National: The man who cries voter fraud: how Hans von Spakovsky has built a career peddling election security fears | Alice Herman/The Guardian
At a US House hearing in May, a bespectacled 65-year-old attorney made a startling claim: American citizens’ right to vote was under attack. Non-citizens, Hans von Spakovsky claimed, were voting unchecked in federal elections, and something needed to be done about it. For Von Spakovsky, who leads Heritage Foundation’s election law initiative and authored the section of Project 2025 on federal election oversight, the testimony joined two of his favorite topics: immigration and what he believes is the unseen scourge of fraudulent voting in American elections. It was also deeply misleading. The criminal penalties for voting in federal elections are steep for immigrants without full citizenship – felony charges and even deportation. So they rarely cast ballots in US elections. That has not stopped Von Spakovsky from doubling down on his claim that non-citizen voting threatens election security. Read Article