Yesterday I was pulled to the Fox News website by another article, at this point I don't recall what it was about, but it was not political in nature. When I had finished reading the article, I came across this little nugget over on the right. I could hardly resist clicking.
Essentially this is an article about the effort by a group called Minnesota Majority to have a federal investigation of the 2008 election that saw Democrat Al Franken defeat Republican Norm Coleman by a razor thin margin of 312 votes. Minnesota majority commissioned their own study and discovered that there was potentially enough voter fraud perpetrated that the final result of the election could have been influenced.
Now, I do want to state, for the record, that nowhere in the article does it once say that Minnesota Majority had any proof of any kind that Franken benefited from this voter fraud. Nor does the Minnesota Majority in any way assert in it's report on voting felons that Franken benefited from the fraudulent voting, simply that there is the appearance of impropriety and that it should be investigated.
That being said, Fox News does everything they can to make the reader assume the Franken benefited and won the election due to this voter fraud. You can read Fox's spin on this story for yourself, but I'll sum it up as well.
First up, we have this picture:
It all starts with an image and a caption. "341 convicted felons voted illegally in the election that made former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken a U.S. senator in 2008." Now, if this were "fair and balanced" wouldn't it read "A study shows that 341 convicted felons voted illegally in the 2008 Senate campaign between Al Franken (D) and Norm Coleman (R)." Doesn't that seem significantly less prone to suggesting that Franken was the one who won the election due to these votes? Since there's no proof that he did, don't you think it makes more sense to be neutral on their impact?
But it doesn't stop there, let's move on to the article.
The group that uncovered evidence of large-scale illegal voting (emphasis mine) by felons in Minnesota's contested 2008 Senate race says the whole mess might have been prevented if the federal government had just done it's job
Hmm, 341 felons out of 3 million voters, so 1/1000th of a percent now equals "large scale illegal voting"?
The federal government is required...to make sure that states purge their voter rolls of ineligible voters -- the dead, those who have moved, felons, undocumented immigrants, etc. -- an to ensure that elections are administered and conducted fairly, said Dan McGrath, executive director of Minnesota Majority
Well, to begin with, they quote Mr. McGrath without using quotations, and they call themselves journalists? Second, this is simply passing the buck higher up the chain. Sure, the Fed is required to do all that, but it is the responsibility of the State to actually do it, so it sounds like it's a general system failure here.
The group's recently published report found that hundreds of felons voted in the election in which Al Franken, a Democrat, beat then-incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman by just 312 votes out of more than 3 million cast -- a margin that was determined after six months of legal challenges and recounts
Again, there's nothing false about that statement. 341 is "hundreds of felons" and yes, Al Franken is a Democrat and he did defeat Norm Coleman (mysteriously missing his party affiliation) by just 312 votes. But I remind you that nowhere in the Minnesota Majority's report does it state that those votes were cast for Franken.
“If the feds had done their job and ensured that the voting records were up to date, things would have turned out very differently,” McGrath said.
This is the fulcrum point of the article, McGrath claiming outright that "things would have turned out very differently". Now, this quote, in the context of the article, can only mean one thing. If the Federal government had done their job, those 341 felons wouldn't have voted and, most importantly, Al Franken would not have won the election. How could it be interpreted any other way? However, there is much left to be found in the article's denouement.
McGrath said Minnesota Majority's study hadn’t been able to pinpoint where the problem lay in failing to keep the voting records up to date. He said that there are three groups responsible for the effort. “Courts must notify the secretary of state when someone is convicted of a felony, who then must notify the counties of the conviction, and the county auditors must then update the books. We are not sure where the fault lies,” he said.
Really? "We are not sure where the fault lies," would indicate that, they have no idea who to blame. But earlier in the article we were sure that "If the feds had done their job...things would have turned out differently". Pretty clear to me that the federal government is to blame, right?
Minnesota isn’t the only state with deep electoral problems, said Robert Pastor of American University’s Center for Democracy and Election Management. He said the management of elections in the U.S. has become increasingly partisan, especially since the disputed 2000 presidential election.
“We are worse than many Third World countries,” Pastor said. “Having partisan election officials oversee election decisions makes those decisions suspect.”
Minnesota Majority says it does not want the 2008 election overturned, but it wants to make sure the next election is less prone to fraud.
Notice that last sentence there? Yep, that's right, not even the "group that uncovered large-scale illegal voting" is calling for the 2008 Senate election to be overturned. Why you might ask? Well, because they don't have any proof, nor can they even begin to prove that Franken benefited from this voting. Why can't they prove that you might ask? Well, because it's an anonymous vote. It is quite possible that all 341 of those convicted felons voted for Norm Coleman.
Now, you could read all this and say, well, you're taking this out of context and putting your own spin on it, and you could be right (except that I'm not). But I can prove that this article was written specifically to convince the Fox News audience that the article implies that Franken, the Democrat party and by extension President Obama (who was not in office at the time) are to blame for this.
Here are a few of the hundreds of comments on the article:
Rod - This was deliberate. Crats kept counting until the numbers favored them. They would not know legal if it bit them in the a**.
captaindes - I'd be willing to bet ACORN signed all those folks up and voted for them.
orfulknorful - We all must grieve with the parents of this phony of a Congressman, as this is all that his parents had offer for a "live" birth.
jako88 - This has obama administration all over it.If the proof is there i feel the election should be overturned.Franken is nothing but a clown anyhow.
keonigohan - BLAME barracki huINSANE obonzo for commanding the SEIU to get the dem vote so they could control the congress. The SEIU then had their prison gurads make sweetheart deals with the inmates for their vote and in return they got free cigarettes and Playboy magazines.
This is just a sample of the nearly 700 comments thus far. To be fair, there are several comments that assert a similar point to my own, that there is no proof nor assertion that these votes were cast for Franken, but they are few and far between. Now let us remember, this was the election that put Barack Obama in the White House, how exactly can his administration be blamed for this potential voter fraud? At the time, the Bush Administration would have borne the responsibility for administering a fair election.
Now just to be clear, I am not in any way asserting that allowing felons to vote in violation of the law is appropriate, it most certainly is not, but it is irresponsible of Fox (and would be of any news organization) to publish an article that so blatantly infers a benefit where none can be proved. Should this be investigated? Absolutely. And the fact that the federal government has shown no overt interest in taking a serious look into voter irregularities since 2000 (and probably before) is the reason that we are here.
At the end of it all, I will say that I have to agree with Robert Pastor, "Having partisan officials oversee election decisions makes those decisions suspect" and this most certainly does fall at the feet of the MN Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (who is responsible for elections within that state) who is a Democrat. However, simply placing blame on one party or another, or the federal instead of the state government for that matter, does nothing to solve the problem, it simply increases the partisan nature of the debate and make resolution and even more arduous task.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 8:20AM 
See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil: by Philip Absolon. Copyright © Philip Absolon, stuckism.com. Released under GFDL.Yesterday, Democrats in the Senate were unable to get the 60 votes they needed to break the Republican filibuster of the "Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections" or DISCLOSE Act. While it may have a ridiculous name, it's failure once again shows us that, in Washington, nothing speaks louder than money.