It was two weeks ago when Brit Hume, senior political analyst at Fox News, had a most interesting, and to me amazing commentary. He was talking about voter ID laws and bemoaning the inability of the Republicans and Democrats to be able to get along on this issue. He starts out by saying, “If there is one issue that you thought Americans could agree on, it would be the right to vote and have every legal vote count.”
He then presents the positions of the two parties as if they are simple disagreements. Democrats claim there is no significant voter fraud and that obtaining a photo ID discriminates against minorities. Republicans say it’s easy to get a photo ID and that is needed to keep elections clean. “You might think the two sides could find a compromise on this,” he says, “but that would require each side to recognize the sincerity and good faith of the other.”
What is it that keeps Brit Hume from acknowledging that there is voter fraud going on in this country and it is affecting elections. We have all known about it and joked about it for years – about the dead voting, people voting twice, illegal immigrants voting. Goodness, that’s the reason the Department of Justice has made states print ballots in Spanish – it’s a clear invitation for non-citizens to vote. Every naturalized citizen has to know English. The only reason you need ballots in Spanish is to accommodate non-citizens.
We have the North Carolina Board of Elections that has found over 35,000 voters who are registered in both North Carolina and at least one other state. We have Jesse Richman and David Earnest who recently published the results of their study in the Washington Post showing that 6.4% of non citizens voted in the 2008 election.
The dismissing of the significance of vote fraud is clearly and blatantly partisan. With parties pouring billions of dollars into election campaigns (in some elections this cycle it was estimated that the parties spent over $100 per vote cast) there is ample motivation to attempt voter fraud. And fraud is easy to commit, hard to catch, with prosecutions rare. Brit Hume’s plea to grant good faith to those who are promoting it has to come from a fear of appearing partial. He wants to appear fair and balanced at the expense of being sensible.
For years, as host of Fox News Special Report, Brit would sign off by saying, “Fair, balanced, and unafraid.”
Really? More like fair, balanced, and afraid, at least in this commentary.
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