A failed voting-fraud prosecution from more than 30 years ago could re-emerge as a contentious issue during Sen. Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing for attorney general. Sessions was dogged by his handling of the case as U.S. attorney during his 1986 confirmation hearing for a federal judgeship, when he tried to fend off complaints of a wrongful prosecution. He devoted more space to that case than any other in a questionnaire he submitted this month to the Senate Judiciary Committee for the attorney general post, suggesting the matter is likely to come up again during his Jan. 10-11 confirmation hearing before the panel. The 1985 prosecution involved three black civil rights activists, including a former adviser to Martin Luther King Jr., who were accused of illegally tampering with large numbers of absentee ballots in rural Perry County, Alabama. The defendants argued that they were assisting voters who were poor, uneducated and in some cases illiterate, and marked the ballots with the voters’ permission. A jury acquitted the three after just a few hours of deliberation. Howard Moore Jr., a member of the defense team, said he didn’t think it was a legitimate prosecution. “That’s why we defended the case so vigorously,” he said in an interview. “We felt that it would have had a chilling effect, if they had been convicted, throughout the south.”
Sessions has defended the decision to bring the case and suggested in his questionnaire that there was ample evidence for a conviction. His supporters note that Justice Department officials in Washington approved the investigation and the indictment, and point to one voter’s statement to the FBI that her ballot had been manipulated and her preferences crossed out and replaced with a different slate of candidates.
The case matters because as attorney general Sessions would be the federal government’s top lawyer in voting-rights disputes, with the authority to challenge — or support — state laws dictating access to the polls. He would inherit an agency that under the Obama administration has sued states over potentially discriminatory voting laws but whose enforcement efforts have been stymied by a Supreme Court opinion that gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. And he could turn the Justice Department’s focus to voting fraud, an issue he’s repeatedly sounded the alarm about but that current leaders consider virtually non-existent.
“There’s nothing in Sen. Session’s record that would give me confidence that protecting voting rights from states intent on restricting them is something that would be a priority,” said Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project.
Full Article: 1985 civil rights voting-fraud case may follow Sessions during confirmation hearing | AL.com.