Obama calls on Bush to ax voting rights chief

Presidential candidate and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Friday called on the Bush administration to sack a senior Justice Department official who has made controversial remarks about minorities.
   
Obama urged acting Attorney General Peter Keisler to fire John Tanner, the chief of the voting rights section in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Tanner said earlier this month that photo identification requirements for voting cause problems for the elderly, but do not disenfranchise minority voters.

{mosads}"Our society is such that minorities don't become elderly the way white people do; they die first,” Tanner said, according to a video of his remarks.

Obama and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) placed a Senate hold on Hans von Spakovsky, whom Bush nominated to the Federal Election Committee (FEC). He had served as counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights and has been accused of politicizing the Justice Department.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reportedly agreed earlier this month to send four nominees to the FEC by voice vote if there were no objections. When Obama, Feingold and others objected, the nominations stalled.