The Justice Department unit that ensures compliance with voting rights laws will switch its focus to investigating voter fraud and ensuring elections are not marred by “suspicion,” according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The new mission statement for the voting section makes a passing reference to the historic Voting Rights Act, but no mention of typical enforcement of the provision through protecting people’s right to cast ballots or ensuring that lines for legislative maps do not divide voters by race. Instead, it redefines the unit’s mission around conspiracy theories pushed by Republican President Donald Trump to explain away his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s attorney general at the time, William Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in that election. Repeated recounts and audits in the battleground states where Trump contested his loss, including some led by Republicans, affirmed Biden's win and found the election was run properly. Trump and his supporters also lost dozens of court cases trying to overturn the election results.
But in Trump's second term, the attorney general is Pam Bondi, who backed his effort to reverse his 2020 loss. The president picked Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican Party lawyer and long time ally who also has echoed some of Trump’s false claims about voting, to run the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, where the voting section is housed.
“The Civil Rights Division has always worked to make sure Americans have access to the polls and that their votes matter,” said Stacey Young, an 18-year Department of Justice veteran who left that division days after Trump’s inauguration in January and founded Justice Connection, an organization supporting the agency's employees. “The division’s job is not to promote the politically expedient fiction that voting fraud is widespread.”
The department did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump has already demonstrated his interest in using the Justice Department to pursue those who stood up for the 2020 election by directing the department to investigate one of his former appointees who publicly vouched for the safety and accuracy of the 2020 vote count.
“The mission of the Voting Rights Section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division is to ensure free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion,” the mission statement declares.
It adds that the unit will "vigorously enforce" Trump’s executive order seeking to reshape how elections are run. Parts of that order have been put on hold by a judge.
The executive order signed late last month calls for people to provide documented proof of U.S. citizenship each time they register to vote; would require all mail ballots to be received by Election Day, which is counter to the law in 18 states; and directs an independent federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission, to amend its guidelines for voting machines.
Several legal analysts say much of the order is unconstitutional because only states and, for federal contests, Congress, can set election procedures. The Constitution provides no provision for the president to set the rules for elections.
The new mission statement for the Civil Rights Division also says the voting unit will focus on ensuring that “only American citizens vote in U.S. federal elections.” It's already illegal for noncitizens to vote. People have to attest they are U.S. citizens when they register and attempts to vote by noncitizens can lead to felony charges and deportation.
Repeated investigations have turned up just a tiny number of noncitizens casting ballots, often doing so accidentally, out of the hundreds of millions of votes over recent contests. A proof-of-citizenship requirement in Kansas a little over a decade ago blocked 31,000 eligible U.S. citizens from registering to vote before it was overturned by the courts.
But Republicans, including Trump, have continued to insist there must be far more noncitizens casting votes and are pushing to tighten election laws to screen them out.
Notably, the roughly 200-word statement on the voting rights section mentions fighting “fraud” twice, as well as investigating “other forms of malfeasance.” The Department of Justice already investigates and prosecutes voting fraud, but in a separate division on the criminal side. The voting section is a civil unit that does not investigate potential crimes.
Now, however, it will “protect the right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated,” according to the statement. It was unclear what that refers to. There have been no widespread cases of votes being improperly tabulated.
Justin Levitt, who served as President Joe Biden’s senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights, noted that because the voting rights section does not pursue prosecutions, its power is sharply limited by the specifics of civil rights laws and what judges will approve.
“For the civil section of the Civil Rights Division, courts need to be buying what they’re selling,” he said.
Nicholas Riccardi, The Associated Press
