FOX Presents Voter Suppression Guru as "Voting Expert"

Posted by Staff, Talking Points Memo at 11:29 AM on October 15, 2008.

Since last Friday, Fox News has mentioned ACORN 342 times, according to Media Matters. It's all ACORN all the time over there (which by itself should tell you a little bit about the credibility of the allegations of widespread voter fraud).

But I wanted to draw your attention to one of the so-called voting experts Fox has been using lately. Everyone remembers Hans Von Spakovsky, right? He's the former official in the Bush Justice Department who got a recess appointment to the FEC but whose nomination failed to get through the Senate because he's made a career of finding ways to restrict access to the polls.

The politicization of DOJ was wide and deep, and the U.S. attorney firings was just a part. The civil rights division, particularly the voting rights section, was thoroughly politicized. Von Spakovsky was one of the key players in that effort, along with Bradley Schlozman. It was Schlozman who later replaced the ousted U.S. attorney in Kansas City and filed federal charges against ACORN workers there on the eve of the 2006 elections. And so we come full circle.

Last time we checked in with Von Spakovsky, he was being hired by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights where he was to help oversee a report the Commission will produce on the Justice Department's monitoring of this year's election.

UPDATE: The Jed Report claims that as of late yesterday, FOX has now mentioned ACORN 609 times -- five times as many times as CNN and MSNBC combined.

Tagged as: voting, fox news, george bush, justice department, voter suppression, 2008 election, acorn, hans von spakovsky, bradley schlozman