Georgian Nominated to FEC to Face Questions on Voter 'Suppression' Allegations

WASHINGTON — Former Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky, set to appear before a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, is expected to face allegations that he tilted decisions to help Republicans and suppress minority votes when he was a federal lawyer overseeing voting rights.

Von Spakovsky, a Georgian who once headed the Fulton County Republican Party, is by far the most controversial of four nominees to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) scheduled to go before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

On Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate from Illinois, entered the fray by raising "serious concerns" about von Spakovsky's decision as a government lawyer to overrule the findings of career professionals when he helped approve a 2005 Georgia law requiring voters to produce a government-issued ID.

The Georgia voter identification law was later tossed out by a federal district court, which ruled that it would place a burden on minority voters similar to the segregation era poll tax.

"Unless Mr. von Spakovsky can provide legitimate explanations for his conduct in these matters, I believe he should not be confirmed to this important position," Obama said in a letter posted on his Senate Web site. The senator took von Spaskovsky to task for playing a role both in creating the Georgia voter ID law and in approving it later as a federal official.

Howard Gantman, staff director for the Senate Rules Committee, said, "Serious concerns have been raised about Mr. von Spakovsky's actions when he was at the Department of Justice, and we expect there to be an opportunity for him to be questioned further on that."

Von Spakovsky declined to comment on the criticism swirling around him. In the midst of criticism, the conservative National Review magazine this week was one of the few publications to come to his defense.

"In truth, the unspoken reason so many guns are trained on him is he refused to allow the DOJ (Department of Justice) career lawyers at the civil-rights division to continue to do what they have done for the last 15 years or more — strip-mine our nation's laws to satisfy their own personal ideals of racial justice," wrote Edward Blum, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Von Spakovsky is seeking formal Senate confirmation for the six-person bipartisan election commission, which oversees enforcement of federal campaign finance laws. He has been on the panel since January 2006, when President Bush gave him a temporary "recess" appointment when Congress was out of session.

In addition to Obama, six former Justice Department lawyers who worked with von Spakovsky in the voting rights division sent a letter late Monday to Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., raising strong objections to the nominee.

Von Spakovsky's action on the Georgia voter law "demonstrates the unprecedented intrusion of partisan political factors into decision-making," charged the opponents, led by Joseph D. Rich, a former chief lawyer for the Justice Department's voting rights division. Rich is now with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, a group that is fighting the nomination.

The Georgian also came under fire for his role in allowing a Texas Republican-drafted redistricting plan to be implemented, until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the plan diluted the votes of Latinos in South Texas.

In addition to von Spakovsky, the Senate hearing will consider the nominations of Robert D. Lenhard of Maryland and Steven T. Walther of Nevada, both Democrats, and the reappointment of David V. Mason of Virginia, a Republican.

The politically sensitive FEC appointments are generally accomplished after months or years of closed-door negotiations that produce nominees in pairs — one for each party.