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DEL.ICIO.USVon Spakovsky says good-bye to that job at the FEC
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hans von Spakovsky threw in the towel on New Years Eve, in an e-mail sent out to supporters.
The former Fulton County GOP chairman became the centerpiece of a tit-for-tat shutdown of the Federal Elections Commission — forced out for lack of U.S. Senate confirmation.
The six-member FEC now has just two commissioners — and four votes are needed for any official business.
“Today was my last official day as a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission,” he wrote. “The Senate officially adjourned today without acting on my nomination… I wanted to thank everyone for their support over the past two years while I was going through this confirmation battle. All of the telephone calls, emails and notes I received from people were great encouragement for me.”
Von Spakovsky attached an endorsement by the Wall Street Journal, though he added that “it did not help in the end in convincing the Democrats to vote to confirm me.”
Democratic senators blocked von Spakovsky’s appointment, over concern about his tenure in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, where he sided with efforts of Georgia Republicans to require that voters present a photo ID.
Republican senators retaliated by blocking the appointments of two Democrats to the FEC.
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By ShorelineCT
January 3, 2008 1:06 PM | Link to this
Goodbye to another of those Republican foxes (in charge of the henhouse?) that Bush is trying to reward for politicing the DOJ and making elections laws that try and block poor voters (mostly Dems) from voting.
Case in point:
http://tinyurl.com/2w9uc8
Former DoJ Official Changes Testimony on Voter ID Law By Paul Kiel - July 19, 2007, 12:27PM
In April of 2005, Hans von Spakovsky, then a senior lawyer in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, almost singlehandedly disenfranchised thousands of voters. Without consulting career voting rights attorneys, Spakovsky wrote a letter that incorrectly advised Arizona’s secretary of state that the state should prevent voters from receiving a provisional ballot if they did not have proper ID.
When von Spakovsky — whose nomination as commissioner on the Federal Elections Commission is still pending — testified before the Senate Rules Committee last month, he claimed that he’d consulted with lawyers in the voting rights section before drafting the letter. “This was not me acting by myself, “he testified. “You know, I would have been consulting with the other attorneys there [in the voting section] to do it.”
But that wasn’t true, as Joe Rich, the chief of the voting section at the time, told TPMmuckraker. Rich is one among six veterans of the section who wrote the committee to object to von Spakvosky’s nomination, calling him “the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights” when he worked at the Justice Department. Calling von Spakovsky’s testimony “a flat out misrepresentation,” Rich said that none of the career attorneys in the section had been aware of the letter — even then-Assistant Attorney General Alex Acosta, who oversaw the Civil Rights Division, had not known about it. The letter went out under the signature of Sheldon Bradshaw, a senior political appointee in the division, on his last day.
In written answers (pdf) submitted to the committee weeks later, von Spakovsky changed his tune: “As I recall, I may not have consulted with the Section prior to drafting [the letter].” Von Spakovsky did not note that this was at variance with his spoken testimony. He continued, however, to say that he thought that he did consult with the section on a follow-up letter, sent in September. That letter, of course, reversed his earlier advice.
snip….
By getalife
January 3, 2008 1:18 PM | Link to this
Excellent news.