Labor Union Blog

Rep. John Conyers

In a report on TPM Muckraker, former Justice Department officials questioned the seriousness—or rather lack thereof—of an "investigation" by the department's chief voting official, John Tanner, into reported problems at African American polling places in Ohio during the 2004 elections.

So what did Tanner find? If black voters had any problems accessing the ballot box, it's pretty much their own fault. According to Tanner, Ohio's African American voters faced long lines in the 2004 presidential election because blacks tend to vote at night while whites vote during the day when there are shorter lines. Now House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) says he intends to hold hearings to get to the bottom of what really happened in the so-called investigation.

In a statement, Conyers says he's

concerned about the extreme lengths Mr. Tanner went to in order to justify the reasons African Americans were not treated equally in the 2004 Ohio election. The Department of Justice—since the Voting Rights Act of 1965—has a responsibility to thoroughly investigate allegations of voter suppression and discrimination, like those made in Ohio in 2004.