A Third Strike for Obama at the EAC

Yesterday, President Obama nominated Kate Marshall to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). A brief review of his previous nominations seems to be in order. All too often the Democrats consider election administration in a partisan fashion, seeking to advance a political agenda or scare their base.  

President Obama seemingly believed such when he nominated the hyper-partisan liberal extremist Myrna Perez previously.  As we wrote at the time:

It is hard to imagine a person less suited for a commission whose job is to be “independent, bipartisan commission charged with developing guidance to meet HAVA requirements” than Ms. Perez.  Some of the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA’s, requirements were for states to update their voting rolls.  An effort which Ms. Perez has long opposed calling such efforts “list purging” with made up statistics and overheated rhetoric.  An example of the latter is Ms. Perez once said: “purging happens all across the country, probably every day.” 

To election officials of both parties that statement is ridiculous but it is the kind of extremist rhetoric that Ms. Perez has been spouting for years against Republicans and Democrats who try to enforce laws on voting that the far left opposes.  In Ms. Perez’s world such Republicans and Democrats are racists or fear mongers. 

According to Perez, Secretaries of State and other election officials spend their time trying to remove people from the voting rolls.  Such rhetoric and her extreme partisanship resulted in Perez being forced to withdraw her name.  

President Obama replaced Perez's nomination with Matthew Butler. Butler was the former CEO of Media Matters. While Perez was a partisan extremist on election issues, Butler had no experience at all on election issues.  He is now the Chief of Staff for the Democratic National Convention. In other words, he was only a partisan.  

Which brings us to the current nominee, Kate Marshall. She similarly has no election administration background. (Although unlike Butler, at least she "applied" for such a position when she ran unsuccessfully for Nevada Secretary of State.)

And that is how the Democrats view the EAC: a place to reward partisans for their service to the liberal movement. It is sad that the left has so little regard for election administration.

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.

Victory and Defeat for Open, Fair, and Honest Elections

While Republicans see the administration of elections as a non-partisan process to be performed in accordance with the rule of law, we have long contended that some far left Democrats see election administration as a way to race bait and fear monger in a desperate effort to scare the liberal base into voting.  The leaders in this effort include the Brennan Center which has recently been rebuked on the left by the likes of liberal law Professor Rick Hasen and the New York Times. 

The Brennan Center’s most visible spokesperson on election issues has been Myrna Perez.  Ms. Perez has made outlandish statements that such activities as cleaning up the voting lists are “vote purging” that  “happens every day”, that 1.2 million people don’t have ID in Texas, and much more. 

For her years of effort of carrying the Democrats water on these issues she was rewarded with a nomination to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC).   RNLA and others interested in fair and honest elections vehemently and vociferously opposed her nomination. 

She has been proven factually wrong again and again but that never mattered.  That is until today.  She has withdrawn her nomination to the EAC. 

We hope this is not just a rejection of her but of the organization that gives her a platform, the Brennan Center. 

However, while we won the battle, we have not won the war.   Her replacement, Matt Butler, is even being questioned for partisanship by the left.  Like most liberal “experts” on voting, he has no experience in working in election administration. 

Today was a victory for open, fair and honest elections with the withdrawal of Ms. Perez.  However, the war is not over as President Obama has nominated another person who seemingly has little interest in election administration. There are literally dozens of current and former Democrat election administrators and experts who would be qualified to help lead a commission whose responsibility it is, at least in theory, to “assist” state and local election officials and voters. Is Butler really qualified for such a task? What are his qualifications other than being an activist progressive Democrat?  As Doug Chapin writes:

At this point, it would appear that the Democrats have made the decision to trade a potentially controversial (and therefore problematic) pick for on that is lower-profile, albeit just as partisan.

More on Butler later, however, his nomination at first blush seems to prove why it is time to end the EAC.