Bush Nominees Controversial?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Elections3 out of 4 aren’t questionable.
However, nominating somebody who wanted a voter ID law should raise some eyebrows:
President Bush nominated two controversial lawyers to the Federal Election Commission yesterday: Hans von Spakovsky who helped Georgia win approval of a disputed voter-identification law, and Robert D. Lenhard, who was part of a legal team that challenged the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.In addition, Bush proposed a second term for commissioner David M. Mason and nominated Steven T. Walther, a Nevada lawyer with close ties to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).
Von Spakovsky and Mason are Republican appointees, while Lenhard and Walther are Democratic picks for the bipartisan six-member commission.
In a letter to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) wrote that he is “extremely troubled” by the von Spakovsky nomination. Kennedy contends that von Spakovsky “may be at the heart of the political interference that is undermining the [Justice] Department’s enforcement of federal civil laws.”
Those voter ID laws call for photo identification, and they notoriously hurt black voters who may not have a driver’s license or even a non-driver’s license. Again, this appointment troubles me.
However, questioning the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law is certainly not anything to get too concerned with. To think that political contributions are akin to free speech is a valid opinion and one I’m sure we’re going to have to have a debate about extremely soon.
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2005 and is filed under Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 19th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Wasn’t the Georgia-Voter ID law passed on the premise that, if requested, someone would come to your house and take your picture for your photo ID. All of the disenfrachisement arguments just didn’t make sense to me. I tried not to think that the real reason that someone was whining was because this would help eliminate voter fraud.
December 19th, 2005 at 5:06 pm
The entire purpose for laws like this (almost invariably pushed by Republicans) is to make it harder and more inconvenient for low income voters to vote, because they usually vote Democrat.
What this suggests to me is that the Republicans are poising themselves to screw over the whole country in the same manner as they did in Georgia, and (if I recall correctly) have recently been attempting in Ohio.
December 20th, 2005 at 6:56 am
How can it possibly be inconvenient. Election workers will come to your house. Maybe they should come to your house to pick up your votes, too! Voter fraud has been rampant in some areas of this country for years, and we’re finally making a step in the right direction.