[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1193-1195]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      NOMINATION OF JOHN ASHCROFT

  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, the position of United States Attorney 
General is the most sensitive in the executive branch.
  I have made a practice of setting a different standard for approval 
of persons nominated to serve in the president's cabinet and those the 
president has chosen for federal judgeships.
  In the former instance, there is a very strong presumption that the 
president should have the right to choose whomever he feels would 
effectively carry out his administration's policies.
  With a federal judge nominee, that presumption is lessened. Federal 
judges serve not at the pleasure of the president, but rather for a 
lifetime and represent the third, equal branch of government.
  I place the appointment of an attorney general in between these two 
standards because of the office's unique role.
  The attorney general has far more autonomy than does any other 
cabinet head. The attorney general decides when and how to take legal 
action and use government resources supplied by taxpayer dollars.
  Attorneys general do not just enforce the law. They have broad 
discretion to interpret the law, then enforce it based on that 
interpretation. Traditionally, the attorney general does not attend 
political functions or otherwise engage in partisan politics to 
preserve the appearance of neutrality.
  Rarely does the president interfere in the realm of the attorney 
general--a

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notable exception being when Attorney General Elliot Richardson 
resigned to avoid complying with President Nixon's order to fire the 
special prosecutor investigating the Watergate burglary. More often, 
the president consults the attorney general for legal counsel and 
follows that advice. The attorney general's interpretations then become 
government policy.
  Interpretation of a law by a United States attorney general has been 
responsible for some of this country's proudest moments, and some of 
its most shameful. It was a United States attorney general, in the 
cabinet of President Martin Van Buren, who argued that the men and 
women who had rebelled against their slave masters on the Spanish ship 
Amistad, were property and should be returned to captivity.
  It was also the interpretation of civil rights statutes that led 
Attorney General Robert Kennedy to use federal troops to desegregate 
schools. Kennedy also chose to use the government's resources to ensure 
the right of African-Americans to vote--filing more than 50 law suits 
in four states that were resisting change.
  In large part because of this legacy, the attorney general has come 
to be seen as the primary defender of individuals' basic civil rights.
  Because of this protective role, and because of the discretionary 
nature of the job, the attorney general must be a person who commands 
the respect of all people in the country. That doesn't mean that 
everyone has to agree with everything the attorney general has done in 
the past.
  But the attorney general must be able to carry out the covenant with 
America that comes with the job--the agreement to look at the law with 
an unbiased eye and enforce it without personal or political prejudice.
  I submitted questions to Senator Ashcroft to help me ascertain his 
level of commitment to that covenant. Specifically, I am concerned 
about the investigation by the Department of Justice Civil Rights 
Division into allegations of discrimination in the November 7, 2000 
election in Florida. These are serious allegations. These are not about 
chads, or butterflies or any of the other arcane voting terms that have 
made their way into the wider American lexicon. These are about 
Americans and their fundamental rights. These must be investigated by 
someone who has the trust and confidence of the public.
  Investigations are now being conducted by the Department of Justice's 
Civil Rights division and the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
  The focus of these investigations is to determine whether these 
individual acts, which denied citizens the right to vote, were just 
that--individual acts of incompetence and inefficiency--or whether they 
represented a conscious pattern intended to deny thousands of 
Floridians the right to vote.
  Allow me to share a few of the allegations. Donnise DeSouza, a Miami 
attorney, wanted to teach her 5-year-old son about democracy by letting 
him punch her ballot. Instead she was told her name was not on the 
proper list, and was sent home without having cast a vote.
  Ernest Duval is a Haitian American who lives in Palm Beach County. 
He, like many others, found the ballot layout confusing. He punched the 
wrong hole, recognized his mistake, and asked for a new ballot. His 
request was denied. He was left with no choice but to repunch the 
original. His ballot became an official ``overvote'' and was discarded. 
He told the NAACP ``I left Haiti for the freedom to live in a free 
land. We have the right to choose the right person.''
  Radio host Stacey Powers visited polling sites to encourage African-
American voters and saw police officers harassing an elderly African-
American man for doing nothing more than being in the neighborhood. 
After she reported it on the air, a police car followed her for five 
and a half miles.
  These were not just the complaints of a few disenfranchised or 
intimidated voters. In an operation of this scale, reasonable people 
recognize that unfortunate mistakes will happen. But on Election Day, 
complaints came from every corner of the state.
  Voters in the City of Plantation were never notified that their 
polling place, Plantation Elementary School, had been demolished two 
weeks before Election Day. Reports were made of police officers' 
blocking roads in close proximity to polling places and of minority 
voters being forced to show identification that white voters didn't 
need to have. Phones in a number of minority precincts were not 
working, leaving precinct workers unable to call central election 
offices for help with broken machines and other problems.
  Just as troubling was the information that came out after the 
election. Statistical analyses by civil rights groups and news 
organizations suggest that outdated or dilapidated voting equipment was 
most likely to be found in areas with a high concentration of minority 
voters. And so it followed that minorities were far more likely to have 
their votes thrown out than were white Florida voters.
  The question that remains is whether these were isolated, though 
widespread incidences, or if there is a broad, systematic pattern of 
discouraging or preventing minority votes.
  If these allegations are swept under the rug, if they go without a 
thorough review--and prosecutions if necessary--there will be a 
permanent scar on the face of our democracy. These allegations are 
germane to these proceedings because the attorney general, by 
congressional statute, has almost total discretion to enforce federal 
voting rights laws.
  The attorney general will decide how the investigation into these 
allegations proceeds--if it does at all--and what will come of the 
findings.
  I asked Senator Ashcroft several questions to further understand his 
commitment to this investigation: Whether he could assure us that such 
an investigation could be completed in a timely matter. What was his 
plan of action for remedies if violations of the Voting Rights Act are 
identified? Would he consider appropriate decertification of all punch-
card voting methods and other unreliable methods, or discontinue purges 
of the voter registration rolls until procedures are put in place to 
ensure that such purges are done in a uniform and non-discriminatory 
fashion? If the United States Commission on Civil Rights does discover 
instances of voter disenfranchisement, will the Department of Justice 
expand its investigation and aggressively prosecute violations of the 
Voting Rights Act? How will the Department of Justice use information 
from this election to make sure discrimination is not given free reign 
in the future?
  In answering my questions, Senator Ashcroft said the right thing, but 
did so in a perfunctory manner. The answers were long on platitudes, 
short on specificity. He did not present a course of action in pursuit 
of the truth, nor offer potential solutions.
  Had these answers been the only information available about Senator 
Ashcroft's commitment to civil rights, I may have accepted them on 
their face and approved this nomination.
  But Senator Ashcroft has a long record of public service that 
suggests enforcement of civil rights is not his highest priority. My 
colleagues on the Judiciary Committee raised questions about several of 
these incidents. I share their concern. I also believe, as his 
supporters have said, that Senator Ashcroft has a good heart and that 
he is a man of integrity.
  I hope that my apprehensions about Senator Ashcroft turn out to have 
been unwarranted and that if confirmed, as I assume he will be, he will 
prove me wrong by carrying on a full, fair hearing of the allegations 
raised by thousands of Floridians.
  I look forward to the opportunity to acknowledge my mistake. But I am 
not prepared to take the risk that Senator Ashcroft's longstanding 
practice of not defending the civil rights of minorities will be 
prologue to his policies as attorney general.
  Since the birth of this country people have died fighting for the 
right to vote. Our own American Revolution was about lack of 
representation, lack of voice and choice in governance. Nearly two 
centuries later Michael Schwerner,

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Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, were brutally murdered for trying to 
register African-Americans to vote.
  More recently, Americans have been lulled into complacency about 
voting rights. We seem to believe that if there are no obvious 
deterrents to voting, like poll taxes, then there are no voting-rights 
violations.
  The events of the past election should wake us up. The right to vote 
can be violated by armed men lurking menacingly at the door of the 
polling place.
  The right to vote can also be stolen by antiquated voting equipment 
and careless or discriminatory purging of the voter rolls. Coupled with 
his record, Senator Ashcroft's answers to my inquiries do not convince 
me of a genuine commitment to a forceful investigation and follow-up 
action of voting-rights violations in Florida.
  I am not confident that action will follow words. Therefore, I will 
vote ``no'' on the confirmation of John Ashcroft for United States 
Attorney General.

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