San Francisco Chronicle: FEC nominee withdraws name
President Bush's contentious nominee for the Federal Election Commission removed his name from consideration Friday, potentially ending a lengthy stalemate that had paralyzed the work of the agency.
Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official who never had Democratic support to win confirmation, withdrew his nomination, saying it was time for the protracted deadlock to end.
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Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., welcomed von Spakovsky's withdrawal. Democrats have charged that von Spakovsky tried to suppress voter participation through new restrictions such as voter identification laws and voter roll purges.
"Democrats stood united in their opposition to von Spakovsky because of his long and well-documented history of working to suppress the rights of minorities and the elderly to vote," Reid said. "He was not qualified to hold any position of trust in our government."
Why he had to go (short version, via Talking Points Memo, go there for links to supporting articles):
To remind you of some of the lowlights of Spakovsky's career at the Justice Department: his attempt to disenfranchise thousands of voters in Arizona singlehandedly (and then his false testimony to Congress about that), his petty attempts to retaliate against Department employees who did not agree with his legal philosophy (and his contested testimony about that), and his advisory letters that led to restrictive voter roll policies in a number of states.
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