"Our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do; they die first."

This is pretty unbelievable.

John Tanner, the top ranking voting rights official at the Justice Department, was caught on video claiming that photo ID requirements do not disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters because: "Our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do; they die first."

He went on to argue, irrationally, that these requirements actually benefit minorities because: "Anything that disproportionately impacts the elderly has the opposite impact on minorities."

Barack sent a letter to Acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler last week demanding that John Tanner be removed from his position -- but the Justice Department needs to hear from you as well. The more they hear from people like you, the more pressure they will feel to do the right thing.

Send a message to the Attorney General's office and tell him to replace Tanner immediately:

http://Action.BarackObama.com/TannerMustGo

As absurd and wrong-headed as Tanner's remarks were, they are less surprising in the context of his record as voting rights chief.

Tanner has been an outspoken advocate for photo ID requirements for voters, going so far as to overrule the recommendations of Justice Department lawyers in order to support a controversial photo ID requirement in Georgia.

The Georgia law has been repeatedly compared to a poll tax. In 2005, Barack Obama spoke out against this law, noting that, "in our democracy, the goal should be to encourage eligible voters to vote, not to create new barriers to make it more difficult for them to exercise their most basic right." Barack also introduced a resolution in response to Tanner's decision to approve the Georgia law, expressing his belief that any law requiring a photo ID to vote would put an undue burden on voters.

Numerous studies show that photo ID requirements have a discriminatory impact on African American and other minority voters. Yet, in public statements like his October 5th remarks, Tanner continues to justify them with faulty logic. And it adds insult to injury to use tragic discrepancies in life expectancies for African Americans as justification for policies that would further disenfranchise them.

The situation is clear. John Tanner has an obvious disregard for the voting rights of minorities and should not be in charge of protecting them.

John Tanner must go. Join Barack in demanding that he be removed from his position immediately:

http://Action.BarackObama.com/TannerMustGo

From the beginning, our campaign has been about increasing the number of Americans who are engaged in the political process. We took our lead from Barack's days as a community organizer and built a network of hundreds of thousands of supporters nationwide, many of whom are getting involved in politics for the first time.

John Tanner and others like him have been appointed to positions of power in the Bush administration with the specific intent of limiting participation in ways that benefit the Republican Party. It's time to turn the page on that kind of politics.

All we demand -- and all that any reasonable person of either party should demand -- is that voting rules be fair and enforced equally, regardless of race.

John Tanner has demonstrated time and again that he has other things in mind. His recent comments are the last straw -- he must go:

http://Action.BarackObama.com/TannerMustGo

Thank you,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Which the right-wing DOES ON PURPOSE!

Bush's Legacy on Voting Rights: A Story from Ohio
By Paul Kiel - October 12, 2007, 10:32AM
In June of 2005, John Tanner, the chief of the voting rights section, wrote Columbus, Ohio's election officials to publicly assure them that the Justice Department had found no evidence of intentional African-American voter disenfranchisement in the 2004 election.

Not only was that an unprecedented move, former Department lawyers say, but the letter is another, and particularly galling, example of Tanner using the force of the Department to further Republican aims -- in this case, to hamper future lawsuits or investigations concerning the problems in Columbus.

"It really looked like the Civil Rights Division was used to run interference for Republican election officials in Ohio," former voting rights section deputy chief Bob Kengle told me.

At issue was the experience of thousands of voters in Franklin County, Ohio, in the 2004 election. Voters in mostly African-American precincts were forced to wait hours in long lines to vote. An investigation by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) found that voters often waited as many as four to five hours, some as many as seven, deep into the night. The Washington Post reported that "bipartisan estimates say that 5,000 to 15,000 frustrated voters turned away without casting ballots." The culprit, of course, was a scarcity of voting machines in those districts, one that seemed to follow a suspicious trend: "27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush" and "six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry."

-snip

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004438.php



An Open Letter to John Tanner, Chief, Voting Section, U.S. Department of Justice
July 2, 2005

An Open Letter to John Tanner, Chief, Voting Section, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Section in response to his June 29, 2005 letter to Nick A. Soulas, Jr., Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, Civil Division, Franklin County:

Dear Mr. Tanner:

I was curious to find that you had “conducted an investigation into the November 2, 2004 general election in Franklin County, prompted by allegations that Franklin County systematically assigned fewer voting machines in polling places serving predominantly black communities as compared to its assignment of machines in predominantly white communities.”

Let me begin by suggesting the word “contrasted” would be more appropriate than “compared.” Indeed, the difference is literally black and white.

You praise the bipartisan nature of the Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE). But you fail to mention that the Director, Matt Damschroder, is the former Chair of the Franklin County Republican Party, and that J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio’s Secretary of State and the Co-Chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-election Committee appoints all board members as well as officers, and they serve at his pleasure. Blackwell’s actions throughout the election year were openly partisan and obviously unethical.

For example, I was at a meeting prior to the election where Mr. Damschroder informed a delegation of esteemed international election observers that he would have them arrested based on the orders of Blackwell if they crossed the 100-foot line outside the polls to observe closer to the voting site. Is that what you mean by “the spirit of cooperation?”

-snip
http://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2005/1158

Justice Dept: 2004 Ohio Voting Problems Solved
by FWIW

Sat Oct 13, 2007 at 09:40:37 PM PDT

TPMMuckraker has the story: a recently discovered letter from John Tanner, chief of the Justice Department voting rights section, explains the problems encountered in the November 2004 general elections. Tanner wrote that the investigation by the Justice Department had been closed, and:

...the principal cause of the difference appears to be the tendency in Franklin County for white voters to cast ballots in the morning (i.e., before work), and for black voters to cast ballots in the afternoon (i.e., after work).

Seriously.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. took exception to that explanation. He issued a press release the same day in which he said,

"The 2004 election exposed serious deficiencies in this section's failure to adequately investigate and prosecute voter suppression efforts nationwide and I hope he is prepared to address this issue head on."

FWIW's diary :: ::
Rep. John Conyers' full statement:

I am concerned about the extreme lengths Mr. Tanner went to in order to justify the reasons African-Americans were not treated equally in the 2004 Ohio election. The committee needs to consider this matter. I am aware of no precedent for the Department acting in this capacity in the past.

The Department of Justice – since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – has a responsibility to thoroughly investigate allegations of voter suppression and discrimination, like those made in Ohio in 2004. I look forward to hearing more from Mr. Tanner in our committee later this month as he testifies about his work as chief of the voting section. The 2004 election exposed serious deficiencies in this section's failure to adequately investigate and prosecute voter suppression efforts nationwide and I hope he is prepared to address this issue head on.



-snip

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/14/04037/608

Those good citizens waiting HOURS & HOURS to cast their vote in a system that was obviously abusing them - it made me sick and ashamed.
Still does!
How does this go on in our country in the 2000s?

that I closed my business of 17 years to work on the '04 investigation and election integrity.

It still pisses me off that these criminals are still free.

That having a shorter life expectancy would be the best way to protect your right to vote.

I love America. We have the solution to all your problems: Die young!