WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s voting rights chief stepped down Friday amid allegations that he’d used the position to aid a Republican strategy to suppress African-American votes. John Tanner became the latest of about a dozen senior department officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who’ve resigned in recent months in a scandal over the politicization of the Justice Department in the Bush administration. In recent months, McClatchy has reported on a pattern of decision-making within the department’s Civil Rights Division, of which the Voting Rights Section is a part, that tended to narrow the voting rights of Democratic-leaning minorities. Tanner has been enmeshed for months in congressional investigations over his stewardship of the unit that was established to protect minority-voting rights. He drew increased focus this fall after he told a Latino group: ‘African-Americans don’t become elderly the way white people do. They die.’ In addition, the Justice Department opened an internal investigation into allegations that Tanner unfairly had deprived two veteran African-American staffers of bonuses and that he and a deputy had misused tax dollars on official trips. Department spokesman Peter Carr said in a statement that Tanner, of his own accord, “made […]