Thumb On The Scale

Last Election Day in the U.S., three members of black supremacist group New Black Panthers, one of them wielding an nightstick, stood in front of a polling building in Philadelphia wearing black berets and military-type garb. The Justice Department “filed a complaint under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act…after months of research and acquiring a sworn affidavit attesting to the intimidation,” although they “inexplicably…did not enter the affidavit in the court case.” Here’s what civil rights activist and attorney Bartle Bull, who is a former campaign manager for Jimmy Carter and Robert Kennedy, described in said affidavit:

I watched the shorter man with the weapon point it at individuals and slap it in his hand…I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every bother to pass in close proximity to them. The weapons was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters. I watched the two uniformed men attempt to intimidate, and interfere with the work of other poll observers whom the uniformed men apparently believed did not share their preferences politically….I heard the shorter man make a statement directed toward white poll observers that ‘you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.’

The three thugs, one of whom was a credentialed Democratic Party polling observer and “an elected member of Philadelphia’s 14th Ward Democratic Committee” subsequently refused to show up in court. On April 20 a federal judge ordered a default judgement against them — the usual procedure in such cases. Last week, though, political appointees in the Justice Department overruled Justice Office lawyers and dropped the case outright; the three men now walk away without any penalty whatsoever for either the intimidation at the polling station or their refusal to show up in court.
What happened on election day in Philadelphia was an isolated incident, but even if one charitably views the three men as having been merely overly-dramatic in engaging in what they may have seen as grass-roots activism, it’s important that there be some repercussions for the open intimidation of voters at polling stations, particularly, you’d think, in cases where the intimidators are credentialed election observers. And I don’t think it even needs to be said that if an elected member of a Republican Committee who was also a member of a racist organization had stood in front of a polling station on election day dressed in a paramilitary uniform and jackboots, tapping a nightstick in his palm and making racist remarks against Obama voters, and then refused to show up in court to address the matter, the current Justice Department would have treated the matter quite differently.
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