided to defraud the United States Supreme Court in the hope of preventing sections of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) being ruled unconstitutional.
Section 5 of the VRA requires 9 Southern states and a number of jurisdictions in 7 others—all charged with a history of voting rights abuses–to obtain “preclearance” from the DOJ or the District Court of DC before making any changes to state election policies or procedures. Passed into law in 1965, Section 5 was enacted as an “emergency provision” designed to “promote full access to the voting process” and expire in 5 years.
But now, nearly 5 decades later, Section 5 has become the darling of Civil Rights groups, the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, and liberal bureaucrats throughout the federal government as it has been inexorably extended and amended into a sacrosanct behemoth that virtually guarantees “election success for certain candidates chosen by certain racial groups.”
It was the Justice Department’s dishonest use of Section 5 that prevented the implementation of Voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina prior to the 2012 election. In fact, Holder and the Civil Rights Division blocked both laws from taking effect even though the changes proposed by the 2 states were patterned after the Indiana Voter ID law ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court in 2009.
Of course the Department’s behavior should surprise no one, for Section 5 frankly BEGS to be misused by the Democrat Party. After all, it provides a means of accomplishing voter fraud, something that has worked to the benefit of the Party for 6 decades and more. A case in point: Mitt Romney won every state in which Voter ID laws were in effect.
But then something happened. In 2009, the Supreme Court came very close to striking down Section 5 as Justices Kennedy and Scalia lambasted that portion of the VRA, which both believed to be outdated, harmful, and quite probably unconstitutional. And though the Court wrote a VERY narrow ruling allowing Section 5 to escape unscathed in the Northwest case before it, the die had been cast, and the DOJ knew it had to take action in order to maintain its stranglehold on 9 states.
States subject to Section 5 provisions may seek an exemption from DOJ oversight in the form of a “bailout.” This involves satisfying a prescribed list of rigorous requirements in the text of the VRA itself. Once satisfied, Section 5 provisions no longer apply, and the state may initiate the change to its election law.
For years, the DOJ had deliberately made the bailout process virtually impossible to negotiate, even threatening states that dared make the attempt. But as the Supreme Court had gone to great lengths to grant a bailout in the 2009 Northwest case, the Holder Justice Department decided that bailouts might be the key to salvaging Section 5.
As former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism
