As I ranted about the Acorn "scandal" this morning, it struck me that perhaps the best thing for rational people trapped in the inanity of an election season is to just look away as the partisans scrum.
Voter fraud: This helpful piece from Salon quotes Lori Minnite, a professor of political science at Barnard College who investigated allegations of widespread voter fraud. Minnite explained, "From 2002 to 2005 only one person was found guilty of registration fraud. Twenty people were found guilty of voting while ineligible and five people were found guilty of voting more than once. That's 26 criminal voters -- voters who vote twice, impersonate other people, vote without being a resident ... Meanwhile thousands of people are getting turned away at the polls."
You don't get that sense from Fox News, aka the Acorn Network, which brings with each 15-minute cycle a fresh round of angst over "voter fraud." Note that it is never "registration fraud," which would actually describe the act to which they refer, and which happens by the thousands every election cycle ("Mickey Mouse registered to vote!" is a very different story from "Mickey Mouse voted!") but then, why let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Meanwhile, last week, the New York Times reported that "tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law."
Oh, Fox, where is they outrage? Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly, where are your cries of outrage?
They're too busy railing against those dangerous radicals at Acorn.
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