Does a Life of Partisanship Equate to Being Qualified for the EAC?

As you might remember, President Obama’s choice for the Election Assistance Commission, Myrna Perez, withdrew her nomination last week.  In his place, he nominated Matthew Butler.

While Ms. Perez suffered from overtly partisan ideas and beliefs on voter ID, among other things, Mr. Butler’s nomination is not much better. He has been involved in partisan politics, and has no actual election administration experience to draw on.

Mr. Butler was the CEO of Media Matters for America, a progressive organization that is

Dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

As part of his position with MMFA, Butler opined,

We need strong progressive voices advocating for all of our policy priorities.

In that same interview, Butler stated,

Countering all the misinformation that comes out of right wing media is really tough.  That's why the Media Matters team is 86 people covering the news 24-7 and responding to every point we can get to on mediamatters.org.

Overall, Matt Butler does not seem to be a good fit for the Election Assistance Commission, as his experience is largely in partisan politics.  The EAC is supposed to be independent and bipartisan in assisting America in running our elections.  Matt Butler does not seem to be a good fit for such a position.