Who has the Bush administration hired to make sure our voting rights aren't violated on Election Day?

Meet Hans Von Spakovsky, a key player in the right-wing vote-suppression agenda.

When he was supposed to be ensuring the voting rights of minorities as a member of the voting rights section at the Justice Department, Spakovsky instead used his position to promote voter ID laws. When Republican officials were accused of discriminating against Native American voters, he allegedly hindered the investigation. When it came time to interpret the Help America Vote Act, he opted for a policy that would "keep eligible citizens off the voting rolls for typos and other mistakes by election officials."

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Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters
Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

The battle  to protect the voting rights of low income and minority citizens was marked by several victories last week. In addition to the "three key battles" on voting rights outlined by Steven Rosenfeld last Friday - Missouri's controversial voter ID defeat, Arizona's agreement to comply with federal voter registration law, and voter ID crusader, Hans von Spakovsky's withdrawal from his Federal Election Commission nomination- on Monday Kansas governor, Kathleen Sebelius vetoed a voter ID bill citing "I cannot support creating any roadblock to prevent our citizens from adding their voices to the democratic discourse that makes our nation great," she said.

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Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters

By Erin Ferns

A year has passed since the U.S. Attorneys scandal first gathered steam for the firings of nine federal prosecutors - at least two of whom claim being "pressured by Republicans to bring charges of voter fraud against people who intended to [vote] for Democrats." But the issue is far from settled. This week, the phantom issue of "voter fraud" emerged in the guise of news stories, editorials, memos, blogs, legislation, and even a Senate hearing either extinguishing or inflaming the alleged election integrity problem, particularly regarding voter identification requirements. Ultimately, what has become most evident in the last year is how far partisans are willing to go in order to legalize voter suppression tactics through the smoke-screen of "voter fraud."

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Weekly Voting Rights News Update

This an entry in a series of blogs to keep people informed on current election reform and voting rights issues in the news.

Featured Story of the Week:

Voter Purging: A Legal Way for Republicans to Swing Elections? - AlterNet

Justice Department wants court hearing on Alabama voting system - Associated Press, WAFF.com

"To me, it's a very clear view of the Republican agenda, said former [Department of Justice Civil Rights Division] Voting Section Chief, Joe Rich. "The GOP agenda is to make it harder to vote. You purge voters. You don't register voters. This is ripe for partisan decision making. You pick the states where you go after Democrats."

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By Michael Slater

I posted yesterday on Hans von Spakovsky nomination, noting that a common theme that unifies his work "is not just that it advances his political party's interests but that it does so by impeding minorities from voting and choosing their political representatives." Now there's more evidence.

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