Remember Hans von Spakovsky? The Republican lawyer served in the Bush Administration and has made a career out of suppressing the vote of minorities and low income folks.
We remember him well. In May 2008, 30,000 ColorOfChange members spoke out against von Spakovsky's candidacy for the Federal Elections Committee. Under this pressure, he requested that the Bush administration withdraw his nomination to the post. But it seems like he is still in the business of suppressing voting rights. Von Spakovsky has served as chief counsel to voter suppression groups like True the Vote and the Tea Party.
This week, an investigative piece by The New Yorker revealed von Spakovsky has worked closely with Catherine Engelbrecht, a Tea Party activist and founder of True the Vote. Here's an excerpt from the article:
Engelbrecht has received especially valuable counsel from one member of the group: Hans von Spakovsky. A Republican lawyer who served in the Bush Administration, he is now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. “Hans is very, very helpful,” Engelbrecht said. “He’s one of the senior advisers on our advisory council.” Von Spakovsky, who frequently appears on Fox News, is the co-author, with the columnist John Fund, of the recent book “Who’s Counting?,” which argues that America is facing an electoral-security crisis. “Election fraud, whether it’s phony voter registrations, illegal absentee ballots, vote-buying, shady recounts, or old-fashioned ballot-box stuffing, can be found in every part of the United States,” they write. The book connects these modern threats with sordid episodes from the American past: crooked inner-city machines, corrupt black bosses in the Deep South. Von Spakovsky and Fund conclude that electoral fraud is a “spreading” danger, and declare that True the Vote serves “an obvious need.”
Read the rest of the article here, and learn more about voter suppression groups and the 2012 election at vote.colorofchange.org.
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