Meet the Vote Suppressors and Conspiracy Theorists on Trump's Election Integrity Commission
From Ari Berman at the Nation:
https://www.thenation.com/article/meet-the-liars-and-conspiracy-theorists-on-trumps-election-integrity-commission/
This is a stark example of the damage this commission is doing. And it’s only going to get worse. The Trump Administration has assembled a who’s who of discredited advocates of voter suppression, led by Kobach, who’s lost four lawsuits to the ACLU in Kansas. He’s joined by former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who tried to disenfranchise countless voters during the 2004 election in Ohio, and by Hans von Spakovsky, a former official in the Bush Justice Department who six attorneys in the department’s voting section called “the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights.”
The latest addition to the committee is J. Christian Adams, who served alongside von Spakovsky in the Bush Justice Department. Their boss, Bradley Schlozman, said he wanted to “ “gerrymander all of those crazy libs right out of the [voting] section.” Adams was “exhibit A” for the improper hiring and rampant politicization that occurred during the Bush years, according to former voting section chief Joe Rich.
Today, Adams is best known as the leading figure behind the New Black Panther Party conspiracy theory. He accused the Obama administration of “a hostility in the voting section and in the Civil Rights Division to bringing cases on behalf of white victims for the benefit of national racial minorities.” Since he left DOJ, Adams has been suing states and counties to force them to purge their voting rolls, as Mother Jones reported—a preview of the types of suppressive tactics the Trump DOJ is prepping and the commission will no doubt recommend in its report.
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The likes of Kobach, Blackwell, von Spakovsky, and Adams have for years spread debunked lies about voter fraud and have championed efforts to make it harder to vote, often in violation of federal law. Putting them on an “election integrity” commission is as bad of an idea as Trump forming a “cybersecurity unit” with Vladimir Putin.
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