Antoine Morris

Bush Nominates Voter Fraud Peddler to the FEC

A more important figure is Hans von Spakovsky, who for doing the administration’s bidding has been rewarded with a recess appointment to a Republican slot on the Federal Elections Commission. If he is confirmed by the Senate and serves a full term of 4 years, he could easily influence the next three election cycles – a prospect that many Americans can ill afford.

As one of the chief architects of the fanatical voter fraud movement, Hans von Spakovsky helped steer the Justice Department toward a culture of voter suppression by imposing sweeping voter ID restrictions that make it harder, not easier, for poor, minority, and elderly voters to cast ballots, since they typically do not own driver’s licenses and other forms of government issued identification.

During his four years as an attorney at the Justice Department, von Spakovsky anonymously published a law article that championed the controversial Georgia voter ID law in the spring 2005 issue of the Texas Review of Law & Politics, under the pseudonym of Publius.

Interestingly enough, the law article described the very same voter ID law that von Spakovsky rushed the Justice Department to approve despite the objections of many career attorneys in the voting section, who believed the measure was discriminatory. And they were not the only ones. A U.S. District Judge in Georgia also said it was discriminatory and even likened the law to a Jim-Crow era poll tax. Unfazed by the criticism by the court and other Justice officials, von Spakovsky sought to approve the law anyhow. (Click here for more info on the Georgia voter ID law.)

Spakovsky's failure to recuse himself from reviewing legislation that he surreptitiously advocated not only reveals a willingness to behave unethically, but also a failure to distinguish between acting on his own biases and exercising impartial judgment.

As a recess appointee, von Spakovsky also clashed with the federal Election Assistance Commission as it began investigating the nation-wide impact of new voting ID laws. Once it became increasingly clear the findings would be critical of the very laws von Spakovsky enthusiastically supported and helped grease through Congress in 2002, i.e., Help American Vote Act, he unabashedly tried to influence its conclusions.

In a testy email exchange with EAC chairman Paul DeGregorio, von Spakovsky pressured DeGregorio to drop his objections to Arizona's stringent ID laws, and others like it, by urging the EAC to abandon its contract with a research group who found the measures to be overly restrictive. According to McClatchy Newspapers, when DeGregorio refused, Spakovsky resorted to orchestrating the chairman's ouster.

Liberals are not alone in claiming voter ID laws are tools of voter suppression. GOP operatives actually say the same thing. On May 17, 2007, Royal Masset, the former political director of the Republican Party of Texas, told the Houston Chronicle "requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a dropoff in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent to the Republican vote." But Spakovsky was not solely interested in voter ID laws as a means of disenfranchising minority voters. He also used his expertise in voting laws generally, and his influence in the DOJ particularly, to get Tom Delay's Texas mid-decade redistricting plan approved in 2003, and once again did so over the objections of the more experienced lawyers in the voting section.

Voting section lawyers and analysts agreed that the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two Congressional districts in Texas. In 2006, the Supreme Court largely upheld the Constitutionality of the statewide redistricting plan, but struck down other parts of it as racial gerrymandering in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in voting practices on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups.

When the Senate Rules Committee considers von Spakovsky nomination this fall, his record of shifting the historic mission of the voting rights unit in the Justice Department towards embracing a voter suppression agenda should be thoroughly examined. As a commissioner of the only body that enforces federal campaign finance laws he will most likely try to advance a right wing agenda.

Voter registration groups working in poor and minority communities, in particular will likely be unfairly targeted by his biased interpretations of campaign finance laws. Fat cat corporate donors align with Republicans, however, are likely to receive much more favorable treatment. With competitive races in 2008 on the horizon, Spakovsky in a four-year term would have ample opportunites to advocate against the progress made on voting rights and unjustly influence the outcome of numerous elections.

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Posted at 8:00 AM, Aug 25, 2007 in Voting Rights
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