In other words, is is a pant-load.
"To report this series of articles, two dozen top student journalists from 11 universities are investigating the impact on American voters of recent changes in election laws and voting procedures in many of the 50 states."
The "Exhaustive Database of Voter Fraud Cases" is a mishmash of inconclusive, non-uniform responses that is described in their own "Read more here about how the survey of states was conducted." document by excuse after excuse for the unusable data.
Is this database complete?
No. Despite the huge News21 public-records request effort, the team received no useful responses from several states — for instance, the lone cases in the database from Massachusetts, Oklahoma , South Carolina and South Dakota all came from the RNLA survey. Even in states where some local jurisdictions responded, others didn’t. In addition, it is possible that some jurisdictions which did respond failed to include some cases. Another problem is that some responses News21 received were missing important details about each case — from whether the person was convicted or charged to the circumstances of the alleged fraud to the names of those involved.
Then they idiotically state...
Still, with those caveats, News21 is confident this database is substantially complete and is the largest such collection of election fraud cases gathered by anyone in the United States.
I wonder if any of the "top student journalists from 11 universities" came to the rather obvious conclusion that the requests they sent were received by the individuals that would be held accountable FOR such fraud? There is certainly no inclination to give themselves a clean bill of health, right?
At that point the excuses resumed...
Aren’t public officials required to respond to public-records requests?
You would think so, but one of the lessons News21 learned from this effort is the substantial differences in public-records requirements and responsiveness across the 50 states. Even within a state, where all public officials presumably are operating under the same laws and rules, there often was wide variation in compliance. One county might respond quickly with a list of cases while the next would insist that its public records laws don’t require officials to respond at all.
How was the News21 public-records effort conducted?
In early May, the News21 team sent public-records requests to each of the 50 departments of elections or secretaries of state across the nation. The team also sent similar requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act to the District of Columbia Board of Elections, the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI. The request was simple: Please send information about any cases since 2000 involving election fraud, including the name of accused, the charges they are accused of and the disposition of the case.
Oh, sure, the DOJ and the dee-cee board of elections are gonna jump right on that.
Right.
So... after a month they do this...
In early June, the News21 team sent requests to all 50 state attorneys general. Many of them in turn responded that they don’t track cases of election fraud and that the requests should go to every county district attorney in the state.
There are 3,145 counties in America. News21 emailed, faxed or phoned every county district attorney office in every state that indicated that was necessary, a total of more than 1,000 such contacts. In many cases, offices were contacted more than once in order to get questions answered and details filled in.
How responsive were officials to the public-records requests?
Some states and local jurisdictions responded quickly and efficiently. For instance, the Connecticut State Elections Enforcement Commission sent News21 a CD-ROM containing more than 1,200 files, representing every case the commission had heard since 2000. Most involved technical violations of various laws covering campaign finance reports and advertising, but the comprehensiveness of the response was remarkable and it logged more than 200 election violations.
Hundreds of officials responded with short notes — some handwritten, even coffee-stained — saying they had had no cases of fraud.
When jurisdictions did acknowledge cases of election fraud, the responses came with a level of detail that ranged from complete to deficient.
As I went further into the document the excuses kept right on coming.
Some jurisdictions insisted that their computer systems lacked the capability to search for election fraud cases.
Dozens of jurisdictions flatly refused the requests, using variations of the disclaimer that their public-records law does not require them to create a document that does not exist, therefore the request is denied.
Another problem was a pass-the-buck response. The secretary of state or department of elections would refer News21 to the attorney general, who would refer the team to the county district attorneys, who would then refer back to the secretary of state or department of elections. It was similar at the federal level. The Department of Justice responded to a query by pointing News21 to the 93 U.S. Attorney's offices around the country; many of those offices, in turn, referred News21 back to the department.
In some cases, there even was organized resistance to answering the News21 requests. When North Carolina sent a summary without details, News21 queried the 44 district attorneys across the state and got a detailed response from one of them. But almost immediately, an official with the Administrative Office of the Courts intervened and told the others not to respond to the News21 request. Another example was the director of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association, who refused to give News21 the email addresses of those offices, and then wrote an angry email when a News21 reporter used another source to get that contact information.
On and on it goes.
It was all SO typical I wanted to see where this "News21" was located. At that point everything started to make sense.
News21 is a program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that is helping to change the way journalism is taught in the U.S. and train a new generation of journalists capable of reshaping the news industry.
Foundations support News21 Fellows: The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York have provided millions of dollars in funding for News21 since the program's inception in 2005.
Other support comes from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation and the Hearst Foundations.
Change for a "new" generation.
Sound familiar?
It is not a TV or radio station, it is a propaganda school.
.
Correct. If we were to believe News21, we may as well believe Stinkprogress or Media Splatters.