Outspoken advocate of photo IDs gets civil rights job

Washington — Washington — Hans von Spakovsky, a controversial former Fulton County Republican Party chairman who failed to win confirmation to the Federal Election Commission, has found a temporary job at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, officials confirmed Thursday.

Von Spakovsky has been hired to review civil rights reports for Todd F. Gaziano, a Civil Rights Commission member who has been one of von Spakovsky’s most outspoken defenders.

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RICK MCKAY/Cox Washington Bureau

Hans von Spakovsky, a former Fulton County GOP chairman, pushed for voter photo ID laws while at the Justice Department.

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The selection of von Spakovsky spurred a new round of objections from one Civil Rights Commission member and the civil rights community, which has bitterly opposed him for his efforts while at the Justice Department, where he oversaw voting rights issues, to require voters to have photo identification. The critics charge that voter ID laws inhibit voting by minorities.

The hiring “is absolutely disgraceful and speaks volumes about the political patronage still being doled out by the current administration,” said J. Gerald Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a voting rights advocacy group and leading opponent of von Spakovsky.

The center was part of the coalition that forced von Spakovsky last May to give up his quest for Senate approval to join the Federal Election Commission.

Gaziano said his new part-time assistant is a “great and very talented person.” He said he would be working until the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 on a report about religious freedom in the U.S. prison system and also helping on a study of discrimination in housing.

Gaziano said von Spakovsky would not be involved in a forthcoming report on oversight of the 2008 elections, as was suggested by critics, who disclosed his hiring on an Internet site. That election report encompasses a Civil Rights Commission hearing at which von Spakovsky testified as a former voting official for the Justice Department.

The wrangle over President Bush’s nomination of von Spakovsky to the FEC, where he had served in a temporary appointment, was part of a partisan dispute that left the commission with too few members to conduct business in the leadup to the 2008 election.

Among the long-pending issues was one settled Thursday, when the FEC voted unanimously to belatedly approve Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s withdrawal from public financing for the primaries — a move that spared him potential embarrassment on one of his signature issues.

The decision means McCain is not bound by the spending limits that restrict candidates who do accept primary-season matching funds.

Had the commission rejected McCain’s withdrawal from the system, any money he spent this year in excess of those spending limits would have been in violation of the law and could have been subject to a fine. Such a violation would have been an embarrassment for McCain, because he has been a strong advocate of campaign spending controls.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.