GOP Witchhunt for the Zombie Voter

• By Eugene Robinson, Published: April 30 The Washington Post Republicans are waging the most concerted campaign to prevent or discourage citizens from exercising their legitimate voting rights since the Jim Crow days of poll taxes and literacy tests. Four years ago, Democrats expanded American democracy by registering millions of new voters — mostly young people and minorities — and persuading them to show up at the polls. Apparently, the GOP is determined not to let any such thing happen again. According to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which keeps track of changes in voting laws, 22 statutes and two executive actions aimed at restricting the franchise have been approved in 17 states since the beginning of 2011. By the center’s count, an additional 74 such bills are pending. The most popular means of discouraging those young and minority voters — who, coincidentally, tend to vote for Democrats — is legislation requiring citizens to show government-issued photo identification before they are allowed to cast a ballot. Photo ID bills have been approved by Republican-controlled legislatures in Alabama, Kansas, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin, and by referendum in Mississippi. Only one state with a Democratic-controlled legislature — Rhode Island — passed a law requiring voters to produce identification, and it does not mandate a government ID with a photo. In Virginia, Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell has not decided whether to sign a voter ID bill the legislature sent to his desk. In theory, what could be wrong with demanding proof of identity? In the real world, plenty. As Republican strategists are fully aware, minorities are overrepresented among the estimated 11 percent of citizens who do not have a government-issued photo ID. They are also painfully aware that, in 2008, President Obama won 95 percent of the African American vote and 67 percent of the Hispanic vote. It doesn’t take a genius to do the math: If you can reduce the number of black and Latino voters, you improve the Republican candidate’s chances. If photo ID laws were going to be the solution, though, Republicans had to invent a problem. The best they could come up with was The Menace of Widespread Voter Fraud. It’s a stretch. Actually, it’s a lie. There is no Widespread Voter Fraud. All available evidence indicates that fraudulent voting of the kind that photo ID laws would presumably prevent — someone shows up at the polls and votes in someone else’s name — just doesn’t happen. For a while, the GOP pointed to South Carolina, where Republican Gov. Nikki Haley said that “dead people” had somehow cast ballots in recent elections. But then the state’s election commission investigated claims of 953 zombie voters and, um, well, never mind. The number of voters came from a crude comparison of records done by the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. The elections commission actually found 207 contested votes. Of that total, 106 reflected clerical errors by poll workers, 56 reflected errors by the motor vehicles department, 32 involved people who were mistakenly listed as having voted, and three involved people who had cast absentee ballots and then died before Election Day. That left 10 contested votes — count ’em, 10 — that could not be immediately resolved. However, the commission found no evidence of fraud. Or of zombies. Of course, there are other potential kinds of electoral fraud; crooked poll workers, for example, could record votes in the names of citizens who actually stayed home. Election officials could design ballots in a way that worked to a specific candidate’s advantage or disadvantage (see Florida, 2000). But none of this would be prevented by photo ID, which still hasn’t found a problem to solve — except, perhaps, an excess of Democratic voters. Even more sinister are new laws, such as in Florida, that make it much more difficult for campaigns — or anyone else — to conduct voter-registration drives. If you thought Republicans and Democrats agreed that more Americans should register to vote, you were sadly mistaken. Florida requires that groups conducting registration drives be vetted and that registration forms be submitted within 48 hours of when they are signed — an onerous and unnecessary burden that only serves to hamper anyone seeking to expand the electorate. Let’s see, who might try to do such a thing? The Democratic Party, maybe? The Obama campaign? In the name of safeguarding the sanctity of the ballot, Republicans are trying to exclude citizens they consider likely to vote for Democrats — the young, the poor, the black and brown. Those who love democracy cannot allow this foul subterfuge to succeed.

Racial Disparity in Administration of Georgia Death Penalty

April 22 marked the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in McCleskey v. Kemp in which the Court rejected (5-4) a claim of racial bias based on a sophisticated statistical study of the death penalty in Georgia. Warren McCleskey, an African-American death row inmate convicted of killing a white police officer, presented the Court with analysis showing that defendants charged with killing white victims had odds of receiving a death sentence that were 4.3 times higher than defendants charged with killing black victims. McCleskey argued that his death sentence was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held, however, that the defendant had to show he was personally discriminated against in the course of the prosecution, and merely showing a disturbing pattern of racial disparities in Georgia over a long period of time was not sufficient to prove racial bias in his case. McCleskey also argued that when race is a factor in selecting who will die, the death penalty is unconstitutional under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment, but the Court decided the study offered was insufficient to prove that the death penalty was being applied in an arbitrary manner

As Printed in the New York Times
Georgia's Shame of a Voting Law (6 Letters)
Published: September 18, 2005
Re "Georgia's New Poll Tax" (editorial, Sept. 12):
To the Editor:
Several dozen full-time black Atlanta college students tried to buy the Georgia ID card to vote in local elections on Sept. 20. They were denied access to the ID card because they refused to surrender their home-state driver's licenses to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Is there a shred of doubt that the new Georgia poll tax is more about politics than about fraud prevention?
Janice L. Mathis
V.P., Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
Chicago, Sept. 13, 2005

Supreme Court and Judicial Activism on Health Care

Methink they doth protest too much. President called the Supreme Court Justices who are contemplating overturning Obamacare “judicial activists.” One definition of judicial activism is the usurpation of the power of the elected branches of government or appointed agencies, damaging the rule of law and democracy.
If they overturn the individual mandate, the Justices will render an opinion that will likely fly in the face of 60 years of broad interpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause. It is not a coincidence that the Commerce Clause was the legal architecture used to strike down the scaffolding of private commercial segregation across the Jim Crow South during the 1950’s. There are even whispers among the extreme right about legislative amendments to the Commerce Clause, in order to narrow its reach. This is strange talk from folk who also purport to believe in unfettered capitalism. There is an inherent and growing tension between the Commerce Clause and the 10th (State’s Rights) Amendment.
It was right-wing Republicans who coined and promulgated the phrase judicial activist to denigrate judges whose judicial philosophy differs from their own. Judicial activism is in the eye of the beholder. The Fifth Circuit, which complained today about the President’s remarks, is more conservative than most of the federal circuits and sits in President Obama’s enemy territory, the deep red south.
Bravo for the President. Obamacare is the foundation of the political challenge he faces in November, whoever the candidate is. How many times have Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich indicated that Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan is so similar to Obamacare that it disqualifies him as the GOP’s nominee? The GOP and the Tea Party have taken dead aim at Obamacare as the centerpiece of their electoral strategy. The five jurists who may vote to strike down the individual mandate are all conservative Republican appointees. Are we to believe that they have no partisan leanings? That they were purged of all political thoughts on the day of confirmation? This is philosophically the same Court that decided the 2000 Presidential election, by stopping the vote count and delivering the White House to George Bush II in an opinion so partisan that the Justices themselves warned not to view it as a precedent for future decisions. Let’s not kid ourselves, the President’s political opponents
on the Supreme Court want to overturn Obamacare and the President has a right to defend it…and us.
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote,
The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed.
If the President is not “feeling” the Justices, he has every right to say so. The right wingers are protesting and seek to graft onto the Presidency a prohibition against commenting on judicial philosophy of sitting jurists. There is no such prohibition. Judges may not comment on cases before they reach the court – to avoid the appearance of partiality. But the President is a partisan and a citizen and labors under no such constraint. On the contrary, if he believes the Court means to act in a way to harm the American people, the separation of the Executive from the Judiciary means he has a duty to speak.

Georgia Stand Your Ground Law

O.C.G.A. § 16-3-21
Use of force in defense of self or others; evidence of belief that force was necessary in murder or manslaughter prosecution


(a) A person is justified in threatening or using force against another when and to the extent that he or she reasonably believes that such threat or force is necessary to defend himself or herself or a third person against such other's imminent use of unlawful force; however, except as provided in Code Section 16-3-23, a person is justified in using force which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm only if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or herself or a third person or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

(b) A person is not justified in using force under the circumstances specified in subsection (a) of this Code section if he:

(1) Initially provokes the use of force against himself with the intent to use such force as an excuse to inflict bodily harm upon the assailant;

(2) Is attempting to commit, committing, or fleeing after the commission or attempted commission of a felony; or

(3) Was the aggressor or was engaged in a combat by agreement unless he withdraws from the encounter and effectively communicates to such other person his intent to do so and the other, notwithstanding, continues or threatens to continue the use of unlawful force.

(c) Any rule, regulation, or policy of any agency of the state or any ordinance, resolution, rule, regulation, or policy of any county, municipality, or other political subdivision of the state which is in conflict with this Code section shall be null, void, and of no force and effect.

(d) In a prosecution for murder or manslaughter, if a defendant raises as a defense a justification provided by subsection (a) of this Code section, the defendant, in order to establish the defendant's reasonable belief that the use of force or deadly force was immediately necessary, may be permitted to offer:

(1) Relevant evidence that the defendant had been the victim of acts of family violence or child abuse committed by the deceased, as such acts are described in Code Sections 19-13-1 and 19-15-1, respectively; and

(2) Relevant expert testimony regarding the condition of the mind of the defendant at the time of the offense, including those relevant facts and circumstances relating to the family violence or child abuse that are the bases of the expert's opinion.

March 19, 2012

Norman Wolfinger
Florida State's Attorney
107 West Gaines Street
Suite L-066
Tallahassee, FL 32399

Dear Mr. Wolfinger:

I am writing to encourage your office to carefully consider prosecuting Mr. Zimmerman for the death of Trayvon Martin. Neither the state of Florida, nor the nation will not be well-served by ignoring this matter. The longer it takes for prosecution to occur, the more it will grow and undermine the lawful authority of police and the courts. Our system of justice depends upon the consent of citizens to be governed. Whenever confidence in law enforcement is eroded, the entire society suffers.

This case is more about police failure to investigate and right-wing fear-driven, gun zealot takeover of Southern legislatures than anything else, including race. Zimmerman may be innocent. He may be guilty of manslaughter, or he may be a murderer. The State of Florida deserves its day in court to make its case. Many prosecutors in Florida opposed so-called Stand Your Ground Laws for the very reason they take away from prosecutors and jurors the consideration of whether deadly force in defense of self is reasonably deployed. These laws don't protect the public - they protect the careers of pandering activist legislators. At the time the Florida law was changed to remove a centuries-old "duty to retreat", it was predicted that the law would empower vigilantes. Now that is occurring. This is not principally about race, but about justice and the kind of nation we want to be.

These facts must be weighed in favor of prosecution:
a. A witness heard the scream of a “young boy”
b. Zimmerman followed Martin despite being told by the police not to do so
c. Zimmerman revealed his own bias in statements to the dispatcher
d. Zimmerman suffered no serious injury
e. Zimmerman initiated the confrontation
f. Zimmerman had an exit route – his vehicle
g. Martin had no apparent capacity to carry out a threat of serious bodily harm

We request that you respond to these questions:

1. What is the nature and source of Mr. Zimmerman’s special relationship to the Sanford police department?
2. What about Trayvon Martin’s behavior justified the use of deadly force?
3. Does Zimmerman contend that Martin had a weapon?
4. Exactly what is the nature of the imminent threat that Zimmerman feared from Martin?
5. Do you have ballistics or other test results to tell the distance between Zimmerman and Martin at the time the weapon was fired?
6. Why weren’t interested witnesses contacted?
7. Are any police staff being investigated for failure to take witness statements?
8. What was the condition of Martin’s clothing?
9. Was either person under the influence of drugs or alcohol?

Although many prosecutors disfavor them, you don’t have to oppose so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws to know that this case requires special attention. Failure to thoroughly answer these questions will only undermine future legitimate claims of self-defense. As you know, the prosecutor’s role is to seek justice. Justice demands answers to these (and other) questions and must be administered without fear or favor. The eyes of the world are watching whether justice can be achieved in Seminole County. I look forward to your prompt response.


Sincerely,


Janice L. Mathis, Esq.

Cc: Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

NBCFAE and RPC Meet with DOT

For More Information
Contact pressdepartment@rainbowpush.org
(404) 525-5663
JANICELMATHIS@RAINBOWPUSH.ORG
www.rainbowpushatlanta.org
www.nbcfae.org


(March 17, 2012 –Washington, D.C.) Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., President and Founder of RPC, and Roosevelt Lenard, National President of National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees, met on Thursday, March 15, 2012, with US Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Michael Huerta, Acting Administrator of the FAA, to discuss fairness in employment and contracting at the FAA. Acting Administrator Huerta admitted that despite recent efforts to improve representation of blacks, other minorities and women in jobs and contracts, that much more needed to be done. A recent study by the NBCFAE showed the FAA as the least inclusive agency in federal government.
Secretary LaHood committed to regular meetings between RPC, NBCFAE and DOT and FAA officials to work toward meaningful solutions. Huerta indicated that goal-setting and data collection do not run afoul of prohibitions against quotas. NBCFAE commissioned a study of FAA employment which revealed that in 2007 blacks, other minorities, women and people with disabilities were significantly under-represented at the FAA, especially above the GS 8 grade. For example, in 2007, white males comprised 79% of FAA employees, but only 68% of the federal civilian workforce and 72% of the civilian labor force. According to Mr. Lenard, “the disparity cannot be explained by a lack of qualified minority and female applicants.” Neither the FAA nor DOT disputed the findings of the NBCFAE study.
A barrier study to determine why blacks, other minorities and women are locked out of FAA was agreed to by the FAA more than two years ago, but has not yet been accomplished. Acting Administrator Huerta indicated that he had made completion of the study “a personal priority for the FAA.” If the barrier study reveals systemic patterns of exclusion of blacks, other minorities and women, it clears the way for narrowly-tailored solutions to address the issue.
The FAA also completed the Citizenship Education Fund’s survey of diversity and inclusion at the request of its Vice President, Janice L. Mathis, Esq., who attended the meeting, which also included FAA Chief Counsel Kathryn B. Thomson and U.S. DOT General Counsel Robert S. Rivkin. “Many of the survey questions focusing on contracting were incompletely answered due to lack of data. Administrator Huerta agreed that the FAA needed to do a better job of data collection to document whether or not federal contracts were being awarded fairly as required by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” indicated Mathis.
Transportation constitutes a potential linchpin for economic recovery in the U.S. On that point Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. and Secretary LaHood were in complete agreement. LaHood pointed to recent progress in creating regional transportation plans in Illinois and Georgia as evidence that economic growth spurred by infrastructure investments transcends partisan divides. Jackson indicated that transportation projects create jobs and provide the means for communities plagued by high unemployment to access existing jobs.
According to NBCFAE board member Ron Bagley, “we are grateful to Rev. Jackson and RPC for setting up this meeting. And we appreciate the fact that the Secretary had many of the decision makers in the room. But of course, we must continue to work hard to make sure that real progress is made.” Rev. Jackson indicated that he expects to make fairness in transportation a focal point of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s annual meeting in Chicago, July 11-15.
For more than thirty-five years the NBCFAE has worked to promote equal employment opportunity for black, female and other minority employees and to provide an effective liaison between the FAA and federal aviation employees. The Rainbow PUSH Coalition works to level the playing field in civic and economic life.