Hawaii told to prove it complies with voter registration law
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
WASHINGTON — Hawai'i is one of 18 states that have been sent a letter by the federal Justice Department over compliance with a civil rights law.
The letter asks the states to provide evidence that they're obeying the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 law that's intended to make it easier for poor minorities and the disabled to register to vote.
Specifically, the letter wants the states to spell out their compliance with a provision that requires all public-assistance agencies to offer voter registration services.
The letters indicate the federal Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is now taking steps to enforce the law that was nicknamed the "Motor Voter" law. The division had been under attack for allegedly pursuing policies aimed at suppressing the votes of Democratic-leaning minorities.
The letters said that the targeted states were:
The letters asked the states to identify all agencies offering registration forms.
The McClatchy-Tribune News Service disclosed last spring that the Civil Rights Division had failed to enforce a variety of voting-rights laws intended to protect the ability of minorities, especially African-Americans, to vote. The controversy helped lead to the resignations of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and seven other officials, including Bradley Schlozman, the former acting civil rights chief.
Attorney general Michael Mukasey, whose nomination was confirmed last night by the Senate, has pledged to insulate the agency's law enforcement decisions from partisan politics.
Some election watchdog groups are skeptical, saying that the enforcement push might be a cosmetic response to criticism and congressional scrutiny.
In August, as he was facing demands from the House Judiciary Committee to testify about his alleged role in the voting-rights scandal, John Tanner, the chief of the department's Voting Rights Section, sent the letters to the 18 states.
The states receiving the letters include three that frequently are battlegrounds in presidential and Senate races — Iowa, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The others are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Hawai'i, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New York, South Carolina, Utah and Vermont.
In 2004, when President Bush was up for re-election, the section took the opposite stance on the Motor Voter law. Joseph Rich, the voting rights chief at the time, said voter-registration groups provided evidence of widespread noncompliance. But, Rich said, the division's voting rights counsel, Hans von Spakovsky, whom he's described as the "de facto voting rights chief," told him the section wasn't interested in stepping up enforcement.
From 1995 to 1996, the first two years the Motor Voter law was in effect, 2.6 million people registered to vote at public-assistance agencies, but that number declined to about 1 million.
Michael Slater, deputy director of Project Vote, a voter registration group, said his group is "pleased that the department is starting to build a track record in support of their frequent claim that they enforce the law evenhandedly."
