Voting Chief Defends Overrulling Staff to Approve Georgia Voter ID Law

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Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) kicked off the questioning today by asking John Tanner about his involvement in forcing through an approval of the infamous 2005 Georgia voter ID law (here’s the whole sorry story). Tanner overruled the recommendation from Civil Rights Division staff attorneys to reject the law and then made the unprecedented move of silencing their opposition. After Tanner recommended approval of the law (one day after the staff recommended against that), a federal appeals court judge later barred implementation of the law, comparing it to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.

Under questioning today, Tanner avoided discussing his clash with his own staff, who had made their recommendation in a forcefully worded memo. Instead, he put the emphasis on the fact that he’d “made the decision.” When Nadler pushed, Tanner replied, ” I can’t discuss internal deliberations,” and made reference to the “confidence of our clients.” This apparent invocation of attorney-client privilege seemed to catch Nadler off guard. But isn’t that public information? he asked. Tanner declined to elaborate, instead emphasizing again that the decision was his based on “careful analysis.”

In the Georgia ID memo, Tanner also made the questionable move of reversing the usual Justice Department practice of including his own contrary opinion when he disagreed with the staff recommendation. Instead of forwarding on his staff’s recommendation alongside his own to the Department leadership, Tanner simply removed the staff’s dissent. When Nadler asked him if he’d abandoned this “longstanding practice,” Tanner replied, “That has not been the uniform practice.” But was that the general practice? Nadler countered. “Prior to that time, it had not been done,” Tanner admitted.

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