Former officials oppose FEC nominee

Six former career officials at the Department of Justice’s voting section are urging the Senate Rules Committee to reject the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission.

{mosads}The officials sent a letter yesterday to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and ranking member Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), arguing that von Spakovsky politicized the voting rights division “to promote voter suppression and disenfranchisement” when he headed the unit.

The Rules Committee will consider von Spakovsky’s nomination today.

The former Justice Department officials are the latest critics of von Spakovsky’s nomination. In the last week, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) urged the nomination’s defeat, and the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, the Campaign Legal Center and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights have also registered their opposition.

Von Spakovsky oversaw the Voting Section as voting counsel to the assistant attorney general of the civil right division from early 2003 to December 2005.

The voting section officials who signed the letter include: Joseph Rich, former chief from 1999 to 2005; Robert Kengle, former deputy chief from 1999 to 2005; Jon Greenbaum, a senior trial attorney from 1997 to 2003; David Becker, a former senior trial attorney from 1998 to 2005; Bruce Adelson, a former senior trial attorney from 2000 to 2005; and Toby Moore, political geographer from 2000 to 2006.