Dem Legal Brief: Van Hollen Is "Dead Wrong" in Suppression Suit

Wisconsin can lead the way on October 23 in the most intensely political arena in American society: The courtroom.

Pretensions aside, the judicial branch of government is a dressed-up tool of political power.

As in most areas of government, today’s Republican Party is committed to acquiring power at extreme costs, indifferent at best to the rule of law and democratic values.

In J.B. Van Hollen-Republican Party v. Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) et al, we may see a public display of how low the GOP has gone when Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi rules on a motion to dismiss Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s futile attempt at voter suppression.

No doubt Van Hollen will be rewarded for his political fidelity, while civil rights, the rule of law, and voting rights—well, these remain mere liberal concerns to the smirking GOP.

But so eager is Van Hollen to suppress voters this November using the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that he grossly misreads the federal statute and misses by a mile the requirements for the extraordinary writ of mandamus judicial order that he seeks to enforce his peculiar view that he should be the official instructing the GAB how to do its job for the benefit of Senator John McCain.

Let’s hope Judge Sumi offers a detailed explanation in her rulings exposing as much as possible the nature of this despicable abuse of office by Van Hollen. That way the political system can hold Van Hollen accountable for his betrayal of the people of Wisconsin.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s brief offers insights into Van Hollen’s vacuity and nihilistic political values, though not describing his arguments as such:

The lawsuit has numerous procedural defects, each of which independently precludes this court form reaching the merits of the complaint. … (Including that the) Attorney General has no authority to change the eligibility standards for Wisconsin voters or compel the GAB to change eligibility standards.

However, it is vitally important that the Court, as well as the voting public, understand that on top of all of the procedural issues, there is not a shred of merit to the Attorney General’s legal position on the meaning of HAVA, and not a shred of evidence that there is any voter fraud that exists or could be revealed through retroactive HAVA checks. In light of the extraordinary and alarmist rhetoric included in the Attorney General’s Complaint and subsequent filings (suggesting the Court must act or the entire Presidential election may be thrown into doubt) the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW) will address the merits directly.

First, a failed match between the voter rolls and the DOT or SSA databases does not reflect any defect in a voter’s eligibility — rather, it reflects a mismatch of information between two separately-created computer databases. Second, HAVA does not mandate that Wisconsin perform retroactive ‘checks’ on registered voters on or after a date certain — rather, it requires that the state ‘coordinate’ its statewide voter registration database with the databases of the DOT and SSA, leaving the method and means of doing so in the discretion of the state. Third, HAVA does not mandate that a state take any action impacting the eligibility of a voter in the case of a non-match — rather, it leaves such issues up to the discretion of the state.

Wisconsin has already exercised this discretion.

After hearing substantial and undisputed evidence that failed matches were the result of database irregularities and clerical errors, and that no fraud whatsoever has been detected, the GAB voted 5-1 on August 28, 2008 to adopt a rule preserving a voter’s basic rights in the event that an attempt to match her registration information against other systems did not succeed. This rule ensures that Wisconsin complies with one of the central provisions of HAVA, which requires states to adopt ‘safeguards to ensure that eligible voters are not removed in error from the official list of eligible voters,’ and prohibits states from rejecting registered voters based upon nonmaterial, technical errors in the registration process.

This means that the Attorney General (is) not only dead wrong about what HAVA requires and the duties and obligations of the GAB under Wisconsin law, but also that the relief seemingly sought by the Attorney General (and explicitly sought by the RPW) would itself violate substantive provisions of HAVA by potentially disenfranchising tens of thousands of voters based upon technical discrepancies between bureaucratic databases.