Lithwick weighs in on "voter fraud" hysteria
In her new piece on Slate, Dahlia Lithwick argues why hysteria over voter fraud is far more dangerous to "the fabric of democracy" than voter fraud itself.
Week of October 12, 2008 - October 18, 2008
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Media Matters takes on CNN over ACORN coverage
Via Atrios:
From October 6 through October 15, CNN aired at least 54 segments mentioning allegations that ACORN submitted allegedly false or duplicate voter registration applications this year in a number of states. However, only one of those segments mentioned both of the following two relevant points: 1) that the statutes of most of those states require third parties registering prospective voters to submit all registration forms they receive; and 2) that actual instances of illegal votes being cast as a result of registration fraud are extremely rare. Of the 54 CNN segments addressing the allegations against ACORN, two mentioned only the former of those two points, while one mentioned just the latter.
Full story here.
Where's Al Gore?
I've seen both Clintons on the trail, Sen. Kerry, Gov. Richardson, and Gov. Rendell on television, and Sen. Webb cutting a radio spot promoting the Obama-Biden ticket -- where's Al Gore? Or have I just been missing him?
By RNC standards, is Joe the Plumber eligible to vote?
This from the New York Times "Caucus" blog:
By the standards Republican groups are pushing to have voter registrations checked against social security databases and the like before they are deemed valid, would Joe Wurzelbacher be allowed to cast a vote in the upcoming election? His name does not match the name on the rolls.
Mr. Wurzelbacher is registered to vote in Lucas County under the name Samuel Joseph Worzelbacher.
"We have his named spelled W-O, instead of W-U," Linda Howe, executive director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, said in a telephone interview. "Handwriting is sometimes hard to read. He has never corrected it in his registration card."
The records, she said, showed he voted Republican in the March primary.
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Second Debate Nostalgia (Conan O'Brien)
This is a bit dated, but Conan's skit last ween on McCain's "wandering" during the second debate was so funny that my girlfriend and I almost fell out of our chairs. So as a warm-up for tonight:
MUST READ by Roger Simon: "McCain warned on race card"
Roger Simon has a stirring column up on Politico on Rep. John Lewis's "George Wallace" statement and the message it conveys.
Joe Biden on ABC
Joe Biden reacts to Virginia GOP Chair's call to stress a "connection" between Obama and bin Laden:
Doesn't the logic of an "Obama-ACORN" conspiracy seem a little twisted?
The McCain camp's claim is that ACORN's submission of thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms is somehow a ploy to help Obama "steal" the election. As Josh Marshall many others (even a couple on CNN) have pointed out, voter registration fraud rarely leads to actual voter fraud, as the Republican's are trying to insinuate. In any case, the sheer fact that so many of these forms are obviously fake would suggest that whoever filled them out had no intention of trying to make them withstand scrutiny -- this lends credence to the notion that it is not ACORN trying to game election boards but ACORN employees trying to game ACORN.
But this does not mean that these masses of forms are innocuous to the election process. On the contrary, a large volume of fake registration forms can seriously slow down the process of putting legitimate voters on the rolls for the upcoming election. But how could this possibly help Obama, who is relying on large numbers of new registrants to come out and vote? Wouldn't this clogging up the machinery actually hurt Obama by preventing people who registered through his GOTV efforts from getting their registrations processed in a timely manner?
