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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Court’s voter-ID ruling vindicates a whipping boy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Apology Window is OPEN.
First up should be the American Civil Liberties Union, Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama and other partisans on the left who made former Justice Department official Hans A. von Spakovsky the whipping boy of their vicious campaign to whip up the Democratic base against the reasonable requirement that voters produce identification at the polls.
They were brutal. Kennedy, according to The Washington Post, wrote to then-Chairman Trent Lott of the Senate Rules Committee objecting to his nomination to the Federal Elections Commission. Von Spakovsky, who was appointed in 2001 to the election-reform unit of the Justice Department’s voting rights section, “may be at the heart of the political interference that is undermining the Department’s enforcement of federal civil laws,” said Kennedy.
Obama, Kennedy and other Democrats blocked von Spakovsky’s permanent appointment to the FEC on the basis of his belief that states could require voters to produce proper identification before voting.
Guess what?
The U.S. Supreme Court agrees with von Spakovsky. The court said so Monday in an opinion that is as emphatic as it gets these days.
The Associated Press described the 6-3 opinion upholding an Indiana’s Voter ID law as “splintered.” Five-four is splintered. Six-three means that even the liberal bloc “splintered” to join the majority. “We cannot conclude that the statute imposes ‘excessively burdensome requirements’ on any class of voters,” wrote —- sit down, conservatives, you’re not going to believe the name that follows —- Justice John Paul Stevens.
He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy.
In an election, the 6-3 outcome would have been interpreted as a landslide. A landslide, slam-dunk, blow-out for the very view that got poor old Hans von Spakovsky vilified.
Von Spakovsky, a former chairman of the Fulton County Republican Party and member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections , was appointed by former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft as counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, specializing in voting and election issues.
President George W. Bush gave him a recess appointment to the Federal Election Commission in January 2006. Democrats blocked efforts to make the recess appointment permanent before it expired on Dec. 31, leaving the six-member FEC with just two commissioners, two shy of the number needed to conduct official business. Von Spakovsky has since become a Heritage Foundation scholar researching and writing about election issues, though the Senate could still confirm him to the FEC.
While opponents needed no excuse to oppose Von Spakovsky, the pretense for declaring him an enemy of the voting rights of humankind was an article he wrote for the Texas Review of Law & Politics in which he declared that there was no evidence a voter ID requirement disenfranchised minorities, as alleged. The article contained this truth: “The objections are merely anecdotal and based on the unproven perception that minority groups such as African-Americans do not possess identification documents to the same degree as Caucasians.”
There’s never been any question that states can impose reasonable requirements on voting. Requiring proper identification proving that you are who you say you are is eminently reasonable, as von Spakovsky and —- pinch me! —- Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledge. (Von Spakovsky has written two pieces for Heritage that bear reading: “Stolen Identities, Stolen Votes” on March 10 and “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire” on April 16 about 100,000 fraudulent votes cast in Chicago during the 1982 Illinois gubernatorial election.)
This is an example of small matters made large for partisan purposes and of good public officials trashed without mercy.
For Hans A. von Spakovsky, though, a day of vindication comes.
It was Monday, April 28.
The Window is OPEN.
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