Holder Fails to Protect our Most Sacred Freedom

Kathleen Burch | June 1, 2012
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On Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a keynote address at the inaugural Faith Leaders Summit on Voting Rights in which he warned that Voter ID Laws pose a disproportionate threat to the minority vote. Despite the flood of evidence offered by James O'Keefe, the King Street Patriots, the Minnesota Majority, and the Election Integrity Project, Holder affirmed that "no form of electoral fraud ever has been or ever will be tolerated by this administration."

Yesterday, Chris Matthews hosted Representative John Lewis (D-GA) on Hardball to discuss the Voter ID Laws. Rep. Lewis states that he "believes in his heart and in his gut that the vote is the most powerful, nonviolent tool we have in a democratic society and we must use it...or we will lose it." He continues, no matter who you are, "we all have one vote," but asserts that there is a "deliberate, systematic attempt to win or steal this election before it takes place.”

Chris Matthews echoed Rep. Lewis's worries, referencing the recently passed law in Pennsylvania which requires voters to show a photo ID. "Rep. Lewis, I hear every word you say and I'm worried, worried, worried about this."

However, despite the liberal dismissal of the existence of voter fraud and their insistence that this initiative to require photo identification is a ploy to disenfranchise minority voters, J. Christian Adams, election lawyer and author of Injustice, maintains that "the Holder justice department is leveraging its power to attack state election integrity measures."

Adams details the obstruction of voter integrity measures by the Justice Department under Eric Holder. In 2009, the Justice Department tried to block the Georgia law to require verification of citizenship in order to vote. Recently, "because of their ideological opposition to voter ID" they tried to block the South Carolina law which requires that voters show a photo ID. Adams goes on to say that "if you want to get state laws approved that prevent voter fraud, don't go to Eric Holder, go to federal court." Most recently, the Justice Department intervened in Florida to prevent the removal of ineligible voters from the voter rolls.

The efforts to derail this movement to safeguard our most precious right as Americans are persistent and numerous. Liberals continue to insist that voter fraudulence is a Republican invention. Bill Fletcher of the American Federation of Government Employees claimed on an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell that "a problem is being manufactured." Certainly the work by James O'Keefe does not prove that voter fraudulence is occurring, but it does reveal a weakness in our voting system. In a matter of seconds, O'Keefe gained access to Holder’s election ballot.

In this same interview with Andrea Mitchell, Augusta Thomas of the American Federation of Government Employees insisted that voter ID laws are a return to the Jim Crow laws. She explained how difficult it would be for certain "vulnerable populations" to obtain the proper identification. Students are a part of this group allegedly being victimized by the Republican Party. I offer my personal testament that I am a student, I have never owned a car, I use public transportation (all indicators Thomas used to justify her claim that students can't get photo IDs), and I have a driver's license because my Illinois public high school required that I complete driver's education in order to graduate from high school. Furthermore, states such as Georgia are offering free voter identification cards to those in need of proper identification.

Why would Eric Holder, Rep. Lewis, and the others who object to voter ID laws disregard and even oppose the efforts to protect what Holder referred to as our most important and sacred American freedom?

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