The firings of 8 U.S. attorneys, for what appear to be political motives, continues to be a hot issue. However, again, we must not lose sight of why this is a big deal. One of the motivations behind some these firings was that these attorneys would not prosecute so-called Democratic “voter fraud” cases. Why? Because, as they put it, there was no evidence there to support that such a thing was happening.

You see, particularly during the last election, the Republican voter intimidation machine was in full effect and they were looking for ways to discourage Black and Latino voters by threatening them with outrageous claims of being able to prosecute them for the most stupid things. For example, there are stories of black voters being told that they may not be able to vote if they had unpaid utilities bills, black voters being told that they would be arrested at polling places if they had unpaid parking tickets and, in 2006, one Republican candidate’s campaign (Tad Nguyen of California) sent 14,000 letters to LEGAL immmigrants, threatening them with deportation for voting in a federal election.

Against this backdrop, the Republican desire to cling to power was so strong that it led to them chasing ghosts (or actually trying to create them) in looking for cases to bolster their claims that people were illegally voting for Democrats. Never mind that, in this country, it is hard enough to get people just to vote, much less have to worry about illegal votes.

So, now we have a view from the inside at the height of this madness. Joseph D. Rich held the distinction of being the voting chief in the Justice Department’s civil rights division from 1999-2005. In a piece he wrote for the L.A. Times, he discusses how politicized the Justice Department has become under Bush and how the rights of minority voters have been threatened as a result.

For example:

It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats.

This pattern also extended to hiring. In March 2006, Bradley Schlozman was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. Two weeks earlier, the administration was granted the authority to make such indefinite appointments without Senate confirmation. That was too bad: A Senate hearing might have uncovered Schlozman’s central role in politicizing the civil rights division during his three-year tenure.

Schlozman, for instance, was part of the team of political appointees that approved then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s plan to redraw congressional districts in Texas, which in 2004 increased the number of Republicans elected to the House. Similarly, Schlozman was acting assistant attorney general in charge of the division when the Justice Department OKd a Georgia law requiring voters to show photo IDs at the polls. These decisions went against the recommendations of career staff, who asserted that such rulings discriminated against minority voters. The warnings were prescient: Both proposals were struck down by federal courts.

Schlozman continued to influence elections as an interim U.S. attorney. Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department’s long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration’s aims more transparent.

So, indeed, these firings are a big deal for us.

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