The American Civil Rights Union (ACRU) in April sued Walthall County, a white-majority southern Mississippi county that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, and also nearby Jefferson Davis County, which has a black majority and voted for Barack Obama. The Jefferson Davis case is still pending.
The complaints were filed under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (“Motor Voter”). Section 8 of that law requires states and counties to regularly remove the dead, duplicates, felons and noncitizens from voter rolls. Despite the reality that hundreds of counties around the nation have not been obeying the law, the Justice Department has looked the other way.
“This case should have been called United States v. Walthall County instead of ACRU v. Walthall County,” said J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department Voting Section lawyer who, along with former Voting Section chief Christopher Coates and former Justice lawyer Henry Ross, filed the lawsuits. “We’re doing the job that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. won’t do. In fact, he’s too busy suing Texas for its new photo-ID law and abusing power in other ways to harass states that are trying to ensure election integrity.”
Indeed, Mr. Holder has snorted loudly at Texas, suing the Lone Star State on Aug. 22 over its new photo voter-ID law. He effectively ignored the Supreme Court’s June ruling that struck down key sections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The law required some Southern states, plus some other jurisdictions around the nation, to submit voting-law or redistricting changes for review by the Justice Department or a three-judge, D.C.-based federal panel.
The court majority said the nation has changed since 1965, when Jim Crow laws mostly in Southern states prevented black Americans from voting. However, Mr. Holder is locked in a time warp.