Wall Street Journal Profiles Heritage Scholar Hans von Spakovsky

A stalwart advocate of election integrity and a formidable opponent of those seeking to subvert our nation’s electoral process, Hans von Spakovsky sat down with The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto to share his experiences fighting to protect every citizen’s right to vote.

In his capacity as a senior legal fellow and manager of the Civil Justice Reform Initiative for Heritage’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, von Spakovsky works to ensure that any effort to hijack elections for partisan gain fails. It’s a goal he’s had throughout his career.

At a young age, he learned to respect and to value our nation’s democratic process. As he explains in the interview, “My childhood was filled with stories from them [his parents] of what it’s like living in a dictatorship, living with the secret police. I very early understood the importance of our democratic process and how important it is to protect our right to vote.”

>>> Read the full story on Hans von Spakovsky from the Wall Street Journal

The battle to protect the integrity of the electoral process is an uphill one for sure, but that doesn’t deter von Spakovsky’s resolve. He describes for Taranto just how organized the left is in its attack on voting rights. They are “constantly working on these voting issues. … They have dozens of organizations, with a lot of money.” He notes that the left’s goal is “to change the rules to give them an advantage in elections. The other side of the political aisle [the right] just doesn’t do that.”

In the interview, von Spakovsky also debunks the latest liberal effort, the Voter Empowerment Act, federal legislation that seeks to mandate automatic registration. “They basically want to use the government to do Democratic voter outreach and voter registration for them,” he says.

There is another way to improve the integrity of our vote and prevent the left from succeeding in its attempts to attack the democratic process. As von Spakovsky explains in the interview, “voter ID is just a basic measure to protect the integrity of the voter-registration process. … A lot of times, the victims of voter fraud are in fact black voters and people in poor communities. They are the ones who often are taken advantage of, particularly by some Democrats, because they are less likely to complain or find out that their vote has been stolen.”

In addition to his extensive research and policy papers on voter ID, von Spakovsky recently co-authored a book, “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk,” with John Fund. The book details the prevalence and dangers of voter fraud.