{"id":3137,"date":"2008-05-08T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-08T15:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3137"},"modified":"2008-05-08T11:01:14","modified_gmt":"2008-05-08T16:01:14","slug":"crippled-election-commission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3137","title":{"rendered":"Crippled Election Commission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The New York Times<\/em><br \/>\nMay 8, 2008<\/p>\n<p>The White House is removing a member  of the Federal Election Commission for standing up for clean elections, while  trying to install another member whose specialty is keeping eligible voters from  casting ballots. The Senate, which must confirm nominees, should insist that  President Bush appoint commissioners with a proven record of supporting voting  rights and fair elections.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Bush is purging the current F.E.C. chairman, David Mason, presumably  because he was responsible enough to challenge the funding machinations of  Senator John McCain\u2019s presidential campaign. Mr. Mason shocked his fellow  Republicans by notifying Mr. McCain that he might run afoul of the law by  switching from public funding to private donations once he secured the party\u2019s  nomination.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The White House proposes to replace Mr. Mason with Donald McGahn, a  Republican warhorse. F.E.C. commissioners are expected to be aligned with a  party \u2014 one of the new Democratic nominees is a staff member of Senator Charles  Schumer of New York \u2014 but Mr. McGahn has a particularly partisan background. He  was the party\u2019s Congressional campaign counsel \u2014 and the ethics lawyer for Tom  DeLay, the former House majority leader from Texas who left office under  multiple clouds.<\/p>\n<p>The six-member commission, which now has four vacancies, has been rendered  inoperable. If it is to perform its role as referee of national elections, it  urgently needs a full complement \u2014 and it needs commissioners with the sort of  professionalism displayed by Mr. Mason.<\/p>\n<p>Senate Democrats should push for someone more suitable than Mr. McGahn, and  they should continue to oppose Hans von Spakovsky, a terrible nominee with a  record as a Justice Department lawyer of aggressive partisanship and opposition  to minority voting rights.<\/p>\n<p><em>For the latest reform news and to access previous reports,  releases, and analysis from Democracy 21, visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracy21.org\/\">www.democracy21.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times May 8, 2008 The White House is removing a member of the Federal Election Commission for standing up for clean elections, while trying to install another member whose specialty is keeping eligible voters from casting ballots. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3137\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-OB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}