Election integrity experts blasted President Barack Obama on Tuesday for nominating a left-wing "voting rights" activist to a federal panel that oversees election administration.
Obama on Friday tapped Myrna Perez as an election assistance commissioner, which oversees an independent federal agency that helps states meet election administration guidelines laid out by the 2002 Help America Vote Act.
Critics of the nomination say Perez is an ideologue with no experience overseeing election logistics.
"The EAC is supposed to recommend best practices to the states on how to run their elections, yet the president nominates a radical, left-wing activist with absolutely no experience in election administration," said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, in an emailed statement.
Von Spakovsky, a former official at the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department civil rights division’s voting section, said the nomination was part of an ongoing effort by the White House "to politicize election administration."
Perez’s controversial views include outspoken opposition to laws that require voters to present a photo ID at the polls. She has suggested that such laws are motivated by animus towards racial minorities.
Voter ID laws are widely supported by the American people and have been upheld by the Supreme Court.
Perez has also defended the inclusion of illegal immigrants in the U.S. Census.
She is currently a deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-wing organization based at the New York University School Law that describes itself as "part think tank, part public interest law firm, part advocacy group, part communications hub."
The Brennan Center, while officially nonpartisan, receives funding from some of the nation’s most prominent left-wing political financiers.
The Democracy Alliance, a shadowy network of liberal donors that bankroll a host of organizations, has contributed undisclosed sums to the group.
Robert Johnson, a former Brennan board member, also sat on the board of the Democracy Alliance.
The Open Society Institute (OSI), a foundation run by left-wing currency manipulator George Soros, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Brennan since 2002.
Brennan Center attorneys have represented OSI. Two OSI employees formerly worked for Brennan, and one Brennan staffer was formerly with Soros’ foundation.
These connections and Brennan’s body of work combatting voter integrity measures suggest to J. Christian Adams, a former DOJ voting rights section attorney, that Perez will bring a stridently ideological approach to the EAC.
"Her only experience in the field is in the harassment of dedicated state and local election administrators when they follow the law in cleaning their voter rolls of duplicate, deceased, and felon voters," Adams said in an email.
Like von Spakovsky, Adams worries that the president is attempting to further politicize the administration of elections.
Perez, he said, "has spent her career suing election officials trying to stop basic measures designed to safeguard the integrity of our elections like voter ID."
"She is not qualified to be a commissioner on the EAC," Adams added.
Perez’s nomination will be considered by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which oversees the EAC.
She was previously nominated to the post in 2011, but her nomination died in committee at the end of the 112th Congress, a rules committee spokesman said, forcing the president to re-nominate her.
The Brennan Center did not respond to a request for comment.