Paul Mirengoff:
An expert witness hired by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice testified that North Carolina election law requirements have an adverse impact on black voters because they are less “sophisticated” than white voters and therefore have more difficulty figuring out how to register to vote. Christian Adams has the details.
The requirements that the DOJ’s witness found blacks less able than whites to comply with are (1) registering to vote before the day of the election and (2) voting in the precinct where one lives. Since one needn’t be at all “sophisticated” to comply with either requirement, the DOJ’s witness, who was paid with our tax dollars, must have little regard for African-Americans.
Asked whether terminating the ability to register to vote on the day that someone casts a ballot impacts blacks disproportionately, the DOJ’s witness, Charles Stewart, testified in court that it does. He reasoned that (1) people who register at the last minute “tend to be less sophisticated voters, tend to be less educated voters, tend to be voters who are less attuned to public affairs” and (2) “people who correspond to those factors tend to be African Americans.”
Does the Holder Justice Department really believe that African Americans are less sophisticated voters than whites? Does it really believe they are less attuned than whites to public affairs?
To be sure, blacks vote overwhelmingly in favor of Holder’s party. Other than that, I see no reason to conclude that they are less “sophisticated” and “less attuned to public affairs” than whites.
If a conservative were to so conclude, Eric Holder would be the first to condemn him as a racist. Yet the Holder DOJ is paying a witness to advance this position in a court of law on behalf of the United States of America.