Fraud on Voter Fraud
Panel Said to Alter Finding on Voter Fraud
Can you tell the difference between these two phrases?
- “there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud,”
- “there is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud.”
How about these two?
- “false registration forms have not resulted in polling place fraud,”
- citing “registration drives by nongovernmental groups as a source of fraud.”
A federal panel responsible for conducting election research played down the findings of experts who concluded last year that there was little voter fraud around the nation, according to a review of the original report obtained by The New York Times. Instead, the panel, the Election Assistance Commission, issued a report that said the pervasiveness of fraud was open to debate.
The revised version echoes complaints made by Republican politicians, who have long suggested that voter fraud is widespread and justifies the voter identification laws that have been passed in at least two dozen states.
Democrats say the threat is overstated and have opposed voter identification laws, which they say disenfranchise the poor, members of minority groups and the elderly, who are less likely to have photo IDs and are more likely to be Democrats.
Steven Taylor sums it up:
… the two sentences, which overlap in a very general sense [suggest] two different conclusions. Indeed, the sentence released to the public suggests that there is pervasive fraud, while the first sentence downplays the notion that there is significant fraud.
… given that the administration (especially its political arm, e.g., Karl Rove) has focused on the issue of voter fraud, this is a suspicious, if not outright disturbing, action.
… the notion that we have a radical, widespread voter fraud problem has no empirical basis.
… a key allegation in the USA firings case is that a motivation for targeting specific US Attorneys was their failure to address voter fraud cases that would have helped Republicans and damaged Democrats. To have an administration panel play up the notion that voter fraud is a huge problem in contradiction to the actual findings of a report adds substantial fuel to that fire.
Completing this morning’s Triple-Steve-Threat, read the considerably harsher Steve Benen, who concludes:
This is one of those handful of controversies which is a scandal compounding another scandal. In this instance, the Republican machine wants to manufacture a non-existent voter-fraud crisis so that GOP partisans can stifle participation in the political process. That’s obviously scandalous enough, but these revelations show the same machine taking this one step further, lying to the public about the evidence so as to perpetuate a lie to the public about the illusory problem.
Some days, it’s hard to conceal my contempt for these people.
I’m waiting for Parrotico to weigh in with “this is all very reasonable, nothing to see here, folks, … reasonable people can disagree … and what do words like ‘little’ really mean anyway?”
Voter Fraud … Not!
Even I am not ready to believe this
Voter Fraud in Yemen
Iglesias: “I was fired because I didn’t bring phony cases.”
Manufacturing Voter Fraud