Hans von Spakovsky riled {Fairfax County, Va.} with voter fraud efforts; Trump just elevated him

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Sat Jul 1, 2017, 12:01 PM - Edit history (2)

Von Spakovsky riled Fairfax with voter fraud efforts; Trump just elevated him

By Gregory S. Schneider and Alex Horton June 30 at 5:54 PM

From pursuing voter fraud in the George W. Bush Justice Department to policing polling places on the Fairfax County Electoral Board, Hans von Spakovsky has been a national lightning rod on the issue of voter integrity.

Now that President Trump has named the Virginia lawyer to the new Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, the man the New Yorker magazine called the source of “the voter-fraud myth” has perhaps his greatest chance to influence Americans’ access to the polls.

Von Spakovsky, 58, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said in an interview Friday that he does not enter this role with the assumption that voter fraud is a nationwide epidemic. ... “I think the answer to that is what we hope to find out,” he said. “What I would say is that I think it’s a danger to the way our democratic system works anytime people are either kept out of the polls or their vote is stolen through fraud.”

But his appointment has drawn deep skepticism from many who view the commission itself as a chilling effort to control the voting process in states.
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Greg covers Virginia from the Richmond bureau. He was the Post's business editor for more than seven years, and before that served stints as deputy business editor, national security editor and technology editor. He has also been a reporter for the Post covering aviation security, the auto industry and the defense industry.
Follow @SchneiderG

Alex Horton is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post and a former Army infantryman.
Follow @AlexHortonTX

[dalton99a]

1. Time to shine light on this fascist cockroach Hans von Spakovsky

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Wikipedia: Hans von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky

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Justice Department tenure

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Von Spakovsky also served on the Board of Advisors of the Election Assistance Commission, a government commission created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. He clashed with the Commission head, Paul DeGregorio. Several individuals with knowledge of the situation, speaking anonymously to McClatchy Newspapers, alleged that DeGregorio had resisted an overtly partisan agenda and his removal was therefore engineered by von Spakovsky.

Federal Election Commission

Von Spakovsky received his recess appointment by President Bush to the FEC in January 2006. His confirmation hearings were contentious, as Democratic Senators criticized von Spakovsky's Justice Department tenure and accused him of partisanship. A group of career Justice Department staff wrote a letter to the Senate arguing against von Spakovsky's appointment, saying that he "played a major role in the implementation of practices which injected partisan political factors into decision-making on enforcement matters and into the hiring process, and included repeated efforts to intimidate career staff." In response to questioning from the Senate, von Spakovsky repeatedly asserted that he could not remember or recall his involvement in various controversial Justice Department decisions, drawing comparisons to the testimony of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Faced with mounting opposition, von Spakovsky ultimately withdrew from the FEC confirmation process. He subsequently assumed a position with the Heritage Foundation, a politically conservative think tank.

Von Spakovsky has claimed that about 1400 votes, four times the margin of victory, were cast by ineligible prisoners in the 2008 Minnesota race for U.S. Senate, which was won by Al Franken. However, Von Spakovsky's statistics have been labeled "fraudulent" by the Hennepin County Attorney who investigated the matter.