Bush lawyer is Fox’s lone expert pushing Coleman-Franken to federal courts

Fox News reported yesterday that although taking Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election to federal courts “could take years, election law experts say it may be the only way to satisfy everyone.” But Fox’s one expert (not “experts”) is Hans von Spakovsky, whose controversial appointment by former President George W. Bush to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) snarled the agency for years.

As Media Matters points out, Fox IDs von Spakovsky only by his current affiliation with the conservative Heritage Foundation, but he gets a fuller introduction in mainstream media outlets like the Star Tribune. The newspaper called him “a former Federal Elections commissioner and point man on voting rights in the Bush administration’s Justice Department.”

Here is the video clip from Fox News’ “Special Report” on Monday:

Partial transcript (see full transcript at Media Matters):

FOX’S SHANNON BREAM: … If Coleman ultimately loses there, heading into the federal court system on a constitutional challenge will certainly be an option. And though getting to the U.S. Supreme Court is a long shot that could take years, election law experts say it may be the only way to satisfy everyone.

VON SPAKOVSKY: If you don’t deal with all of the issues that have been raised in this case, then, you know, a lot of people are going to be questioning whether the real winner, who actually ends up with the seat, was the person who really won the race. And that’s not good for the kind of election process that we have.