Another reader writes:

Your correspondent put a strange slant on your old Slate article about Hans Von Spakovsky & the FEC. Nowhere in your article did you suggest that Hans would have acted/voted any differently than Don McGahn. You simply made the point that Hans’s notoriety might have resulted in more media/public attention to the FEC.

I also think your correspondent really muddies the waters by claiming the opposition to Hans was purely partisan (or worse, a “personal vendetta”). I’m willing to grant that the Voting Rights Section & Civil Rights Division seem to be–or at least have recently been–pretty nasty places to work, but Hans & his crew really did stand out. The fact that they were willing to destroy the careers of Republican U.S. Attorneys who wouldn’t aid their wrong-doing is proof enough that the opposition to Hans shouldn’t simply be seen as partisan or personal.

Maybe in the limited case of disclosure regulation, there are grounds to argue that the dead-lock is partisan. However since present-day Republicans are hostile to almost all federal enforcement of election & voting laws (unless the NBPP are defendants), I think it becomes less about the scope of regulations than about whether there should be regulations at all. Furthermore, although it’s true that removing unnecessary obstacles to enfranchising poor non-white people is probably a boon to the Democrats, such actions are also consistent with the 15th & 24th Amendments.