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TechnoratiWhy the Media Can't See the Trees for the ACORNs
John McCain and other Republicans making criminal allegations against the community-organizing group ACORN know exactly what they're doing. They're using alarmist allegations of "voter fraud" to fire up their conservative base and suppress the votes of some citizens who may, out of fear, stay away from the polls.
They exploit lingering unease among the poor and minorities who, with some justification, believe themselves to suffer disproportionately from unbalanced wheels of justice in America. These innocents know they don't have to commit crimes to be accused of crimes. Better to stay away from the places where the accusations might be leveled. Like the polls.
The allegations can also help cover up actual election fraud undertaken on behalf of McCain. This is the tactic Karl Rove learned so well from his right-wing predecessors: accuse your opponent of your own unethical or illegal acts.
These are a tried and true -- and grossly undemocratic -- tactics. And they are often accomplished with the complicity of the press.
I don't think there is a journalist covering the ACORN matter who doesn't know with a great deal of certainty that there is a substantial difference between fictionalized voter registration forms and real voter suppression and election fraud. The former are easily identified and never result in fraudulent voting. No one covering these stories believes that someone is going to show up at the polls this year and say, "My name is Mickey Mouse."
A few bad-apple, low-paid canvassers who take jobs registering voters will turn in fraudulent forms. In this case (as in most) it appears the bad registration forms were identified by ACORN and turned over to authorities in accordance with the law.
The media attention granted the right-wing attacks on ACORN begs the question: why does it seem to be a greater sin to be suspected of voter registration mistakes than to publicly engage in voter suppression efforts?
One answer to this question might be simple editorial bias. E&P's Greg Mitchell detailed the right's pioneer suppression efforts in his book, The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics.
As reported by Mitchell, in the 1934 race for governor of California, Republicans hatched perhaps the most sophisticated voter suppression scheme undertaken up to that time in America. Taking the shrewd advice of a former New York prosecutor, Eli Whitney Debevoise, opponents of Democrat Upton Sinclair leveled wild charges of voter registration fraud. A cooperative district attorney drew up a secret list of 200,000 allegedly illegal registrants.
The Los Angeles Times advanced the suppression campaign, writing on the front page that "it would be far better for a few honest persons to lose their votes than for a hundred thousand rogues to defeat by fraud the majority will of the people." The publicity, the conspirators knew, would frighten those who were afraid they just might be on that list. Rather than risk capture (for a vague crime they had no understanding of), they'd stay away from the polls.
Ultimately, the effort ended in some embarrassment when no actual voter registration fraud was uncovered and the state's Supreme Court tossed out the accusations. But not before the goal of the publicity was met.
There is some historical symmetry in the fact that in 1982, U.S. District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise, a distant cousin of El Debevoise, the suppression guru who hatched the California scheme, ordered the Republican National Committee to forever halt its voter intimidation and suppression campaigns. In the 1982 New Jersey gubernatorial contest, the RNC launched a sophisticated "voter caging" campaign. Letters were sent to voters. If they were returned for bad addresses, the GOP challenged the addressees' registration. It raised doubts among citizens about whether they were illegally registered.
A "Ballot Security Task Force," patrolled the polls, lurking beneath signs that read, "It is a crime to falsify a ballot or to violate election laws." The tactic is being used this year by state attorneys general and others. The RNC remains theoretically under Judge Devevoise's order.
When I covered politics for Texas newspapers in the 1980s, the voter intimidation efforts of the Right were well known. We covered some of them, but not with a lot of energy or insight. I'm afraid we took intimidation and suppression as just another part of the game.
But it's a fact that Karl Rove was the consultant to the incumbent Texas governor back then. So it shouldn't be a surprise that county voter registrars received a list of 29,000 alleged felons to purge from the rolls. That got some coverage when it turned out a Democratic candidate for the state house who had no criminal record was on the list. But it didn't stop the intimidation efforts. Signs reading "You Can Be Imprisoned" were posted at minority polling locations.
If media bias is not the answer to broad coverage of spurious registration fraud allegations, what is the answer?
I think it has something to do with our history. The right to vote has always been contested. In our early years, those without property couldn't vote. Neither could women, freed blacks, or slaves. It took 140 years for women to be granted the franchise. Exclusion is a tradition with deep roots in our cultural narratives and founding documents. Historically accustomed as we are to exclusion, maybe we don't judge it to be news.
Illegally crossing barriers to inclusion, however, is news. I guess.
Isn't it finally time for the media to drop the habit and turn its attention to anti-democratic voter suppression tactics they know are anti-democratic? Isn't it time they dropped their complicity in voter suppression schemes? The ACORN controversy would be a good place to start.
17 Comments so far
Show AllAnd India Daily says:
Are neo cons and their leader Bush planning to defer the election by six months?
I seriously doubt it. They can rest "happy" that Mccain or Obama, the neocon imperialism will continue.
"Isn't it finally time for the media to drop the habit and turn its attention to anti-democratic voter suppression tactics they know are anti-democratic? Isn't it time they dropped their complicity in voter suppression schemes? The ACORN controversy would be a good place to start."
The media is looking for juicy gossip to sell the sheeple. Negative campaigning works and media corporations only care for the bottom line. With Democrats in charge, we have a chance to get back some media control. With Republicans, we'll get more "free market" media warfare that forces the opponents to spend more and more money on ads to counter the other's negative ads.
Like Keith said, to offset Bob the Plumber, maybe Obama should use a Mary the student, a poor girl trying to get into college, but can't because she can't get a student loan plus she has to work to pay for her healthcare and carry her stepfather's baby to term because the Republicans took away Roe v Wade.
A vote for Obama is a vote for women's rights. A vote for McCain is a vote for the American Taliban that wants to make women their slaves.
To even grant this crap discussion time is to fall somewhat into the trap intended.
There is only so much time, so much headline space. If it is filled with this sort of thing it can't be filled with something else.
Obviously the idea that any significant number of poor Workers would risk FEDERAL FRAUD CHARGES just for the chance to pad the victory of a candidate who doesn't really represent them and IS ALREADY A SHOE-IN without fraud is ridiculous on the face of it.
The only way it can even by entertained is with classism from the "liberals" and racism and anti-socialism from the poor, deluded "pale red-necks" of the Right.
Listen to this person write about "a few bad apples" in an article supposedly defending a group supporting the Rights of poor Workers!
Has it occurred to this Senior-frickin' Fellow at some "Institute" that there may be a reason beyond "bad-applism" for somebody to fudge some registrations? Something involved with MONEY and trying to make a LIVING, perhaps?
This really hits home with me. I have worked as a paid signature gatherer before. For weeks I took all the crap people would give me about getting paid per signature, because I needed the money, was waiting to get hired back at my real job, AND believed in the petition (which was just to clear up an old bottleneck in the law that made it too hard for some people to get live-in medical care for pete's sake!). But then for some reason this one guy pushed me too far. I said:
"Yeah man, I get paid by the signature. 50 cents per. FIFTY CENTS. If I stay out here in front of this stupid store all day I can maybe get enough of you selfish bastards to care enough to sign to make ALMOST the wage per day that you DEMAND just for turning into a friggen' old fart! I work hard to make a living and get an important issue on the ballot, just ON THE BALLOT! And you treat me like I'm scum for getting paid per "piece"? You'll drop 'less than a dollar a day' to put some gruel into some Guatamalean kid's stomach and send them to school to make sure they grow up to be the right kind of bible-thumper. But you're gonna give me this shit because of the 'method of pay' my BOSS decided on? Screw you!"
Or something to that effect. Then I just walked home and had to look for another job in the "Land that Good Jobs Forgot" which the U.S. has become for people under 30 and with less than $30,000 of loan debt.
I'm looking real hard for my Social Progress Optimism, but I think I dropped it between your Ivory-Tower Classism and your Useless Liberal Wussiness!
Don't Panic,
-matti.
To Bill from Saginaw---
Thanks for that! "Worried about the accuracy of the current status of your child support payments?" It hadn't occurred to me that even if you were up to date on your support payments the "official" record may say otherwise. Also, your observations on the increasing centralization of government (and private, contracted-out-by-government) data "in the computer age" are prescient.
This is also exactly the case in Ohio, where the GOP is trying to force the Dem Sec. of State, Jennifer Brunner, to compare all new voter registrations with Social Security and other lists to match for errors. Remember when your Social Security number was specified as "not to be used for personal identification"? This case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, very intentionally overburdening Sec. Brunner's office, and very late in the game. This is a national GOP strategy to DISENFRANCHISE otherwise perfectly legitimate voter registrations. It is a far worse crime than anything the GOP has accused ACORN of, in large part because it is a systemic attempt to disenfranchise as opposed to a dissociated attempt to let Mickey Mouse vote. This is one more assault on the Constitution.
I'd rather let Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck vote on election day than deprive hundreds of thousands of otherwise entitled people of the Will to Vote. Mickey Mouse & Donald Duck, let alone Batman & Robin, would not change the outcome. The GOP stole the last two Presidential elections by fraudulent disenfranchisement. Remember Florida an 2000, and Ohio in 2004.
Fight, fight, against the dying of the light...
-30-
"These innocents know they don't have to commit crimes to be accused of crimes. Better to stay away from the places where the accusations might be leveled. Like the polls."
Yes indeed. Having functioned as a credentialed poll challenger and as a voter protection advocate for the last several elections, I believe this observation of Glenn Smith cuts right to the heart of the matter.
We live in an increasingly computerized age, featuring ever-expanding, interlocking data bases containing personal information, public record information, with a staggering quantity of outright misinformation interwoven within it. The Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN) and National Criminal History Information Center (NCIC) are readily accessible along with Department of Motor Vehicle registration records from dash board terminals of many police cruisers now.
Worried about the accuracy of the current status of your child support payments?
Concerned whether those traffic fines you're pretty sure you paid in full might not have been entered into system properly?
If your name is Smith, Jones, or Johnson, Mary, Bob, or John, do you ever have a problem being confused with somebody else when you show identification?
For that matter, I trust you certainly don't have any objection if we just quickly cross check your voter ID information against the lists and data bases of the Social Security Administration, the IRS, Immigration, Homeland Security, city hall, Equifax, or the civil and criminal records departments at your friendly county courthouse..... or do you object for some reason?
Here in Michigan, the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit to halt a "caging" tactic that an official of the Macomb county Republican Party announced which would have had GOP challengers cross check prospective voters' names and addresses on election day against a compiled list of residential foreclosures and evictions.
Got proof on you that your mortgage payments are up to date?
Well, just step aside and wait over there in that line until this discrepancy can get cleared up.....
Fear of getting sucked up into some sort of awkward or nasty legal entanglement, courtesy of life in the computer age, is a well founded fear - one that very likely keeps more legitimate, motivated voters away from the polls on election day than any other single factor.
Bill from Saginaw
ACORN should consider letting 3rd parties fight for them and let them kick the GOP's ass since the Dems won't even try. In 2000, Al Gore couldn't even get the recount going and yet in 2004, the Green Party and Libertarian Party were able to get it going. The GOP has always been nasty and fraudulent but the Dems never bothered to fight them back. Give 3rd parties a voice and they'll fight the fraud that is the GOP better than you think.
Infiltrating or emulating ACORN is a Republican False Flap Op to cover for their actual purging and other true voter fraud. Already the Indiana registrar has put aside ALL the ACORN forms because some are bad. They will process them if they have the time; eligible voters who submitted their forms on time may thus lose their right to vote this year. Unbelievable good fortune for the scumbag Republican anti-democracy machine or the intended result of their black op? You make the call.
The intended result of their black op.
To all of the above 5 posts, my thoughts exactly. But I certainly would not expect the media to bite the hand that feeds them. They have shown far too much complicity with the corporate state. Shame on them.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
This is really about MEDIA FRAUD!
Here's a bit from an American Propaganda (AP) 'news story' about the FBI investigation of ACORN.
"Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Justice Department regulations forbid discussing ongoing investigations particularly so close to an election."
- how is anyone to check a 'story' by Anonymity?
Or is AP saying that 'officials' are breaking Justice Department regulations???
Egad, talk about eating your cake and having it too!
This time we will find out if its true or not.
And if we don't, if this investigation goes away as soon as the election is done.....you guys were right.
But that's the trick.
There's no "investigation", there's just accusations.
To Madhoosier---
I live in Indiana. You are right on the money.
Voter intimidation is TERRORISM and often racist. The GOP is intentionally suppressing the vote by instilling fear by lies. For example, by telling people that if they have an outstanding parking ticket or they missed a child support payment (because they are unemployed!) they can be arrested if they show up to vote.
These anti-democratic TERRORISTS and their financiers need to be hunted down and arrested and held at Guantanamo and waterboarded. Voter intimidation is not some frivolous "dirty trick." It is a criminal conspiracy against the Common Weal and should be actively prosecuted all the way to the top.
-30-
I unpluged my Neo-Con Propaganda Box last year so I have avoided all these insulting lies spun by Faux News and all the others.
The fact that the corrupt and partisan "Justice" Department is investigating this speaks volumes.....Bush's discredited "Justice" Department is just another wing of the GOP racist machine.
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
Qui bono? Who benefits from the alleged ACORN voter fraud? The republicans.
While there are probably some lazy ACORN workers that are submitting false registration forms I suspect that there are also some republican moles that have infiltrated ACORN that are intentionally submitting false forms as a means to divert news coverage from the vast republican election frauds including voter purges, black box voting machines that can be hacked to switch votes and bogus vote tabulations.
The Lake County Indiana ACORN fake registration forms seemed very suspicious, Indiana has the nation’s strictest voter identification law, in Indiana a voter registration card is not acceptable identification to vote, you must present a photo ID with an expiration date issued by the state or federal government so the idea that any of these false registrations would have resulted in voter fraud is absurd.
Infiltrating ACORN and filing bogus voter registration forms would fit exactly with the pattern of voter suppression the republicans have used in the past.