Reply #15: Dumbya has already nominated von Spakovsky [View All]

Bush Picks Controversial Nominees for FEC

By Thomas B. Edsall and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 17, 2005; Page A09

President Bush nominated two controversial lawyers to the Federal Election Commission yesterday: Hans von Spakovsky who helped Georgia win approval of a disputed voter-identification law, and Robert D. Lenhard, who was part of a legal team that challenged the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

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In a letter to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) wrote that he is "extremely troubled" by the von Spakovsky nomination. Kennedy contends that von Spakovsky "may be at the heart of the political interference that is undermining the Department's enforcement of federal civil laws."

Career Justice Department lawyers involved in a Georgia case said von Spakovsky pushed strongly for approval of a state program requiring voters to have photo identification. A team of staff lawyers that examined the case recommended 4 to 1 that the Georgia plan should be rejected because it would harm black voters; the recommendation was overruled by von Spakovsky and other senior officials in the Civil Rights Division.

Before working in the Justice Department, von Spakovsky was the Republican Party chairman in Fulton County, Ga., and served on the board of the Voter Integrity Project, which advocated regular purging of voter roles to prevent felons from casting ballots.

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The Lenhard nomination, first proposed in July 2003, has provoked strong opposition from advocacy groups seeking tough enforcement of campaign finance laws, especially the 2002 McCain-Feingold bill.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/16/AR2005121601717.html

Redistricting map: 'It's the purest form of racism'

by Gordon Jackson
December 19, 2005

"Eight bi-partisan DOJ voting rights experts, including chief of the voting rights section, unanimously recommended DOJ file a voting rights objections against Tom Delay's redistricting plan," said West, holding up a copy of the 73-page memo during a news conference at his law office. "It was overturned by DOJ political appointees who approved the plan and covered it up for two years. Political appointees at the Department of Justice conspired to commit a political crime that denied voting rights to African American and Hispanics in Texas."

West now hopes that the memo will be considered as the plan is pending review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Veasey stated that senior officials overruling a unanimous decision, then not releasing the opinion to the public, was unprecedented at the Justice Department.

"This was a quarantined document. They never expected the public to find out about this blatant act of discrimination," Veasey said. "There's no integrity at the Justice Department right now. They had no regard for the law whatsoever. They didn't care if this map blatantly discriminated against African Americans and Hispanics. They wanted this plan by any means necessary."

Adding fuel to the fire, according to the memo, was the fact that Hans von Spakovsky, one of the political appointees overruling the findings, worked on the controversial Voter Integrity Team in Florida during the 2000 presidential elections.

http://www.chicagodefender.com/page/national.cfm?ArticleID=3286