About Hans von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky is recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on elections and election reform. He is manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in Heritage’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He is the co-author with John Fund of the book “Who’s Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” (Encounter Books, 2012). Before joining Heritage in 2008, Mr. von Spakovsky served two years as a member of the Federal Election Commission, the authority charged with enforcing campaign finance laws for congressional and presidential elections, including public funding. He has served on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and on the Fulton County (Ga.) Board of Registrations and Elections. He is a former vice chairman of the Fairfax County (Va.) Electoral Board and a former member of the Virginia Advisory Board to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. A 1984 graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law, Mr. von Spakovsky received his B.S. degree in 1981 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Hans von Spakovsky: Thomas Fires Warning Shot at Media, Organizations That Lie About Conservatives

If you are a private figure and The New York Times or the Southern Poverty Law Center publishes a lie about you, you simply have to prove that the statement was false and harmed your reputation. The fact that the publisher didn’t know or care that the statement was false is irrelevant. But if you are a “public figure,” you not only have to prove that the statement was false and harmed your reputation, but that the statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” And the definition of who is a public figure constantly has expanded since 1964.

By |2022-06-30T13:37:22+00:00June 30th, 2022|
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Hans von Spakovsky: This Supreme Court Ruling Will Prove Vital to Defending Voter ID

The Supreme Court’s important ruling last week on voter ID in North Carolina has been overlooked in the fervor over the high court’s spot-on decisions upholding the Second Amendment and religious freedom and overruling Roe v. Wade. But the court’s procedural decision Thursday in Berger v. NAACP will help prevent state officials from sabotaging the defense of state election laws and other measures being attacked by their political allies and friends.

By |2022-06-29T14:00:38+00:00June 29th, 2022|
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Hans von Spakovsky: If Garland, Local Prosecutor Won’t Protect Justices, Virginia Governor and State AG Must Act

With U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Fairfax County, Virginia, Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano refusing to enforce federal and state laws against the pro-abortion protesters who are intimidating and threatening Supreme Court justices and their families who live in Virginia, it’s time for Gov. Glenn Youngkin and state Attorney General Jason Miyares to step in and use their statutory power to arrest, prosecute, and seek the maximum penalty for every day the protesters are violating the law. The lack of action by Garland and Descano is encouraging the “summer of rage,” leading not only to the arrest of an individual who wanted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but also attacks on pro-life charities and pregnancy resource centers.

By |2022-06-28T12:59:41+00:00June 28th, 2022|
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Hans von Spakovsky: Dirty tricks more sophisticated

June 17 marks the 50th anniversary of the night when D.C. police arrested five men breaking into the Watergate hotel/office/apartment complex. The burglars were operatives of President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign. Their mission: to tap phones and steal documents from the Democratic National Committee, which had its headquarters in the Watergate.

By |2022-06-17T15:11:19+00:00June 17th, 2022|
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Hans von Spakovsky: 30 Years in Making, Museum Dedicated to Victims of Communism Opens

Remember these two numbers: 100 million and 1.5 billion. Those were the two numbers emphasized at the dedication on Wednesday of the new Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C., which I was privileged to attend along with my family. An estimated 100 million is the number of human beings slaughtered, massacred, and killed by Marxist, communist regimes in the past 100 years, from the Soviet Union to Red China to Castro’s Cuba. And 1.5 billion is the number of people still suffering under oppressive, tyrannical communist regimes today.

By |2022-06-14T13:36:16+00:00June 14th, 2022|
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Von Spakovsky: Protesting at justices’ homes: A violation of federal and state law

It’s easy to take for granted one of our country’s greatest strengths: a legal system in which we settle our disputes peacefully in court. We do this without the type of violence, intimidation and threats against judges that occur in too many other countries. That was true until someone leaked a draft opinion from the Supreme Court a few weeks ago.

By |2022-06-02T17:17:41+00:00June 2nd, 2022|
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Hans von Spakovsky: Biden Administration Implements a Racial Spoils System

The Biden administration is doubling down on the color-conscious policies that were the hallmark of its first year in office through a series of “action plans,” which it released through every executive bureaucracy last month. Only this time, in a bid to avert legal reversals, the administration is concealing its racial spoils system under bureaucratic euphemisms.

By |2022-06-02T17:14:32+00:00June 2nd, 2022|
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Von Spakovsky: The Fraud that Dare Not Speak its Name

Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary, 2,000 Mules, raises serious questions about possible skullduggery in the 2020 election, involving absentee ballots across multiple states. But neither the liberal media, nor election officials, nor law enforcement seem to have much interest in investigating that potential wrongdoing. The reaction has largely boiled down to “nothing to see here!” or else to so-called “fact checks” that criticize the technology used to analyze the problems the film documents, rather than actually use the information D’Souza presents to investigate the credibility of the claims being made.

By |2022-06-02T17:19:18+00:00June 2nd, 2022|
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Von Spakovsky: Latest Cases of Election Fraud Underline Need for Vigilance and Action

Election integrity continues to be an important issue to citizens across the country, regardless of their political affiliation. While many politicians on the left continue to downplay the issue of election fraud to the dismay of their constituents, threats to free and fair elections continue at an alarming rate,

By |2022-05-23T17:53:35+00:00May 23rd, 2022|
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Von Spakovsky: Efforts to bar reelection bids are unconstitutional

The effort to have members of Congress barred from having their names on ballots based on claims that they participated in an “insurrection” on Jan. 6 or objected to electoral votes should fail. Congress permanently eliminated the insurrection disqualification in the 14th Amendment in amnesty acts that are still in force today, and the objections to the electoral votes were filed in accordance with federal law. All of these efforts and threats are a desperate attempt to gain political advantage through unconstitutional actions. They are a waste of time and resources and should be dismissed as such.

By |2022-03-27T13:01:34+00:00March 27th, 2022|
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