Von Spakovsky's long career on the right side of the political spectrum before working with the DOJ and FEC features steady and consistent work advancing voter suppression policies. In 1997 he wrote a policy paper saying Georgia needed a photo ID requirement to “help prevent impostors from voting,” according to a 2005 Washington Post report. He “pushed strongly for approval of the state program requiring voters to have photo identification,” but staff lawyers “recommended 4 to 1 that the plans should be rejected because it would harm black voters; the recommendation was overruled by von Spakovsky and other senior officials in the Civil Rights Division.” In response to the nomination, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) wrote the Senate Rules Committee, saying “von Spakovsky 'may be at the heart of the political interference that is undermining the [Justice] Department's enforcement of federal civil laws.'”
These often esoteric issues are drawing increased scrutiny, including the national Democratic Party, which announced its intention to survey potential election administration problems, state-by-state, before the 2008 presidential election, according to the New York Times. Problems include voting machine shortages and illegal voter list purges, which turned scores of voters from the polls in 2000 and 2004. The committee plans to interview election officials in more than 3,000 counties regarding the “type of voting machines, how many are sent to a polling place and how absentee ballot request and voter registrations are handled.” Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean said the effort is being put forth because Democratic “candidates need to know how elections work in every single precinct...That is an enormous advantage when you're going up against a party that is essentially a vote suppressor.”
With primaries fast approaching, the actual mechanics of how elections work are gaining a higher profile in the media and in the minds of actors in electoral politics. These issues affect everything from who makes the rolls, to how voting occurs, to whose votes get counted. We’ve provided links below to organizations, studies, and other information that voter participation advocates can use to advocate for public policies, rules, and regulations that broaden access to the polls, rather than restrict them.
Quick Links:
Citizens Without Proof: A Survey of Americans' Possession of Documentary Proof of Citizenship and Photo Identification - Brennan Center for Justice
The Century Foundation
EAC Voter ID Study
Georgia – Common Cause
The Politics of Voter Fraud – Project Vote
Restrictive Voter Identification Requirements – Project Vote
In Other News:
Ohio election officials say two thirds of Ohio counties lost or destroyed their 2004 presidential ballots, violating federal mandates to preserve them. State law which requires election records to be kept 22 months after Election Day, “and a U.S. District Court order issued last September that the 2004 ballots be preserved while the court hears a civil rights lawsuit alleging voter suppression of African-American voters in Columbus.”
Former Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell along with other officials “'selectively and discriminatorily designed and implemented procedures for the allocation of voting machines in a manner to create a shortage for certain urban precincts where large numbers of African-Americans resided.'”
“The destruction of the election records also frustrates efforts by the media and historians to determine the accuracy of Ohio's 2004 vote count, because in county after county the key evidence needed to understand vote count anomalies apparently no longer exists.” Read more of this AlterNet story here.
Erin Ferns is a Research and Policy Analyst with Project Vote’s Strategic Writing and Research Department (SWORD).
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