In my home town of Lake County, Ohio, a bogus letter has been sent by persons unknown under the Board of Elections letterhead to an unknown number of people who were registered by various arms of the Democratic Party. The letter says that persons registered by ACT, the NAACP, the John Kerry for President campaign and the Capri Cafaro for Congress campaign may have been registered illegally, and are thus ineligible to vote this year.
Law Geek has a picture of the letter here, and trumpets it as proof that the VWRC is trying to suppress voting among Democrats. While I agree that this sort of thing, no matter who perpetrates it, is despicable and dangerous to democracy, I think he should get his facts straight instead of simply making them up. He concludes that the letter must have been sent out by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy because Lake County is a "largely-Democratic, largely-people of color community." He's absolutely wrong. Had Law Geek spent thirty seconds on Google, he would have learned that Lake County is, in fact, nearly 96% white. Two more minutes of digging would have revealed that Republicans hold every nearly every elected office in Lake County: one of the three County Commissioners (Sines) is a Republican; Congressman Steve LaTourette is a Republican; the county recorder, engineer, coroner, clerk and Sheriff are all Republicans; two of the three state representative offices are held by Republicans; and the current state senator for Lake County is a Republican. Accordingly, the evidence on which he bases his conclusion is no evidence at all.
Putting aside the question of whether the allegations contained in the letter are true, even if the letter is a fraud (note the delicious irony -- "The documents are fake but true!"), it seems that Democrats could benefit from such a letter as well as Republicans. The letter provides another basis to challenge the voting results if they don't go in Kerry's favor, and the Dems have made no secret of their intent to do so if they lose this election. (Unless, of course, only Karl Rove can mastermind such an elaborate conspiracy.) The bottom line is that we don't know how many letters were sent, to whom, or by whom. But Law Geek, in the grand tradition of the NYT and CBS -- the media arms of the Kerry Campaign -- would much rather smear George Bush first with false information that fits his spin than do any actual investigation into what the facts really are.
UPDATE: A commenter to Law Geek's post pointed out that Lake County is over 90% white, so he has corrected the assertion that it is largely people-of-color.
UPDATE 2 (11:40 a.m.): Thanks to my comment (I assume), Law Geek is no longer claiming that Lake County is largely Democrat, either. Gotta give him credit, at least, for making corrections when warranted instead of digging the hole deeper. 'Course, some simple investigation of the facts at the outset would have been better.
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