Suppressing the vote on two fronts and, natch, the DOJ refuses to testify

a two-pronged strategy for voter suppression...

State welfare offices across the country are not offering millions of low-income Americans the opportunity to register to vote when applying for public assistance despite a federal law requiring them to do so, according to an analysis of a recent federal voting registration report and experts who say the Department of Justice and states are to blame.

and...

At the same time, the Justice Department's Voting Section, which enforces voting rights and supervises elections in some states, is pressuring 10 states to do more to purge voter rolls -- or remove ineligible voters -- before the 2008 presidential election, according to letters sent to state election officials this spring.

"We conducted an analysis of each state's total voter registration numbers as a percentage of citizen voting age population," wrote John Tanner, the Department of Justice Voting Section chief, in an April 18, 2007, letter to North Carolina's top election official. "We write now to assess the changes in your voter registration list ... and the subsequent removal of persons no longer eligible to vote."

say, does that name, john tanner, ring a bell...?

from TPMmuckraker yesterday...

The House Judiciary Committee was set to hold a hearing on the Civil Rights Division's voting rights section tomorrow, but no more. That's because the Justice Department has refused to allow the chief of the section, John Tanner, to testify. The committee has postponed the hearing until the Department allows Tanner to appear.

the reason the states aren't complying is because they know the doj won't enforce the law...

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