Today he'll be campaigning in Madison, Wis., for John Kerry and will deliver two environmentally themed speeches on the candidate's behalf.
Madison, Wisconsin? Gee, do you think he'll find any likeminded enviroweenie socialists there?
Here's the link: Pushing to be Counted. And here's my letter to the Post's ombudsman who, in my estimation, has been fairly balanced in the past.
Dear Mr. Getler,I'm a Republican, so you may dismiss my anger over this article. I hope you will continue reading.
This article could be summarized in one sentence : "GOP officials in Florida are racists and are preventing blacks from voting". The reporters couldn't wait to work in a reference to "closed school house doors"...it's in paragraph 3. Later there's a quote invoking George Wallace. They even managed to work in Ax Handle Saturday, a 44-year-old disgraceful event. Certainly those were shameful times, but resurrecting them so prominently in this context is paramount to pouring gasoline on a fire.
Here is just one example of the sloppy and inflammatory language in the article:
On page 1:Summary: the new black voter registration rate, likely Democratic, was 3-1/2 times higher than new white voters (21% vs. 6%).
From the 2000 election to August 2004, nearly 200,000 black voters were added to the rolls in Florida, a 21 percent increase in large part because of registration drives by groups including America Coming Together. Registration by white voters increased almost 6 percent. Black people overwhelmingly vote Democratic...Five paragraphs later:3-1/2 times more registrations (likely Democrat), 3 times more flagged forms. No disparity, right? No information is offered that would attribute this to anything other than the law of averages. But, just in case the reader missed the reporters' point, the last sentence leads one to conclude that blacks are being disenranchised at a disproportionate rate.
A Washington Post analysis found nearly three times the number of flagged Democratic registrations as Republican. Broken down by race, no group had more flagged registrations than blacks.Early voting sites---not enough and not open on Sunday. Purging felons---the reporters make it clear they believe such laws are discriminatory, but they offer no proof. "Carlberg's office purges an average of 140 felons a month." The only example: a felon, legally purged from the rolls. In example after example, the reporters say the registration offices are following the law, but they do so in a way that implies they are manipulating the law. The reporters' treatment of the local election official was smug and dismissive, despite his having been sandbagged in a media-driven event.
Lastly, I read this article in the context of a highly-charged election. There have been dozens of recent articles throughout the country about problems with sloppy and fraudulent voter registration practices. Most involved "voter registration drives" like the one in this article. But that is not noted in this article, nor has the Post given prominent coverage to those incidents. I'm really curious to know why there are such widespread problems with the forms turned in by those groups. What is so hard about filling out the forms, especially if one considers that the people filling them out were hired for that specific task and are said to have been trained on how to do it? I read most national newspapers every day on-line and, as of this writing, no major investigative pieces have been written about this widespread phenomenon. It seems to me this is likely to be a major story after the election, given the Democratic Party's evident intent to cry foul over any problems at the polling place. Wouldn't it be wise to investigate it now, before we are in the heat of any post-election disputes? Is there more here than simple sloppiness? We don't know because, to date, no national newspaper has done an investigaton.
I am so disappointed in the Post's treatment of this story. I've always held your paper in very high esteem. But this article and it's prominent placement lead me to conclude that your editors still believe Southern whites (and perhaps Republicans in general) are closet racists practicing clever new forms of Jim Crow. That really hurts. I now feel it necessary to assure you that I would be as outraged as anyone else if anyone, black or white, was being wrongfully denied the right to vote. There are many grounds upon which to disagree politically, but the racist Republican stereotype is so beneficial to the Democrats, and harmful to Republicans, that your editors should have been much more careful not to let it creep into the Post's front page.
You are right on about Madison - that place is infested with leftist whackjobs. I HATE going there. It is literally a little Berzerkley. Probably a notch below Ithaca. Barely.