Fact-Checking Eric Holder’s South Carolina Speech
by Charles C. Johnson
Attorney General Eric Holder got a lot wrong in his speech in Columbia, South Carolina, but two things in particular: 1) that voter fraud is rare and 2) that South Carolina’s voter laws are racist, not only by their intent, but by their effect.
Holder told his audience that included the NAACP top brass:
… I learned early in my legal career – when I actually investigated and prosecuted voting-fraud cases – making voter registration easier is simply not likely, by itself, to make our elections more susceptible to fraud. Indeed, responsible parties on all sides of this debate have acknowledged that in-person voting fraud is uncommon.
But Alabama Democrat (and black) former congressman Artur Davis says that, on the contrary, voter fraud is far more common than surmised. Indeed, the very day that Holder spoke in South Carolina The Daily Caller broke a story highlighting the criminal voter fraud conducted by the NAACP in Mississippi and Ohio. Democrats, including Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, Pittsburgh District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., and Miami, FL. State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, have all prosecuted the voter fraud that Holder says is rare. Voter I.D. would hamper the ease with which voter fraud could be committed.
In speaking of voter I.D., “we concluded that the state had failed to meet its burden of proving that the voting change would not have a racially discriminatory effect,” Holder told the audience in South Carolina, but he offers no evidence for his claim. Perhaps that’s because the evidence that requiring a photo I.D. has an “unfair impact on minority voters” is utterly lacking. The Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez really had to stretch in South Carolina’s case because, as the Wall Street Journal notes, “8.4% of the state’s registered white voters lack photo ID, compared to 10% of nonwhite voters.” Only in Eric Holder’s so-called Justice Department is the normal variance between different racial groups in identification documents tantamount to disparate racial impact while the coordinated thuggish behavior of the New Black Panthers against white voters or the discrimination against white voters in Guam were nothing to see. In South Carolina Holder brags about “a record number of new investigations—more than 100 in the last fiscal year” but somehow those two instances didn’t make the cut. Holder warned of “both overt and subtle forms of discrimination [that] remain all too common,” but the subtle forms of discrimination are simply too subtle to be noticed while the overt discrimination is too obvious to be actionable.
Holder fails to understand that this is not the South Carolina of the 1960s, the Confederate flag flying over the capitol notwithstanding. Indeed Tim Scott, one of the most popular congressmen in the Republican Party, is a black man who represents a congressional district that is 75% white. This is an achievement that no Democrat has ever accomplished in the South (or much of elsewhere for that matter) because of the persistent folly of the Voting Rights Act, which, by making congressional districts as black as possible have diluted the need for black congressmen to build bridges across the racial divide and limited their effect on the national conversation, as Abigail Thernstrom, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, has noted. President Obama, Eric Holder’s boss, must know this well, having been trounced in his ill-considered bid to replace Bobbie Rush. It was only when he moved out to the ‘burbs and courted white voters that he began to have an effect.
Perhaps Holder doesn’t understand the achievement made in South Carolina because Holder’s roots don’t extend south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but from the Barbados and New York City. How uncomfortable it must be for Holder that the state that once enshrined the superiority of the white race in its constitution is now governed by Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s first non-white governor. Rather than celebrate these victories for what they are, as evidence that South Carolina, like the rest of America, has turned from the racism that made a Civil Rights Act necessary. Eric Holder seems to believe he is still living in Jim Crow America.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?
50 Comments
South Carolina needs to pass some tougher voter laws.
How many bubbles are in a bar of Ivory Soap?
(I say that sarcastically, and tongue in cheek).
But in all seriousness, I wholeheartedly believe if you are third generation Government Dole, and own no real property, that you should be ineligible to vote.
Anything to continue the fraud that they need to win the election. We all know if Obama had to run on his political beliefs….Fascism, the American people knew the truth about his school history and his abysmal (but intentional) record on the economy they would lose, epically…….without the voter fraud. They have already counted those votes in their minds.
Holder… Obama's right hand man in fundamentally transforming America..into New EuropeWest..
The Department of Social Injustice under Eric the Red strikes again!
I still have a hard time believing Holder hasn't been removed from office for malfeasance, at best.
Holder is perhaps an even bigger liar and danger to the country than his boss since he can bring the DoInjustice down on anyone who dares to question the Obamessiah and his agenda. I have to say I agree with Cowboy up top of the thread – if your income comes from the government either in the form of welfare or as a government employee you should not be able to vote yourself more of the same.
Did he come out and endorse Romney too?
And I agree with a lot of people that there should be mandatory drug testing every time you pick up your welfare check. Want 'free' money? pee in the jar.
In speaking of voter I.D., “we concluded that the state had failed to meet its burden of proving that the voting change would not have a racially discriminatory effect,” Holder told the audience in South Carolina.
So in order to reform voter registration laws, we have to prove a negative. A grand legal arguement from a fine government litigator. What a moron.
Make it free to get a photo ID in the state. Then the whole "poll tax" argument dies.
Pay for the whole thing by no longer allowing welfare/food stamp recipients to purchase soda pop, which leads to further health problems that we have to pay for again.
Make it a nationwide jingle:
If it fizzes and it's sweet,
We're not paying for that treat
Because that law's been re-wrote
So that everyone that HAS the right…can Vote!! Hurray!~
Next subject.
Why is the DOJ going against their own precedent? The same voter ID laws were OK'd by the DOJ in other states?
Because when they saw the tsunami of states preparing to pass the same laws, they had to stop or delay their passage until after the November election, at least. It's SO obvious, it's laughable. And, it proves that the Democrats KNOW that there is a lot of fraud and they ADMIT that they are doing it……..otherwise, they wouldn't care.
I agree with everything in your post except the Confederate flag does not fly over the capitol. It is in a monument/memorial area on the grounds.
Facts, to Holder, are what he says they are.
Noone should object to limiting fraud in our elections.
Mr. Holder, a few days ago, I had to enter one of your Federal Courthouses. I had to show my ID. Under your logic, you're own Justice Dept. policy is unconstitutional.
There were laws in all or nearly all states that disqualified people who received public charity from voting. They were called 'pauper' laws, because formerly – really long ago, in the 1950's and '60's *wink* – in order to receive public assistance, one had to sign a pauper's oath and being legally a pauper disqualified one from voting. Of course, those disqualifications were done away with because they had a 'disparate impact' on Attorney General Holder's 'people', as he referred to them in his Congressional testimony.
Anyone find a fact yet? I can't seem to find anywhere on the net this trash ever spoke or wrote a fact.
Fact check everything Holder says after he was flat busted lying about The Gunwalker Scandal.
Everything.
In Texas, voter ID's are already free. All one must do is appear at the local Department of Public Safety drivers' license office and show something – utility bill even – showing your home address and they will issue you a photo ID for free. Guess what? Texas' voter ID law is being challenged on the same grounds as is South Carolina, so the argument doesn't die, the racists who have decided that, ipso facto, being white equals being wrong simply ignore the facts and continue to rant and conclude that requiring a photo ID in order to vote equals discrimination. Don't you understand what's going on, yet? Law and reason have nothing to do with it; revenge for real or imagined injuries and insults is what is going on.
I am a victim of voter fraud! I went to vote and was refused. Why? Cuz someone had already voted using my name. Since there is no ID check, it's rather easy for anyone to walk in and claim to be whoever they say with very little problem. That's OK just as long some "mythical old black man" in the deep south isn't refused his right to vote because he doesn't have an ID. I guess his rights trump mine? What a joke the election process is in this country.
How hard is it to get an ID, and why wouldn't an honest person want one?
It is very easy to register to vote. I can think of no reason that requiring a person to identify themselves at the voting booth is a bad thing.
Well, it might not please someone wanting to vote illegally.
Veterans and Taxpayers (filing for a tax return does not qualify), Only!!!
So, the "poll tax" argument isn't even a part of it there in Texas?
Oh man. Back to the drawing board. OK.
Gonna need a new jingle.
If you don't know what you're talking about, you're probably better off reading about the subject until you do. Lest you fly too far off the handle, I'm referring to the first two sentences in your comment. Why indeed?
Take your own advice simpleton.
Owning the right to vote does not and cannot hinge upon whether or not you own property.
The correct answer, which would absolutely suffice the issue you have and why you turn to that errant solution is do exactly what our FOunders and Framers did – LIMIT WHAT CAN BE VOTED ON (like, say ummm, your property – set your property outside the reach of the population's vote….set your right to speak outside the purview of the majority vote, set your right to keep and bear arms outside the ability of the majority to remove it by a vote etc).
Cowboy, your heart is in the right place, but your policy is misguided. People need not be stripped of their right to vote, it is just that what they can and cannot vote upon, as set forth in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution has to be observed!
Ask yourself, CL, does a homeless man retain the right to speak, worship and bear arms? Must a person own property in order to exercise them? C'mon now, you know better than that. I know you know better than that.
Emotion got ya here, and if you think it through I believe you will admit that to be true.
Wow, that's going to leave a mark! Tell me, wise solon, what is the answer to sistyugler1's question? Why does the Department of Justice seem to selectively weigh in on this issue? Do you have any idea at all?
I listen to nothing that the liar that is our AG has to say. He should be in a prison cell.
Let's go ahead and have, openly, the 14th Amendment ramifications of the civil rights act. By all means, let us discuss equal protection of the laws…..let's do exactly that. For hat will lead to exploring why the 14th came to be in the first place and when that happens, the "minority" community will be looking to the gun grabbing permission slip demanding DEMOCRATS for answers as to why THEY have been so guilty of violating the rights of so many. Hopefully, at the same time they, along with othrs will then snap on the Republican party that is filled with progressives who act just like Democrats on the permission slip front.
So then THEO, lets do have that 14th Amendment discussion, Shall we?
No.
Emotion did not get me here.
“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the Republic.”
(This quote has always been attributed to Benjamin Franklin, although it has never been fully proven)
We are there.
Um, what? I think you need to give me a little bit more to go on. I must be wearing different tinfoil than you, because I'm not picking up what you're putting down.
Georgia and Indiana. Unless you believe Media Matters spin, which you probably do.
Sometimes I feel like I am living in Nazi Germany and everything said by anyone has to be approved by da fuhrer.
His head moves and his arms move. Hell, even his eyes and mouth move.
I see no strings so there must be a hand up his butt.
If Holder can so easily lie under oath, VIOLATE his oath of office, what makes anyone think he even knows what truth is?
In the early years – during the first century of the Republic – states routinely and nearly universally had property qualifications for voting and until the Civil War era those qualifications had nothing to do with race and everything to do with the notion that if you had to 'have a dog in the fight'. Remember that states are widely believed to be possessed of 'inherent authority' to pass legislation on whatever topic enters into the minds of their legislators. So, you see, the property requirement to vote was another limitation on the exercise of government power, placing the interests of those who would be taxed against the interests of the legislature. Remember only the Federal government was (and is) seen as being a government of specified, limited, authority. A pauper's oath had to be renewed every year (six months in some states) as a condition of receiving public assistance and if the previous one had expired and you didn't sign a new one, one was again eligible to vote.
Yep and probably in other states as well. It depends on whether they have free photo ID's or not. Oh, yes; keep in mind that the 'poll tax' argument is specious as well, since the cost of photo ID's is less than a twelve-pack of beer in most places. Just give up your beer buzz for one night and you have the money for the ID. But that counter-argument gets no traction, since those allegedly discriminated against don't have enough money, because of discrimination of course. What they get in welfare doesn't count, you see.
Why does this guy still have a job?
An agency he oversees sold 2,000+ assault rifles to Mexican drug lords.
Selling 2,000+ assault rifles to Mexican drug lords is a bad thing.
It's not that hard to figure out…
First of all, under the proposed SC law, YOU CAN STILL VOTE without a photo. All one needs do is sign an affidavit that you really are who you say you are.
Secondly there are several ways to get a free Photo ID, including if I recall correctly, someone will come to your home if you can't travel.
PS,
after just a brief review, SC found at least 900 dead folks who voted.
Well how about this– Indiana is not under the jurisdiction of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and when Georgia passed its voter ID law, the Department of Justice at the time did not challenge it under the Act. That's not to say the Justice Department was wrong last time, any more than to say the Justice Department is right in this instance. I'm just saying that by asking the question, you showed your lack of familiarity with the subject at hand, which probably makes your commentary on the matter somewhat less valuable.
And now you know.
Holder is a criminal and an enemy of the United States of America…not a defender of it's laws and it's freedoms according to our Constitution…which he and his false messiah trample on daily!
He should be tried and sent to prison for crimes against humanity…as should his false messiah…but there aren't enough MEN with cajones in Congress to get it done…in both parties!
Cleaning house come November 2012…again…and this time…this time…we will eradicate all who escaped in 2010…guaranteed!
~~~
2012 RALLY CRY – “BACK TO THE FUTURE – BACK TO GROUND ZERO”!
~~~
It is true that Indiana does not have to have approval from the DOJ. But, Indiana's voter law was challenged in the courts and upheld.
So, in one case the DOJ went against their own precedent and in the other case they went against precedent in the courts.
Holder knows he can't win this. It's purely political, race-baiting and delay tactics.
"You know, comrades," says Stalin, "that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how."
Chapter 5, "Memoirs of Stalin's Former Secretary"
"Indeed, responsible parties on all sides of this debate have acknowledged that in-person voting fraud is uncommon."
At least, getting caught is uncommon.
He also says that most of the fraud is absentee voting. Why don't we tighten that thing right up?
Jan 20, 2013 – Holder is out.
Feb 2013 – Holder, Jarret, & half of BO's newly unemployed Cabinet are indicted.
By 2014 – The whole Felonious lot are wearing orange.
Sometime between now & then, some Friend-of-Humanity "Adolf Eichmanns" George Soros & he ends up paying for what he's done to a 1/2 dozen countries & hundreds of millions of people.
Remember, Liberals are: Progressive in name, Gropressive in fact!
You can't get food stamps unless you have a I.D. so does that make welfare racist? Hmmm actually it is because it was designed to keep the blacks in line since the democrats failed 1st at keeping slavery and then 2nd at keeping Jim Crow.
Voter fraud is uncommon? In the last election is was rampant. Only a TOTAL LOON wouldn't know that? This CLOWN is our AG? Why hasn't he been fired yet? Hmm, I wonder!
Lying=Holder's first language.
Any Jackwagon can register to vote months in advance. Stop the game playing. It is called being an adult. If you are legit, you can get a state issued ID card and have 2 other forms of ID or a utility bill as to where you live. But this entire debate is a fraud 100%.
And his boss too
Looking at the U.S. Census Bureau, SC has about 4.6M residents. Here is the link I found: (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/45000.html).
66.2% are white, with the remaining 32.8% as non-white. So, if we put this to a simple math problem, you will see this doesn't hold water. Sally has 66 apples and Jane has 34. Sally is forced to give up 8% and Jane 10%. Who has to give away more apples? Sally would have to forfeit 5 apples and Jane would give up 3.
Now, does the "unfair impact on minority voters" hold water when 244.9K whites would be effected, but only 156.3K non-whites would be effected. As we've said from day one of Obama's Presidency, simple math is something the Democrats fail miserably doing.
You really don't understand any of this, do you? The DOJ is like a local district attorney's office, but on a national level. If there is a potential violation of the law, they will make a decision whether to bring suit and act as the prosecution. Indiana is not subject to the Voting Rights Act, so the DOJ could not bring suit against Indiana for violations of the Act, even if it wanted to.
Georgia, however, is subject to the Voting Rights Act. Why didn't Eric Holder and his team bring suit against Georgia? Can you try to think of a reason why that might be? Is it because the law is significantly different than South Carolina's? Maybe, but that's probably not it. Is it because Eric Holder and his team really like Georgia? I doubt it. You know what I think the reason is? It's because the DOJ has yet to complete work on a functioning time machine. The time for DOJ to act on Georgia's law was in 2005 and 2006, when the DOJ was staffed by folks with a different set of priorities.
Have some read and explain this to you.
You must be logged in to post a comment.