cite the inaction by the Justice Department as further evidence that politics drove the Bush administration

Wed, Jun. 06, 2007 | U. S. ATTORNEYS | Complaints abound over enforcement of voter registration law | By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Representatives of three liberal-leaning groups came to the Justice Department in 2004, armed with evidence that hundreds of public-assistance agencies had illegally failed to offer voter registration to their mostly poor and minority clients.

Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act, which imposed the requirement, in 1993. But after these agencies registered 2.6 million people to vote in 1995-1996, the total registered plunged to about 1 million in 2003-2004.

Michael Slater, the Oregon-based deputy director of the national registration group Project Vote, said officials of the Justice Department's civil rights division showed little interest in enforcing that part of the law.

Officials for the three groups, as well as former lawyers in the division, cite the inaction by the Justice Department as further evidence that politics drove the Bush administration's operation of the nation's chief law enforcement agency.

The Bush Justice Department, they said, has largely ignored the voter registration sections of the law while aggressively using a narrower provision to sue or threaten to sue states that have failed to purge the names of allegedly ineligible people from voter rolls. ...