Bullies in the Courthouse
By Anita MonCrief
Anyone who ever spent time in a children’s schoolyard can spot a bully a mile away; their aggressive swagger, their entourage of enablers, and of course, their brutish intimidation of vulnerable targets. The schoolyard bully complex is an archetype as old as time, endured by societies throughout the ages, but usually kept in check through the bully’s own recognition of his limited power. He knows he can push only so far before society pushes back.
However, there are some bullies whose appetite for tyranny extends well beyond the schoolyard. They do not alter behavior based on social limits, because they do not believe that society’s limits apply to them. Given the right circumstances, these “super bullies” can destroy whatever they set their sights on. Unfortunately for America, a group of “super bullies” has not just emerged, but united, and their sights are set on our nation’s electoral system.
From the hallowed halls of Yale, Harvard and other Ivy League institutions, elitist lawyers have teamed up with activist organizers and self-appointed “community leaders” to engage in targeted election litigation that exploits emotionally dependent arguments from a bygone era.
ACORN’s Project Vote, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Advancement Project, and groups like the NAACP are quick to join in this contrived legal firestorm, targeting state election codes to extract settlements that alter those election codes just enough to assure future “super bully” behavior can be applied to state election processes and leveraged to partisan advantage – all done, by the way, with the assistance of our country’s own Department of Justice.
In 2011, Judicial Watch used FOIA requests to successfully prove coordination between “super bullies”, but this type of aggressive litigation has roots that reach back to the Clinton administration.
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) was the first bill signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton, who enjoyed a long career alongside ACORN, which was founded in Little Rock, Arkansas. Under Section 7 of the NVRA law, state social welfare agencies are required to offer voter registration forms to anyone seeking government services, including drivers’ licenses. This law is commonly known as “Motor Voter.”
A lack of knowledge regarding the implications of NVRA’s Section 7, coupled with low public scrutiny, allowed Project Vote and other groups to operate on the edges of society – and they liked it that way. Quietly, all across America, the DOJ has been a willing accomplice to the “super bullies’ ” assault on the states, increasingly serving as far more than just an accomplice by facilitating its own frivolous litigation to generate binding consent agreements against state election administrations.
A list of recent bully-tactics litigation:
- National Council of La Raza v. Miller (Nevada)
- Fair Elections Ohio v. Husted (Ohio)
- Scott, Project Vote, NAACP v. Schedler (Louisiana)
- Project Vote v. Texas
Often, it only takes one person to stand up to a bully, but what about a bully backed by billions, with the best lawyers in the country and tremendous (albeit, misplaced) public support? Litigation that will challenge the narrative of voter suppression is crucial at this juncture in history. When the DOJ files a lawsuit against a state they assume no one will stand up and fight back. The states are afraid of the stigma that those allegations bring and of getting on the wrong side of the federal government.
True the Vote is fighting for those states who are being bullied and intimidated by this increasingly out of control pack of “super bullies”, including the DOJ. However, the bully pack’s entourage of enablers is legion; mainstream media, so-called “community leaders”, and countless radical activist groups, are ever ready to attempt to silence critics by manufacturing outrage.
The “super bullies” failed attempts to silence True the Vote and other supporting organizations will over time encourage others to speak out and stand up against this orchestrated effort to use baseless litigation to destroy the integrity of the American electoral system. Thankfully, American society is still strong enough to assure that fair rule of law, not the schoolyard bully, will prevail.