by Farai Chideya

Farai Chideya

Just when you thought the controversy over the Attorney General nominee and waterboarding were going to fill all of the Justice Department's news-hole, there's Tanner.

John Tanner is the Voting Section Chief for the U.S. Department of Justice. Last week, he appeared before the House Judiciary Subcommittee to apologize for recently saying that a Georgia voter ID requirement wasn't unfair to elderly African-Americans because black folks "don't become elderly the way white people do. They die first."

Was this a case of verbal clumsiness or a sign the Justice Department doesn't care about voting and civil rights?

Today we heard from:

Democratic Congressman Artur Davis of Alabama. Rep. Davis argued that elderly African Americans have strong voter turnout, which flies in the face of Tanner's statement. He added that whether Tanner apologized is not the issue:

"The issue...[is] the fact that you have the head of the Voting Rights Division, who in charge of enforcing a major portion of voting rights laws, advancing an argument that is factually unsupported, statistically unsupported. And that led, in this case, to I think the wrong conclusion, which was to sign off on a voter ID law that frankly should have been rejected by the Department of Justice."

We also spoke with Joe L. Reed, a long-term friend of Tanner's who is chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference. He said:

"You have to judge the man, the whole man, not just one statement or the statement in any one case. He worked with us in Alabama to get more black polling officials. Alabama has more black polling officials than any state in the nation."

John Tanner declined to come on the show, but gave us a statement which read, in part:

"The reports of my comments do not in any way accurately reflect my career of devotion to enforcing federal laws designed to assure fair and equal access to the ballot.
I am honored to have the opportunity to do this work, and I am honored to serve with the dedicated employees of the Voting Section who, day in and day out, work hard to protect the rights of all Americans under the Voting Rights Act."

Later in our show, political analysts Robert Traynham and Donna Brazile gave their takes on Tanner and voting rights... and Brazile added that the issue wasn't on the radar as much as it could be.

Listen to the segments and tell us what you think.