The U.S. Justice Department plans to get involved in Wisconsin’s voter ID lawsuit, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a recent interview. “We have already filed suit in Texas and North Carolina,” Holder said. “I expect that we are going to be filing in cases that are already in existence in Wisconsin as well as in Ohio.” Holder’s comments were made in an interview with ABC News that aired Sunday. Holder’s office confirmed the statement but would not elaborate on what kind of action was planned. Wisconsin’s Republican attorney general, J.B. Van Hollen, criticized Holder’s comments.
“He should focus on the law and not his, or the president’s, personal beliefs,” Van Hollen said in a statement. “At a time when an immigration crisis is rattling the nation, the attorney general is choosing to spend taxpayer money to meddle in a state law that does nothing more than ask a voter to show a photo ID.”
Earlier this year President Barack Obama, a Democrat, said “the right to vote is threatened today — in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago.”
Wisconsin’s 2011 law requiring voters to present an approved photo identification at the polls is being challenged in both state and federal court. The ACLU of Wisconsin and the League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin filed separate federal suits saying it violates the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.
Full Article: U.S. attorney general wades into Wisconsin voter ID court battle : Wsj.