Remember Hans von Spakovsky, the former Civil Rights Division attorney with a voter-suppression resume who was at the center of the Bush administration's politicized hiring scandal? For a while he was killing time at Heritage and National Review, attempting to smear the new leadership in the Civil Rights Division for returning to the business of protecting Americans' civil rights rather than just the civil rights of people who vote Republican. Recently, von Spakovsky was appointed to a local election board in Fairfax County, Virgina.
Not Larry Sabato reports that his first action on that board was to try to make it harder for non-English speakers to register to vote.
In his first action, he voted with the other Republican on the Electoral Board to stop distributing voter registration applications in languages other than English. These applications are online in other languages, and if the registrar receives them they will still be required to process them- but von Spakovsky's effort here was to ensure they were not passed out at community registration events run by the Electoral Board.
Shortly before being appointed and voting to make it harder for non-English speakers to exercise their right to vote, von Spakovsky complained that the Obama administration's Civil Rights Division wouldn't intervene on your behalf if you happened to be white. Talk about projection.
Look, I can't repeat this enough: This guy helped run the part of the Justice Department that protects Americans' civil rights. Be glad that time is over.
-- A. Serwer
