More on Voter Fraud: FOX Paints Democrats as Guilty Paranoiacs
Reported by Ellen - October 22, 2004 -
Major Garrett appeared on FOX News Live with Alan Colmes last night (a radio show) to discuss with him the latest FOX talking points about voter fraud. I'm sorry to say Colmes played right into the agenda.
Garrett tossed off a little dig against Democrats before he got into the meat of the "voter fraud" story when he said, "Democrats are forever registering dead people."
Colmes let that assertion go unchallenged and unsubstantiated. Instead, he said, "The more people vote, the better for Democrats, the fewer the better for the Republicans."
Major Garrett weasled his way around that correct statement by saying that it's not always true.
Well, maybe it isn't ALWAYS true but he must know darn well it's likely to be true now. As the NY Times reported on October 4, in a story by Kate Zernike and Ford Fessenden, voter registration "is particularly high in urban areas of swing states, where independent Democratic groups and community organizations have been running a huge voter registration campaign for just over a year." Similarly, on September 26, Fessenden reported that, "A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows."
Next, Colmes just happened to mention the increase of voter registration in Philadelphia, a topic that Major Garrett just happened to have covered earlier in the day in a video report called Recount Funds, available at FOXNews.com.
"I'm glad you mentioned Philadelphia," Garrett said. Then he repeated an anecdote he reported in the video that Philadelphia had nearly 99% of its adult population registered to vote in 2000 and that if voter registration is up by 200,000, there "damn well better have been 200,000 more added to the census." Apparently, Garrett made no attempt to get an explanation from a Democratic spokesperson about this either on Colmes' show or in the video. Nor did Colmes ask about any such opposing view.
Colmes then asked whether the Republican efforts to "stop fraud" might be seen as intimidation. Garrett conveniently had facts and figures ready to rebut that possibility. He said the Justice Department will have 2000 monitors around the country in the swing states. "None of them can be prosecutors, former prosecutors, have any law enforcement background whatsoever and yet the mere presence of monitors from the federal government some will construe as a potentially intimidating factor, even though they're there only to watch and make sure the laws are enforced."
Once again, Colmes and Garrett overlooked what they both must have known: That John Ashcroft's Justice Department is not exactly a reassuring presence for minority and Democratic voters. As the Washington Post said on September 20, 2004, "Ashcroft, a former Missouri governor and senator, came under fire during his 2001 confirmation for vetoing bills that would have promoted voter registration in St. Louis, a heavily African American Democratic stronghold." (Jo Becker and Dan Eggen reporting, P. A05)
Furthermore, in a recent Newsday article, Christopher Edley, Jr, dean of Boalt Hall, the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wrote that Ashcroft's Justice Department has done little so far to investigate current claims of voter suppression. Edley added, "Ashcroft stated to civil rights groups a few months ago that the priority would be voter fraud, rather than suppression or management malfeasance."
Instead, Garrett bashed Democrats' concerns once more, at the same time raising again the notion of Democratic hanky-panky. He reported that 17 states currently have a law requiring identification linking a voter to his/her address on the roll. "Some Democrats consider THAT a form of intimidation. Republicans say, 'wait a minute. How can it be intimidation if all you have to do is prove that you live where you say you live?'"
It's a fair question but one no Democrat spokesperson had an opportunity to answer.
"Let the legal wrangling begin," Colmes said, ending the segment.
