YOUR NEWSPEAK WORD OF THE DAY: “EDITING”….A few months ago I posted about a study on election fraud commissioned by the nonpartisan Election Assistance Commission. The nickel summary is that the study’s authors (one Republican and one Democrat) concluded that there really wasn’t much. This was a crushing blow to Republicans, who thrive on invented fairy tales about hordes of illegal voters turning American into a banana republic, so naturally the commission decided not to release the report.
This being the Bush administration, though, they didn’t stop there. In December they finally released the study, but not before doing a bit of editing first:
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.
….Though the original report said that among experts “there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud,” the final version of the report released to the public concluded in its executive summary that “there is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud.”
Ah, the old “great deal of debate” dodge. This is, of course, also a favorite among global warming skeptics, who know that all they have to do is manufacture enough uncertainty to keep the average joe slightly confused about what’s really going on. Meanwhile, the usual parade of transparent lies about massive voting fraud can continue unabated, serving the GOP’s purpose of passing voter ID laws that suppress Democratic Party turnout. It’s pretty sweet.
