Feeding frenzy over DSA plan to register voters (10/18)

By Bryan Keefer

The frenzy caused by a link on the Drudge Report to a fundraising appeal by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has escalated considerably.

DSA posted the pitch as a pop-up ad on Wednesday, October 9, according to DSA national director Frank Llewellyn. As originally worded, it stated:

DSA's national electoral project this year is the Minnesota Senate Election. Together with YDS, DSA's Youth Section, we are mobilizing to bring young people to Minnesota. Minnesota is one of the few states that allow same day voter registration. We will therefore focus our energy on registering young people. Wellstone will need a high percentage of young people to register and vote for him if he is to stave off the campaign that Bush, the Republicans and the Greens are waging against him. He is the Right's Number One electoral target.

Because we are focusing on issue based voter registration this electoral work can be supported by tax-deductible contributions. The DSA FUND is soliciting tax-deductible contributions to support this project. Contributions are needed to underwrite the costs of transportation as well as providing a stipend for expenses; housing is being donated.

The pitch as worded is somewhat confusing, but the sentence "We will therefore focus our energy on registering young people" implies that their object is to register young voters at the polls the day of the election, a perfectly legal get-out-the-vote measure. The phrase "issue based voter registration" also clearly establishes the purposes of the project. Read in context, the pitch is not advocating sending out-of-state students into Minnesota to vote for Wellstone, which would be illegal.

On October 14, as reported by the Minnesota Star-Tribune, the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, a conservative advocacy organization, posted a press release attacking DSA's appeal as "one of the most transparent attempts to steal an election since the Daley machine ran Chicago politics." The release quoted from the DSA web site, saying that "The program is intended to 'bring young people to Minnesota' because 'Minnesota is one of the few states that allow same day voter registration.'" Yet the release omitted the sentence following the words it quoted, which provides crucial context: "We will therefore focus our energy on registering young people." The Taxpayer's League release then uses the out-of-context quotes to claim that "This is a transparent attempt to steal this election by using Minnesota's liberal election laws to register out-of-state students to vote for Wellstone."

On October 15, DSA altered the text of the letter on their web page. According to Llewellyn, after discussing the letter with an official in the Minnesota Secretary of State's office, they changed the sentence "We will therefore focus our energy on registering young people" in the original to "We will therefore focus our energy on registering young Minnesotans" (which is how the release appeared when I quoted it in my previous post).

On October 16, Matt Drudge provided a link to the DSA pitch near the top of his web site, the Drudge Report, with the headline "Socialists Sending People to MN to illegally vote for Wellstone" (for an archived copy of the page, click here). That same day, Rush Limbaugh read from an article printed Tuesday in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, then suggested [Windows Media Audio] on his radio show that:

[DSA has] been caught. "We are mobilizing to bring young people to Minnesota" is what it says on the web site. It doesn't say "We are mobilizing to bring out the young people who live in Minnesota to vote" it doesn't say that . . . And then it says, "By the way, did you know Minnesota is one of the few states that allows same-day voter registration? You can go in there and register and vote and split the same day, you can go home, you don't even have to spend the night in Minnesota and freeze if you don't want to, you can go in there and vote and leave."

Brit Hume repeated the accusation on Fox News that evening without any additional context, claiming that "The Democratic Socialists of America, which bill themselves as the largest socialist organization in the country, is raising tax-deductible money to send young people to the state of Minnesota, where they can take advantage of same-day registration to vote for the liberal incumbent Paul Wellstone . . .". And a Manchester Union-Leader editorial published on the17th claimed that "The Democratic Socialists of America, otherwise known simply as socialists, have organized a campaign to steal the U.S. Senate election in Minnesota."

DSA pulled the ad off of their site on Wednesday, according to Llewellyn, because of abuse of the donation system and it had already generated enough donations.

An editorial from the Wall Street Journal today repeated the allegations of attempted fraud, claiming that "The Democratic Socialists of America recently posted an ad on their Web site inviting tax-deductible contributions to 'bring young people to Minnesota' to vote in the close U.S. Senate race there." The piece does go on to raise legitimate questions about the legality of DSA's activities, quoting Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer expressing concerns about potential voter fraud, and calling the DSA ad "clearly advocacy". Minnesota Secretary of State's office spokesperson Kent Kaiser repeated his department's stance on the ad today, but noted that it is legal to encourage people to vote and even to take them to the polls, as long as it does not cross the boundary into advocacy.

While it is legitimate to ask whether the DSA's advertisement constituted illegal advocacy, the ad was clearly intended to promote the registration of young voters likely to vote for Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone, which is perfectly legal. Even the loose wording of the original statement does not excuse the false reports of planned voter fraud propagated by Drudge, Limbaugh, Hume and others.

Related links:
-Drudge falsely accuses socialists of illegal voting activity (Bryan Keefer, 10/16/02)

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10/18/2002 05:21:43 PM EST |

Drudge falsely accuses socialists of illegal voting activity (10/16)

By Bryan Keefer

On the Drudge Report today, Matt Drudge falsely accuses the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) of "sending people to MN [Minnesota] to illegally vote for [Sen. Paul] Wellstone." (For a permanent, achived version of the page, click here.)

Drudge's headline links to a fundraising pitch from the DSA that asks for donations to send students to help register voters in Minnesota. It reads, in part:

DSA’s national electoral project this year is the Minnesota Senate Election. Together with YDS, DSA’s Youth Section, we are mobilizing to bring young people to Minnesota. Minnesota is one of the few states that allow same day voter registration. We will therefore focus our energy on registering young Minnesotans. Wellstone will need a high percentage of young people to register and vote for him if he is to stave off the campaign that Bush, the Republicans and the Greens are waging against him. He is the Right’s Number One electoral target.

Drudge’s headline is doubly wrong: DSA is not sending people to vote for Wellstone, but only to register voters who will be likely to support him; and there is nothing illegal about what DSA plans to do. Under Minnesota law, anyone with proper identification may register to vote at their polling place on the day of an election. Helping them to do so is perfectly legal. In fact, current Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has credited just such a drive with helping him to win election in 1998.

Drudge has a long history of questionable journalistic practices. During the Clinton administration, he posted a number of rumors and unconfirmed reports about various White House scandals, including early reports of the Monica Lewinsky story. Thanks to such stories, Drudge has become one of the top news sites on the internet; he claims that he has received more than 100 million visits in the past 31 days. With so much traffic, his false claims can quickly spread information throughout the media. Recently, his site has helped advance several myths, including the false story that former President Clinton blamed slavery and treatment of Native Americans for the September 11 attacks, and the myth that Ken Lay slept in the Lincoln Bedroom of the Clinton White House.

Criminal allegations are an even more serious matter. Drudge’s casual assertions of illegal activity are wildly irresponsible, especially since they are directly contradicted by the story itself. One would think he would at least read the stories he links to carefully before summarizing them with such potentially libelous accusations.

Update 10/18/02 8:30 PM EST: See my new post for an expanded and updated look at this controversy.

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10/16/2002 03:52:09 PM EST |

Congressman says opponents want to protect murderers (10/15)

By Ben Fritz

As calls for new gun control measures build in the wake of the sniper shootings in suburban Washington, D.C., a Democratic congressman from nearby Northern Virginia has taken the debate to a shameful low. During a discussion of the search for the sniper on CNN’s "Inside Politics" tonight, Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., suggested that opponents of ballistic fingerprinting want to protect murderers. (Tucker Carlson first pointed out the disturbing statement that night on CNN’s "Crossfire.")

"[The Bush administration is] opposed to [ballistic fingerprinting] because the National Rifle Association is opposed to it, but I don’t know what they fear for. Why do they want to protect people who would be shooting other people?"

Distorting the motives of opponents and then impugning them on that basis is a common rhetorical trick that has been perfected in recent years by pundits like Rush Limbaugh. It’s particularly nasty in reference to the flurry of sniper shootings, the most recent of which took place in Moran’s own district.

In his statement above, Moran is clearly suggesting that opponents of ballistic fingerprinting, which can match a bullet to the gun that fired it, want to protect the sniper or other murderers. This is, of course, absurd and untrue. As White House spokesman Ari Fleischer pointed out today during a press briefing, a variety of concerns have been raised about the accuracy and reliability of such a system, as well as concerns for gun owners' privacy. And in any event, the legislation would have needed to have been passed years ago to be effective today, and the gun involved could only be tracked if it was purchased legally after the system was enacted and not been altered by the sniper.

Moran certainly has the right to argue that a ballistic fingerprint system might help to prevent future murders, but he should engage the actual arguments of his opponents. Deliberately distorting others' motives is always a cheap tactic, but suggesting that opponents want to protect murderers in the midst of a killing spree is truly over the line.

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10/15/2002 07:46:20 PM EST |

Fools rush in (10/15)

More false starts in the race to demonize Daschle
By Brendan Nyhan
[First published on Salon.com]

Much later in the story, he clarifies that "the Senate Majority Leader's press office was contacted, NION's statement and Daschle's listing as a co-signer was explained, and a request for verification of the validity of Daschle's support for the group's statement and goals was requested. A press staffer, however, would neither confirm nor deny Daschle's involvement with the petition or the group." Of course, a cursory glance at the Not in Our Name Web site shows that anyone can add any name to the online version of the petition. As James Taranto has pointed out in the Wall Street Journal's online Best of the Web column, the petition has been signed in recent days by such distinguished citizens as Ben Dover, Youcommies Are Nuts, Weldon M. Rumproast and Al Koholic.

But instead of securing official confirmation before publishing the story, Rosenberg rushed it into print and then e-mailed Limbaugh, who quickly read the article on the air in his typically irresponsible fashion. "Did Daschle actually put his name to this group's petition, or did they put it there without his knowledge? … We'll go on the if basis." The host then quickly segued from admitting that Daschle might not have actually signed the petition to speculative attacks on one of his favorite targets, imitating Daschle supposedly playing to Hollywood leftists while he supports Bush. "'We've always been supporting the president. Oh yeah, can't wait to start dropping those bombs on ol' Saddam. In fact, I want to fly the first B-1 that flies over there and drops those bombs,' says Tom Daschle. 'I want to be the guy that sends the first laser-guided bomb into Palace 3.' Then he's telling the Ed Asners and the Tom Haydens and the Jane Fondas of the world, 'I'm right in there with you. I think this is horrible. Not in my name, Tom Daschle.' So if this proves out, if it's true, then it's exactly what we said today is going on. They're trying to satisfy the split in their party. 'Don't put my name in the ad though, OK. Just put it on the Web site. Nobody will see it there. But leave it off the news -- I'd be concerned, Tim [Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press"], if my name was on that ad in the New York Times. It would be outrageous. Outrageous.' We'll wait for further confirmation on this."

Daschle's press office then put out an official statement Thursday afternoon denying that the senator had ever signed the petition. That evening, Fox News reported that the whole thing was a hoax. Rosenberg was forced to retreat the next day, though he buried his admission that Daschle had denied the report in an attack on Daschle's work in Congress for former Sen. Jim Abourezk, D-S.D. In a separate report for World, Rosenberg admitted that Daschle's office had denied the charge within four hours of his first call, showing just how quickly the first story was rushed out. Evidently he learned all too well from his former boss.

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10/14/2002 08:04:50 PM EST |

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