DoJ voting chief ‘poisoned the well’ for OH ’04 probe.

Former Justice Department employees allege that Voting Rights Section chief John Tanner used “the force of the Department to further Republican aims.” In particular, the former attorneys say that Tanner’s half-hearted investigation of alleged African-American voter suppression in Ohio in 2004 was an effort to “poison the well” for “outside groups attempting litigation on the issue”:

“Tanner bent over backwards to rule that black voters did not have a right to the same number of machines as white registered voters, and then went out of his way to make that ruling public,” said David Becker, a former attorney with the section, currently with People for the American Way. “It’s one of the most remarkably disconcerting things to come out of the voting section in a long time.”

Tanner will soon appear before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to testify. Last week, Tanner told the National Latino Congreso that restrictive voter ID laws hurt elderly whites the most because minorities “die first” before becoming elderly.