Hackery, a Follow Up
June 18th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
In researching the post below on a career partisan operative, Hans von Spakovsky, who is now up for confirmation to the Federal Elections Commission, this paragraph stood out enough to warrant its own attention. It describes von Spakovsky’s rise to prominence in the Department of Justice, as told by Steve Bickerstaff in his book Lines in the Sand…
By 2003, von Spakovsky had emerged within the Justice Department as the chief administration voice on voting rights. Before being picked to work at Justice, von Spakovsky had served on the board of advisers for the Voting Integrity Project. This politically conservative organization had gained notoriety among election lawyers nationwide because of its past efforts to curtail alleged voter fraud by sending observer to watch the polls in largely minority areas. Voting-rights groups accused it of being largely responsible for the felony-list fiasco in Florida before the 2000 election. During the 2000 postelection legal battle in Florida, von Spakovsky worked as part of the Bush legal team. After Bush’s inauguration, he was hired for the Voting Section and soon was promoted to be counsel for the assistant attorney general heading the Civil Rights Division. In that role, von Spakovsky worked primarily on directing and overseeing work in the Voting Section.
And, later in the book, as if the above didn’t sound familiar enough:
The increased partisanship within the department in general and the Voting Section in particular is reflected in several ways. For example, some of the political appointees under the Bush Administration, such as Hans von Spakovsky, came to the department with a history of openly and aggressively opposing Justice’s voting initiatives. Others had essentially no experience in enforcing voting rights or managing a large organization. Their one common qualification was that they believed in the Republican ideology.
And all this before even Alberto Gonzalez arrived on the scene!
