Massive assault on voter ID laws

Just last week, a federal court struck down a Texas law requiring voters to present a government-issued photo ID before casting a ballot. According to the organization website, “Advancement Project intervened as defendants in this federal litigation in support of the Department of Justice’s position that Texas’ Photo ID law is racially retrogressive and should be denied preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”

Prior to the ruling, on Sept. 13, 2011, the Advancement Project sent a letter to the Justice Department, calling on the Civil Rights Division to reject the voter ID law. It also delivered a petition of 120,000 signatures demanding the department deny pre-clearance of Texas’ law.

And on Aug. 27, U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley struck down Ohio’s “wrong precinct” law.

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“In the lawsuit, brought on the behalf of several labor and community organizations, attorneys from Advancement Project and Service Employees International Union argued that Ohio’s law unconstitutionally penalizes thousands of voters for poll worker errors that disproportionately impacted African Americans,” the Advancement Project stated on its website.

As WND senior staff reporter Aaron Klein recently reported, the Brennan Center for Justice is another major leftist group with a history of biased research that’s behind the national campaign to paint voter ID laws as racist. Klein noted that the voter ID data collected by the group has been called into question by experts and has been contradicted by other credible studies. Yet the center’s information is cited widely by news media and even members of the Obama administration.

Nonetheless, the Advancement Project and the Brennan Center have joined forces to create a “Talking About Voting 2012″ toolkit with talking points for people to use against voter ID laws when speaking with potential voters.

Some of those talking points include:

• “Unfair voting laws are being passed by politicians who are trying to manipulate the system for their own benefit – because they don’t like what voters have to say.”
• “It’s wrong to pass laws for political gain that take away the right to vote from millions of eligible citizens, including seniors and veterans.”
• “As the world’s leading democracy, we can’t pass laws that block some eligible Americans from voting, or that deny them the opportunity to participate equally in our democracy.”
• “Emphasize the need for flexibility in ID laws, and that ‘one size doesn’t fit all.’”

The document also  instructs its activists to “call out politicians,” stating, “Communications that name politicians as people who are manipulating election laws for their own political gain are also effective.”

ACORN ties and Obama contributions

According to the National Republican Congressional Committee, or NRCC, the Advancement Project had ACORN listed as one of its “voter protection coalition partners” in Pennsylvania.

The NRCC also notes that the Advancement Project “wrote a legal brief on behalf of ACORN” in the case ACORN v. Blanco, arguing that Louisiana violated the Voting Rights Act when it failed to provide out-of-state satellite voting centers to displaced residents after Hurricane Katrina.

Some Advancement Project staff and board members who have donated to the Obama campaign and/or have ties to the administration include:

• Scott Roberts, former organizer and strategist for the 2008 Obama campaign, is now campaign coordinator for Advancement Project’s Ending the School-to-Prison Pipeline program.
• Judith Browne Dianis, a lawyer who has worked for the NAACP and contributed $500 to Obama in 2008, is now co-director of the Advancement Project.
• Scott Melamed, who worked on the Obama presidential campaign in 2007 and 2008, is now a development associate with the Advancement Project.
• Molly Munger, who co-founded the Advancement Project with Stephen English, donated:$5,000 to Obama for America, $61,600 to the DNC and $71,600 to the ... Munger is a member of the Advancement Project’s board of directors.
• Penda Hair, who is former director of the Washington, D.C., office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, co-founded Advancement Project and serves as co-director. Hair, a Harvard Law School graduate, has spearheaded legal challenges to voter ID laws, and shecontributed $2,000 to Obama in 2008.
• Eddie Hailes, former general counsel for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, contributed $1,000 to Obama in 2008. For 10 years, he worked for the NAACP. Hailes is now the Advancement Project’s general counsel and managin....
• James Freeman, former editor on the Harvard Review, contributed $250 to Obama in 2008. He is now director of the Advancement Project’s Ending the School-to-Prison P....
• Others include Ana Reyes, who contributed $250 to Obama in 2007, Erica McKnight, whocontributed $320 to Obama in 2008 and Elizabeth Westfall, who contributed $2,300 to Obama in 2008.

The Center notes that other donors to the Advancement Project include:

• Ford Foundation ($5,266,000 since 2003),
• California Endowment ($2,638,212 since 2001),
• William & Flora Hewlett Foundation ($2,303,500 since 2001),
• Rockefeller Foundation ($2,150,000 since 2001),
• James Irvine Foundation ($1,650,000 since 2002),
• David & Lucile Packard Foundation ($1,230,000 since 2003),
• Tides Foundation ($875,540 since 2007),
• Charles Stewart Mott Foundation ($650,000 since 2001),
• the Carnegie Corp. of New York ($584,000 since 2001)

According to the NRCC, the Advancement Project has also received contributions from:

• the AFL-CIO
• Moveon.org
• NAACP Voter Fund
• SEIU

MUCH MORE