Let America Vote Calls on Senate Judiciary Committee to Demand Answers from Thomas Farr on Record of Voter Suppression

Let America Vote today called on the leadership of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary to demand additional information on judicial nominee Thomas Farr’s involvement in voter suppression schemes. Farr was nominated by President Trump earlier this year to be the U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina. After Farr gave testimony at odds with Justice Department investigators, Farr must explain his misleading testimony and his involvement in suppressing the votes of African American North Carolinians before the Senate votes on his nomination.

“President Trump wants to reconfigure the legal landscape by installing judges who support the kinds of voter suppression efforts that will help him get re-elected,” said Jason Kander, President of Let America Vote. “Thomas Farr is one of the worst nominees he could have chosen to take the bench in a state where Republicans have made numerous efforts to reduce the voting power of the Black community. It’s an insult to anyone who believes in protecting voting rights. The Senate Judiciary Committee should call Thomas Farr back in and demand answers for his misleading testimony. If he does not provide a full, acceptable explanation that precludes him from the discriminatory postcard campaign and any other voter suppression schemes, the Senate should reject his nomination.”

Most notably, Thomas Farr must prove without doubt that he had no involvement in and that he opposed the effort by Jesse Helms’ Senate campaign, for which he served as counsel, to intimidate over 100,000 African American voters in North Carolina using a postcard campaign making false claims about voting laws.

Farr also defended the North Carolina 2013 “monster” voter suppression bill that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down for targeting “African Americans with almost surgical” precision. Farr defended North Carolina’s redistricting maps that the Supreme Court struck down for reducing the influence of minority voters in heavily White Republican districts.