Hans von Spakovsky Overrules DOJ Career Staff to Approve Georgia Voter ID Law Targeting Black Voters

Hans von Spakovsky, serving as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, led the department’s approval of Georgia’s controversial photo ID law in August 2005 despite unanimous objections from career Justice Department attorneys and analysts who determined the law would disproportionately disenfranchise African American voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Career staff had spent months analyzing the law’s impact and recommended that the Justice Department object to the law’s implementation, but von Spakovsky and other political appointees overruled this recommendation. A federal judge would later strike down the law in October 2005, finding that it constituted an unconstitutional poll tax, vindicating the career staff’s analysis.

Georgia’s 2005 voter ID law (HB 244) required voters to present one of six specific forms of government-issued photo identification at polling places, replacing a system that accepted utility bills, bank statements, and other documents. The law imposed particular burdens on elderly, low-income, and minority voters who were less likely to possess driver’s licenses or other acceptable photo IDs. Georgia charged $20-$35 for state-issued photo IDs for those without driver’s licenses. Adding to the controversy, von Spakovsky anonymously published an article endorsing voter ID laws like Georgia’s while the law was under review by his office, creating an obvious conflict of interest.

The approval proved so controversial that more than half of the career Justice Department staff in the Voting Rights Section left their positions in protest during von Spakovsky’s tenure. When President Bush nominated him to the Federal Election Commission in 2006, career Justice Department staff took the extraordinary step of writing a letter to the Senate opposing his nomination, stating that von Spakovsky had “played a major role in the implementation of practices which injected partisan political factors into decision-making on enforcement matters.” Von Spakovsky’s Georgia voter ID approval became a central example of how conservative movement infrastructure operated to suppress voting rights through politicization of civil rights enforcement.