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You are here: Home / ACORN!

ACORN!

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Voters win one:

Great news breaking in Fairfax County this morning. Electoral Boards are split 2-1 in Virginia, one Republican, one Democrat and one member of the Governor’s party. When Bob McDonnell was elected, the Fairfax GOP placed noted voter-fraud conspiracy theorist Hans Von Spakovsky on the electoral board in the largest county in Virginia.
The result was massive lines at polling places with minority (Democratic) voters, while most GOP leaning precincts were able to go in and quickly vote with little wait time.
It was time to reappoint this month. The parties get to nominate three candidates, but judges usually take the first choice of the party. In Fairfax- judges have never bypassed the top choice of a party in the last 50 years (which is as far back as I could find people that remembered). Also the judges making the decision were all selected for the bench by Republicans in the General Assembly.

So what did these GOP judges decide to do? In an unprecedented move in Fairfax County- judges for the first time in modern history have rejected the top choice of a political party for one of these positions. Instead, GOP lawyer Brian Schoeneman was appointed to the Board.
The GOP is already having a meltdown over this decision from the judges they appointed. Get out the popcorn, this is going to be fun to watch.
These judges deserve a lot of credit for standing up for voters and not the political party that put them on the bench.
UPDATE: In case it wasn’t clear above- Hans Von Spakovskywas the GOP’s top choice who was rejected.

Von Spakovsky remains a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundationā€™s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, so heā€™s not out of a job yet.

Reader Interactions

31Comments

  2. 2.

    EconWatcher

    Von Spakovsky has a shadowy and interesting family history, with a German mother and a White Russian father who spent World War II “fighting communists” in Yugoslavia (on behalf of whom?) and then landed in Huntsville, Alabama, along with Von Braun and other Nazi scientists. If you read between the lines, you get the impression the household he grew up in may have been unrepentant Nazi.

    If you spent a few hours alone with Von Spakovsky, with a bottle of scotch and a tape recorder, I’ll bet you’d capture some interesting things about the world view he absorbed with his mother’s milk.

  3. 3.

    patroclus

    Well, it’s excellent news only if GOP lawyer Brian Schoeneman doesn’t act like GOP lawyer Hans Van Spakovsky.

  4. 4.

    catclub

    “Brian Schoeneman.” I know I have seen that last name as an incredible GOP hack, but apparently not as much of one as Spakovsky.

  5. 5.

    Gus

    Von Spakovsky remains a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundationā€™s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, so heā€™s not out of a job yet.

    So it’s not all good news then.

  6. 6.

    mouse tolliver

    We had a three hour wait time here, and only six voting machines. I could swear there were 12 voting machines the previous time I voted during an off year election where there was no wait time at all.

    This is a winning issue for Democrats. Nobody was happy about those long lines.

  9. 9.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Sorry to go OT so quickly but this IGMFU story really pisses me off

    Jason Saine received unemployment compensation for more than a year before he landed a part-time job as a state legislator in North Carolina. This month, he joined his fellow Republicans in supporting a bill that slashes unemployment insurance in the state.

    Saine says he wrestled with the decision to support the bill right up until the final moment before he cast his vote.

    The bill reduces the maximum weekly unemployment check from $530 to $350 and effectively slashes the duration of benefits from 73 weeks to anywhere between 12 and 20 weeks. The ultimate purpose of the measure is to reduce North Carolina businesses’ tax burden by speeding repayment of $2.5 billion the state borrowed from the federal government to pay unemployment claims over the past few years.

    Talk about pulling up the ladder behind you. Wanker.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/22/north-carolina-unemployment_n_2741463.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

    It’s a Huffpost link

  10. 10.

    Roger Moore

    Von Spakovsky remains a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundationā€™s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, so heā€™s not out of a job yet.

    The wingnut welfare you will always have with you.

  11. 11.

    Punchy

    ā€œBrian Schoeneman.ā€ I know I have seen that last name as an incredible GOP hack

    I have a feeling Hans was the deflection while Schoeneman was the real goal. Wasn’t he a Rove-picked Asst. Atty from MO who got the gig after Rove and Gonzo purged all the Dem/Indy Federal lawyers?

    Seems like he might actually be more douchey than Von Sparks.

  13. 13.

    schrodinger's cat

    OT: Sully update.
    His bad NYC experiences continue. He had some bad experiences while getting his beard trimmed. He waited for 2 hours at one shop, at another one the owner dropped his Ipad and a third one he got a bad trim. I loled, I wonder how many NYC barbers are Balloon Juice regulars.

  14. 14.

    MikeJ

    @Punchy:

    I have a feeling Hans was the deflection while Schoeneman was the real goal.

    If that were true Von Spakovsky wouldn’t have been on the board last year during the election.

  15. 15.

    David Hunt

    @mouse tolliver:

    This is a winning issue for Democrats. Nobody was happy about those long lines.

    I disagree. I think there were a large number of Republicans that were happy about your long lines…

  17. 17.

    Bob In Portland

    Von Spakovsky’s folks were brought into the US after WWII to “escape from the Nazis”. As I recall it was years after the war and so they weren’t in any danger from Nazis by that time. Also, they settled in Huntsville, Alabama, right in the middle of where all those Nazi rocket scientists were resettled after the war. There is much speculation that the von Spakovskys were brought over by the CIA in one their several plans to import Nazis and fascists into the US to insinuate them into immigrant communities (see Christopher Simpson’s BLOWBACK).

    So, of course, this spawn of Nazi satanists should be spending his time trying to prevent liberals and minorities from voting.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    @Punchy:

    Seems like he might actually be more douchey than Von Sparks.

    If you read up on Spakovsky, you will see that would be very, very difficult. He’s basically the originator of the push for voter ID and helped write the crappy laws that were being pushed by ALEC.

    Pale imitator Schoeneman will be a (very small, but actual) improvement.

  19. 19.

    Mnemosyne

    @David Hunt:

    I disagree. I think there were a large number of Republicans that were happy about your long linesā€¦

    Republican politicians, maybe. I doubt there were many Republican voters that day who were happy to be standing in a three-hour line.

  20. 20.

    David Hunt

    @Mnemosyne: An underlying assumption of my statement was that funding and allocation of voting machines was arranged so that lines were longer in Democratic precincts. So even at that level, less problems than you might think.

  21. 21.

    poco

    @Kay: Ahhh! Thanks for that link–have been puzzling over how that guy seemed so familiar. Of course, it was Jane Mayer’s brilliant expose. He doesn’t even realize that he is outing himself as a fascist, just thrilled that he is finally getting the recognition he deserves for fucking with this country’s democracy.

  22. 22.

    DonT

    who’s Schoeneman’s chinaman? is the brother-in-law of one of the judges?
    inquiring minds want to know

  24. 24.

    Mike E

    Fighting communists means allying with the Axis against Tito, the longtime premier who helped 2,000 Jews escape Nazi occupied Yugoslavia and attempted an alliance with the royalist Chetniks. The latter tried a parlay with the Axis to keep their prince in power, but they picked the wrong pony and got wiped out in the post war scheme of things. Hans’ parents were royalists, Nazis, or both.

  28. 28.

    Bob In Portland

    From Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article:

    Von Spakovsky is the son of a German mother and a Russian father who met in Bavaria, just after the Second World War, at an American-run camp for displaced persons. They immigrated to the United States in 1951. His father, Anatol, was a White Russian who fought Communism twice: first against the Bolsheviks, in Russia, and later against Tito, in Yugoslavia, where he lived before heading to Bavaria. ā€œHe escaped death many times,ā€ von Spakovsky recalled. ā€œHe taught me to stand up for what I believe in, no matter what the cost, and I have taken that to heart.ā€ Von Spakovsky says that his heritage has made him especially appreciative of American democracy and sensitive to what he calls its ā€œfragility.ā€
    In America, his parents settled in Huntsville, Alabama, where his father taught philosophy at a local college and wrote poetry. ā€œHe was the most intelligent and cultured person I have ever known,ā€ von Spakovsky said, adding that family dinners were more stimulating than the local schools he attended. Although the civil-rights movement created tumult in Alabama during his childhood, he says that he has no memory of it.

    Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/29/121029fa_fact_mayer#ixzz2LfArBz8i

  30. 30.

    Woodrowfan

    as one of the Democratic election officers (i.e. poll worker) in Fairfax County all I can say is THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!!!

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