Fund, John
pro baby jails?
right seems ~ cts b/c losing in them? trend?
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/federal-district-judges-should-not-make-immigration-law-for-whole-country/
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john fund seiu bus sting fail
https://www.projectveritas.exposed/john-buckley
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Conservative activist James O'Keefe plotted a potential voter fraud sting of the Service Employees International Union in 2010 in Massachusetts — a sting that, had it been carried out, could have been funded by Rick Santorum patron Foster Friess.
The plot is elaborated on and eventually ruled out in an email chain started by conservative writer John Fund, who emailed Republican National Lawyers Association executive director Michael Thielen that the union was "contracting for buses on election day."
"If you're black or brown they'll rope you in and take you to the polls, registration can be worked out," Fund wrote, per his "Boston source." His email was forwarded on to others, forming the basis for the plans.
The email exchange, parts of which may be missing, is below. Read from the bottom. The last email is from James O'Keefe to associates Stan Dai and Nadia Naffe, who later filed harassment charges against O'Keefe.
Others on the thread include Heather Higgins, the founder of the conservative Independent Women's Voice and the late Andrew Breitbart.
Naffe told BuzzFeed she flew to Boston to investigate, but that they never uncovered anything of interest and the project fizzled.
From: "James E. O'Keefe III" Date: January 13, 2010 12:21:54 PM EST To: xxxxxxx@gmail.com, xxxxxx@aol.com Subject: Fwd: brainstorm of sorts, here - far-fetched? Maybe not?...
Your thoughts Nadia?
---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Heather Higgins Date: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Subject: Re: brainstorm of sorts, here - far-fetched? Maybe not?... To: Steve Friess , James O'Keefe xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com, Andrew Breitbart Cc: Foster Friess
Andrew and James, I'm forwarding what could be a very clever idea fromSteve Friess in response to the intel below from John Fund re SEIU's intentions in Tuesday's election in MA. Don't know what it would cost, but you all should talk.
Warmest regards -Heather Higgins
On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 12:25 AM, Steve Friess wrote:
Wouldn't it be great if a "ACORN sting video" could be produced about these busses?
Dad - maybe bounce this off Breitbart?
Some black /Latina conservatives could be wired for video, and get picked up on one of these busses, and show what goes on. My guess -they are offering cash, (which I am pretty sure is illegal), and I also would wager that at least some of these busses are making more than one stop with the same people - ie getting them to vote twice -though I don't know the mechanics of that.
Perhaps some private detective types would be needed to help track down the busses, and a block or two ahead of them to drop our cameramen off...
Too much to dream? Imagine pulling this off - legal / image problems for SEIU would be a good thing... think there's upside to this?
Brietbart would know, and Fund would know - 'if we catch them doing X, it could mean Y' - I just don't know what the stakes are...
On Jan 12, 2010, at 12:46 PM, Heather Higgins wrote:
Foster --See below from John Fund re SEIU -Acorn is in MA as well. It would be hugely helpful if you would assist with our non-glamorous but highly effective GOTV effort. If you could possibly let me know today, that would be helpful to our planning. This is such a great opportunity for making trouble in the best sort of way - I hope you can help us really capitalize on it.
Many thanks, Heather
-------- Original Message --------Subject: FW: John Batchelor From: "Fund, John" Date: Tue, January 12, 2010 8:25 am To: 'Michael Thielen'
Tip from Boston source (normally reliable)
Seiu contracting for buses on election day and heading to roxbury, mattapan, roslindale and jamaica plain. If you're black or brown they'll rope you in and take you to the polls, registration can be worked out.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
In the next installment, O'Keefe, who appears to have contacted Fund at this point, starts setting up
From: "James E. O'Keefe III" > Date: January 13, 2010 4:16:14 PM EST> To: "mikeroman.com" > Subject: Re: ACORN videos / seiu / election>> what time zone are you in. I'm assuming you mean 8Est. That works.> I'm 201-637-0564>> On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 1:10 PM, mikeroman.com wrote:>>>> Have time to talk around 8?>>>>>> On Jan 13, 2010, at 3:41 PM, James E. O'Keefe III wrote:>>>> > Mike,>> >>> > Got your info from John Fund.>> > I was the producer of the ACORN Videos>> > Would like to know whereabouts of the busses in Boston SEIU, et al are using in order to bus people in to vote in the Tuesday special election.>> > Thinking about sending some undercover folks up there.>> >>> > James
Then O'Keefe proposed sending Nadia Naffe up to Boston:
From: "James E. O'Keefe III"
Date: January 14, 2010 11:10:49 PM EST
To: xxxxxxx@aol.com
Cc: Stan Dai
Subject: Boston
Nadia,
We're willing to book you a plane ticket to Boston to get some footage from the SEIU busses.
Joe will be joining you taking care of logistics/equipment--- but i'll be in new orleans causing trouble.
im confident your training will take you far.
Interested in making some more video history?
James
A couple days later, O'Keefe has booked travel for Naffe, who was to do the operation. This email included an Orbitz booking confirmation:
From: "James E. O'Keefe III" > Date: January 15, 2010 2:46:09 PM EST> To: nknaffe@aol.com, Stan Dai , Joe Basel> Subject: Fwd: Travel Document - Boston 1/18/10>> Nadia,>> here's what I could come up with- one stop but its along the way - no 12 hour flights, more like 4-5 hour flight.> leaving tampa mon at noon> leaving boston wed at 2pm so you can sleep.>> keep in mind Wed morning is for additional work - if the polls are continuing if its close..>> I'll also get you a hotel room for the mon night - Joe is flying in overnight from San Francisco and arrives at 6:30am.>> Joe will be picking you up shortly thereafter. But you will have to wake up around 7 on tuesday - your country needs you.>> More details to follow.> James
He also set up a place for her and Joe Basel, one of the men later arrested with him after the Senator Landrieu affair, to stay in Boston (Naffe and Basel are copied on the email):
From: "James E. O'Keefe III"
Date: January 16, 2010 10:59:14 PM EST
To: Amy Contrada
Cc: xxxxxx@aol.com, Joe Basel
Subject: Boston election day,
Amy,
Two of my collegues are coming to Boston to infilrate the SEIU on election day. One of them is a female.
Would you be able to put them her up Monday night?
James
The video from the trip, if it was ever made, was never published.
"I believe there was discussion of doing something but O'Keefe's office will tell you nothing was done," said Fund, reached by email.
"This is a classic example of someone trying to breath life into a three-year old dead horse," said Fund.
He said that other reporters had contacted him about it in the past and that some "pointed out the email thread looked truncated and edited." .
Reached by email, Naffe said the emails were authentic: "Fund and Steve Friess, the son of billionaire Foster Friess, introduced the idea to O'keefe that SEIU would fraudulently register anyone with brown skin to vote."
"James flew me out to Boston to find the SEIU busses, just days after that email was sent," Naffe said. She claimed that "Congressman Steve King from Iowa was waiting at the hotel when we arrived to take us to dinner. He gave us a pep talk about illegal voting."
"O'keefe has the footage, though I'm doubtful he would share any of it. Since, he was arrested a week later in New Orleans while attempting to wire tap Senator Mary Landrieu," Naffe said.
O'Keefe didn't respond to a request for comment.
Update: Fund emailed to say that he thinks his original email was altered: "I maintain the email was edited to take out the fact I was referring to what someone told me might be happening and that I was asking a source (whom I have quoted in the past) if they had heard anything about it."
He also wished to clarify that he did not personally tip O'Keefe to the busing. That has been reflected above.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/people/john-fund
no link pix:
Right-wing media's new voter fraud "proof" is even more asinine than usual
Research ››› September 8, 2017 3:34 PM EDT ››› ZACHARY PLEA
Right-wing and fringe media outlets and figures, including Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the Trump administration’s election integrity commission, are citing a Washington Times article about several thousand New Hampshire voters using out-of-state driver’s licenses to register to vote to bolster conservative claims of fraud and say that Republicans may have actually won the state. But journalists and election experts shot down these claims of voter fraud and explained that New Hampshire’s voter ID law permits out-of-state driver’s licenses to be used as proof of identity when voting, an option that college students often exercise.
State Election Officials Throw Cold Water On Conservative Voter Fraud Fears
Research ››› May 11, 2017 2:18 PM EDT ››› JULIE ALDERMAN
Election officials in states across the nation have found no evidence of widespread voter fraud during the 2016 election, contradicting claims from President Donald Trump and right-wing media that voter fraud is rampant in elections.
New Study Debunks Right-Wing Lies, Proves Voter ID Laws Suppress Minority Votes
Research ››› February 16, 2017 11:10 AM EST ››› JULIE ALDERMAN
A study reported in The Washington Post found that voter ID laws disenfranchise minority voters disproportionately, an allegation right-wing media have dismissed while advocating for those types of laws in several states. Courts and other studies have come to the same conclusion.
WSJ Op-Ed Rehashes Discredited Evidence To Fearmonger About Noncitizen Voting
Blog ››› December 1, 2016 12:34 PM EST ››› JULIE ALDERMAN
The Wall Street Journal opinion page provided a platform for serial misinformers -- citing discredited research -- to falsely suggest that a large number of noncitizens voted in the 2016 election. The evidence used by the authors, who have made careers out of pushing misleading claims to advocate for laws that would result in voter suppression, has been criticized by academics and flies in the face of data showing no evidence that noncitizens have voted in recent U.S. elections in any significant numbers.
In a November 30 op-ed, Hans von Spakovsky, a National Review contributor and a current senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and John Fund, a columnist for National Review,asserted that “there is a real chance that significant numbers of noncitizens and others are indeed voting illegally, perhaps enough to make up the margin in some elections.” The authors declare that “the honor system doesn’t work” and that “there are people—like those caught voting illegally—who are willing to exploit these weaknesses that damage election integrity.”
The evidence von Spakovsky and Fund cite to back up their claim is seriously misleading, is methodologically flawed, and has been debunked by experts. Von Spakovsky and Fund point to one “2012 study from the Pew Center on the States estimating that one out of every eight voter registrations is inaccurate, out-of-date or duplicate.” But as USA Today pointed out in a write-up of the study, “experts say there's no evidence that the [registration] errors lead to fraud on Election Day.” The article quoted David Becker, the director of Pew’s election initiatives, warning that “‘the perception of the possibility of fraud drives hyper-partisan policymaking.’”
The authors also cited a 2014 study that “used extensive survey data to estimate that 6.4% of the nation’s noncitizens voted in 2008 and that 2.2% voted in 2010.” That study was endlessly hyped by right-wing media, but Brian Schaffner, a political scientist who was “a member of the team that produces the datasets upon which that study was based,” wrote, “I can say unequivocally that this research is not only wrong, it is irresponsible social science and should never have been published in the first place. There is no evidence that non-citizens have voted in recent U.S. elections.” Another expert, Michael Tesler, pointed out that the study had “methodological challenges” that rendered its conclusions "tenuous at best.”
The authors additionally cited a Heritage Foundation report that they call “a list of more than 700 recent convictions for voter fraud” to dispute “academics who claim that voter fraud is vanishingly rare.” However, as FactCheck.org noted, the report found "less than a dozen individual cases of noncitizens convicted of registering or actually voting since 2000," and USA Today found that the report, which is “based largely on news clippings and news releases,” contains “only a handful of allegations of voter impersonation that voter ID could have prevented.”
In fact, a 2014 study conducted by Loyola University law professor Justin Levitt found only 31 credible allegations of in-person voter fraud among the more than 1 billion votes cast in "general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014."
Von Spakovsky and Fund’s reliance on discredited research is no surprise, given their history of pushing misinformation about voting. Von Spakovsky, who has been featured on Fox News and on National Review for years, has demonstrated an unending willingness to distort the truth in the service of restrictive and discriminatory voter ID laws. Von Spakovsky, in particular, has repeatedly overstated the prevalence of in-person voter fraud and continues to push for voter ID laws that disproportionately affect minority communities and suppress legal voters. At National Review, he also characterized the modern civil rights movement as "indistinguishable" from "segregationists." Even former President Ronald Reagan’s attorney general Dick Thornburgh accused von Spakovsky of being “wrong on both the facts and the law.”
Right-Wing Media Decry Obama's Economic Policy Proposals As Santa Claus-Style Giveaways And Class Warfare
Research ››› January 21, 2015 10:44 PM EST ››› CONNOR LAND
Right-wing media maligned Obama's economic policy initiatives announced during his State Of The Union address as both divisive class warfare and Santa Claus-style giveaways.
National Review Uses Rolling Stone Report To Deny Reality Of College Sexual Assault
Research ››› December 8, 2014 3:34 PM EST ››› ELLIE SANDMEYER
National Review personalities exploited questions surrounding Rolling Stone's high-profile account of a rape at the University of Virginia (UVA) in order to deny the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses and suggested that women should do more to protect themselves, a response in keeping with the outlet's history of denialist, victim-blaming sexual assault coverage.
Evidence Piles Up Against Right-Wing Media's Defense Of Voter ID
Research ››› October 24, 2014 3:20 PM EDT ››› MEAGAN HATCHER-MAYS
As strict voter ID laws are put into effect ahead of the midterm elections, recent judicial opinions and social science studies continue to poke holes in right-wing media's defense of voter suppression.
31 In A Billion: Election Expert's Report Shatters Right-Wing Media Voter ID Myths
Blog ››› August 7, 2014 5:11 PM EDT ››› MEAGAN HATCHER-MAYS
A new report has debunked the primary voter fraud argument right-wing media have used for years to promote unnecessarily strict voter identification laws, which alienate eligible voters and often have the effect of suppressing the vote in minority and heavily-Democratic jurisdictions.
These kinds of voter ID laws, which require voters to present certain forms of ID at polling locations when attempting to vote, disproportionately affect people of color and can cost states millions of dollars to implement. But right-wing media have continued to promote them, especially since 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that prevented suppression efforts in states with a history of racially-motivated voting laws. As Ezra Klein noted on the August 6 edition of MSNBC's All In, right-wing media have consistently raised the specter of in-person "voter fraud" to justify their support for these redundant and highly restrictive voter ID laws.
But as election law experts repeatedly point out, the specific type of fraud that voter ID can prevent -- voter impersonation -- is extremely uncommon.
National Review Online contributors John Fund and Hans von Spakovksy have been at the forefront of right-wing media's push for burdensome voter ID laws, calling Texas's law "a good thing," despite the fact that voters reported being turned away from the polls. Both Fund and von Spakovsky have advocated for further gutting what's left of the Voting Rights Act, making it nearly impossible for citizens who have been prevented from voting due to needlessly cumbersome election laws to legally challenge these oppressive regulations. Fund has also downplayed how difficult it can be for citizens -- particularly people of color, women, and low-income voters -- to obtain the right kind of identification needed to vote. In response to a Pennsylvania state court case that found the state's voter ID law unconstitutional, Fund called evidence that thousands of voters lacked the proper ID nothing more than an "inflated estimate."
While evidence of widespread voter fraud has yet to surface, right-wing media figures have nevertheless insisted that "there are plenty of instances" of voter fraud and that there is "concrete evidence ... of massive voter fraud." But according to a new study by Loyola University law professor Justin Levitt, the in-person voter fraud that strict voter ID prevents is still nearly non-existent. Levitt's study, which "track[ed] any specific, credible allegation that someone may have pretended to be someone else at the polls, in any way that an ID law could fix" found just 31 instances of this potential voter fraud between 2000 and 2014. According to Levitt, "more than 1 billion ballots were cast in that period."
Election fraud happens. But ID laws are not aimed at the fraud you'll actually hear about. Most current ID laws (Wisconsin is a rare exception) aren't designed to stop fraud with absentee ballots (indeed, laws requiring ID at the polls push more people into the absentee system, where there are plenty of real dangers). Or vote buying. Or coercion. Or fake registration forms. Or voting from the wrong address. Or ballot box stuffing by officials in on the scam. In the 243-page document that Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel filed on Monday with evidence of allegedly illegal votes in the Mississippi Republican primary, there were no allegations of the kind of fraud that ID can stop.
Instead, requirements to show ID at the polls are designed for pretty much one thing: people showing up at the polls pretending to be somebody else in order to each cast one incremental fake ballot. This is a slow, clunky way to steal an election. Which is why it rarely happens.
Right-Wing Media Still Excited About ACA Lawsuit That Has Been Rejected By Experts And Federal Courts
Research ››› July 14, 2014 6:26 PM EDT ››› MEAGAN HATCHER-MAYS
The D.C. Circuit is expected to rule soon in Halbig v. Burwell, a lawsuit based on a fringe legal theory that could gut the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by eliminating federal exchange tax credits that significantly reduce the cost of private health insurance. Although this lawsuit has already been dismissed by legal experts and judges as meritless, right-wing media continue to misrepresent both the law and consequences surrounding Halbig.
Celebrating Affirmative Action Ban Decision, Right-Wing Media Ride The Reverse Racism Unicorn
Blog ››› April 23, 2014 5:37 PM EDT ››› MEAGAN HATCHER-MAYS
In the wake of the Roberts Court's latest attack on the constitutionality of race-conscious law, right-wing media are mischaracterizing the decision and Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent in a dishonest attempt to frame civil rights precedent as "racial discrimination."
On April 22, the Supreme Court ruled in Schuette v. BAMN, a badly split opinion in which the Court's five conservatives rejected long-established equal protection law under the Fourteenth Amendment to uphold Michigan's voter-approved ban on affirmative action. Right-wing media immediately began misinforming about the case, ignoring the serious consequences it could have for minority rights in the United States. By effectively overruling the "political process" doctrine, which forbids setting up a separate and unequal tier of political participation for a disfavored minority, the conservative justices reopened the door to the rigging of political systems, previously disallowed because of its negative impact on communities of color.
Nevertheless, Roger Clegg, the National Review Online's resident anti-civil rights contributor, called this outcome "a resounding win for the good guys."
NRO continued its misinformation campaign about Schuette in its April 22 editorial, claiming that affirmative action is itself a form of prohibited racial discrimination. The editorial went on to call Sotomayor's dissent in Schuette "legally illiterate and logically indefensible" and "offers a case study in the moral and legal corrosion that inevitably results from elevating ethnic-identity politics over the law." To bolster the claim that Sotomayor is preoccupied by "ethnic-identity politics," the editors whistled to the 2009 right-wing media smears that the justice was a racist because she once referred to herself as a "wise Latina." From the NRO editorial:
In a perfectly Orwellian dissenting opinion, which she read dramatically from the bench, Justice Sotomayor argued that the decision of the people of Michigan to end racial discrimination is itself an instance of racial discrimination and that the only way to mitigate such racial discrimination is through the mandatory maintenance of racial discrimination. In this opinion she was joined by Justice Ginsburg, with Justice Kagan recusing herself from the case. Justice Sotomayor argued that Michigan's Proposal 2, which mandates race-neutral state policies, is the sort of legislation used to "oppress minority groups." By outlawing racial discrimination, she argued, "a majority of the Michigan electorate changed the basic rules of the political process in that State in a manner that uniquely disadvantaged racial minorities."
Justice Sotomayor is here arguing in effect that if a constitutional referendum doesn't go the NAACP's way, then its effects are invalid. This is not an exaggeration: Justice Soyomayor argues explicitly that Michigan's voters would have been within their rights to, for example, lobby university authorities to adopt race-neutral admissions standards but that by adopting a constitutional amendment insisting on race neutrality, thereby transferring the decision from the education bureaucrats to the people themselves and their constitution, they "changed the rules in the middle of the game." Her opinion is legally illiterate and logically indefensible, and the still-young career of this self-described "wise Latina" on the Supreme Court already offers a case study in the moral and legal corrosion that inevitably results from elevating ethnic-identity politics over the law. Justice Sotomayor has revealed herself as a naked and bare-knuckled political activist with barely even a pretense of attending to the law, and the years she has left to subvert the law will be a generation-long reminder of the violence the Obama administration has done to our constitutional order.
All-White Fox Business Panel Agrees: Obama Administration Trying To Make America Look Racist
Blog ››› April 22, 2014 10:58 AM EDT ››› THOMAS BISHOP
Fox Business panel Fox Business host Lou Dobbs and an all-white panel used proposed changes to federal sentencing guidelines to accuse President Obama of trying to "accentuate the idea that America is a racist society."
The panelists were discussing new rules proposed by Attorney General Eric Holder that would allow more non-violent offenders convicted of drug laws -- which disproportionately sent black offenders to prison for long sentences -- eligible for presidential clemency. The panel suggested that the administration's acknowledgement of racial disparities proved the "race industry's" success in making the country look racist.
In 2010, Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 to reduce the federal mandatory minimum sentencing disparities between those convicted of powdered cocaine possession versus crack cocaine possession. As the Washington Post noted, prior to the law's passage, "those arrested for crack offenses -- mostly young, African American men--faced far harsher penalties than the white and Hispanic suspects most often caught with powder cocaine." In 2013, President Obama commuted sentences for eight individuals who were convicted of non-violent crack cocaine offenses under the old sentencing guidelines.
On April 21, Holder announced that Obama "wants to consider additional clemency applications, to restore a degree of justice, fairness, and proportionality for deserving individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety." The new effort would focus on prisoners serving longer sentences than they would if they were arrested under current law.
Dobbs' panel of experts on the whether Obama and Holder were accentuating racial tensions included National Review columnist John Fund and City Journal contributing editor Heather Mac Donald, a roundtable with a history of racially-charged remarks.In March, Mac Donald dismissed research finding black students were more harshly punished than their white counterparts by claiming it "common sense that black students are more likely to be disruptive" than whites. Earlier this month, Mac Donald doubled down on her remarks, explaining that disproportionate school suspensions for black students stemmed from their "lack of self-discipline." Dobbs himself has accused Obama of "fomenting unrest" to incite racism and accused the Department of Justice of doing the same in the George Zimmerman case.
Watch:
Mozilla And The Right-Wing Media's Persecution Complex
Blog ››› April 7, 2014 1:28 PM EDT ››› LUKE BRINKER
To hear conservative media tell it, the resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich following an outcry over Eich's support for the 2008 referendum that banned same-sex marriage in California is merely the latest sign that a new era of anti-conservative persecution has arrived. That narrative undergirds the right's campaign against LGBT equality and is essential to understanding conservative support for measures that would enshrine anti-LGBT discrimination into law.
On April 3, just two weeks into his tenure, Eich announced his decision to step down as Mozilla's CEO. The revelation that Eich had contributed $1,000 to the anti-marriage equality Proposition 8 campaign had triggered fierce criticism from Mozilla employees, companies like OkCupid, and gay rights activists. As Slate's Mark Joseph Stern noted, the campaign for Proposition 8 was about far more than a simple disagreement over the definition of marriage. Supporters ran stridently homophobic ads accusing gay people of wanting to turn children gay, "mess up" children by introducing gay marriage into the curriculum, and conceal the truth about marriage and reproduction.
The virulently anti-gay propaganda behind the Prop 8 campaign - and the measure's subsequent passage -served to compound the sense of vulnerability among the gay community, which faces discrimination in housing, healthcare, public accommodations, and earnings, and is disproportionately targeted by hate crimes. Given the vitriol that motivated the Prop 8 fight, many supporters of LGBT equality objected to Eich's appointment to Mozilla CEO.
In the right-wing universe, however, it's conservative Christians whose rights are under assault. While Eich's decision to resign was an example of the free market at work - precisely the solution many libertarians and conservatives have long prescribed for anti-gay bigotry - conservative media figures greeted his departure with cries of totalitarianism and bigotry, condemning the "intolerant" LGBT movement for its role in the controversy.
Rush Limbaugh wasted no time in comparing Eich's critics with Nazis, declaring on his April 4 program that "'[f]ascist' is probably the closest way" to describe them (emphasis added):
When it was discovered that Brendan Eich had donated a $100 [sic] to Proposition 8 four years ago, the literal... What is the proper name for people who engage in this kind of behavior? "Fascist" is probably the closest way. You can call 'em Nazis, but nevertheless they went into gear, and immediately Brendan Eich was described as "filled with hatred" and anti-gay bigotry all over the tech media.
Breitbart.com's Ben Shapiro sounded a similar note, launching an anti-Mozilla campaign on his website TruthRevolt.org to protest the company's "fascistic crackdown":
NRO's John Fund: Overly Burdensome Voter ID Laws Are So Cool
Blog ››› January 23, 2014 3:26 PM EST ››› MEAGAN HATCHER-MAYS
144
National Review Online contributor John Fund used anecdotal evidence of voter fraud and specious legal analysis to continue to advocate for oppressive voter identification laws.
On January 17, a Pennsylvania judge ruled that the state's voter ID law was unconstitutional under the state constitution because "hundreds of thousands of qualified voters ... lack compliant ID," and that the state had failed to ease the burdens associated with obtaining one. As The Nation recently reported, "getting a voter ID in Pennsylvania was a bureaucratic nightmare" after the statute went into effect because "[t]here are 9,300 polling places in the state, but only seventy-one DMV offices."
But Fund apparently didn't find this scenario all that nightmarish. In a recent editorial, he dismissed the number of voters without appropriate ID as "inflated" and argued that the law should still be rescued by the state legislature:
In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld on a 6-to-3 vote the constitutionality of laws requiring voter ID at the polls. Justice John Paul Stevens, one of the left-of-center judges on the Court, wrote the opinion in a case involving Indiana's voter-ID law: He found that the Court could not "conclude that the statute imposes 'excessively burdensome requirements' on any class of voters."
But our Constitution decentralizes our election procedures over 13,000 counties and towns, and states themselves are in charge of writing voter-ID laws should they choose to do so. Some do it better than others.
Last Friday, Judge Bernard McGinley of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court found that his state's voter-ID law violated Pennsylvania's constitution because the manner in which it was implemented placed an unreasonable burden on voters. The law, passed in 2012, had been blocked from taking effect while the court case against it ground forward. McGinley's decision is likely to be appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Or the legislature could pass a new version of the law that would answer the judge's objections.
McGinley concluded that the law had been implemented in a sloppy, haphazard way and that the state had not done enough to help provide IDs to voters who lacked one.
[...]
When Pennsylvania's voter-ID law is either appealed or rewritten, let's hope that the state does a better job debunking the inflated estimates that hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians lacked an ID.
The state should also emphasize that even when voters show up at the polling place without an ID, they can vote on a provisional ballot. The state will count that ballot if the voter mails, faxes, or e-mails a copy of acceptable ID within six days of the election. If a person lacks the money to obtain the background documents necessary to acquire a voter ID, he can sign an affidavit attesting to that fact, after which his vote will be counted without further questions.
Fund's claim that the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of strict voter ID laws is misleading -- the case he references is Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, which challenged an Indiana voter ID law specifically, not the constitutionality of ID requirements in general. In the Pennsylvania case, the judge made sure to note that Crawford was not particularly relevant to his analysis, because the underlying facts that supported the legal challenges were so dissimilar. But Fund ignores this important distinction between the two cases in favor of his preferred narrative: that discriminatory voter ID laws are awesome.
There Are "No Vacancies" On The D.C. Circuit And Other Right-Wing Myths
Research ››› November 26, 2013 11:21 AM EST ››› MEAGAN HATCHER-MAYS
85
In response to Senate Democrats invoking the so-called "nuclear option," right-wing media advanced a number of myths not only about filibuster reform, but about the qualifications of President Obama's nominees who have languished in the confirmation process. What right-wing media have ignored is that Democrats used the "nuclear option" only after unprecedented GOP obstruction prevented Obama's judicial and executive nominees from receiving an up-or-down vote.
NRO: Unprecedented Obstructionism Wasn't So Bad
Blog ››› November 22, 2013 4:24 PM EST ››› MEAGAN HATCHER-MAYS
84
National Review Online, while claiming to support a change in Senate procedure in order to "overcome partisan obstruction," refused to acknowledge that it was hyper-partisan obstructionism that forced Senate Democrats to embrace the so-called "nuclear option."
On Thursday, Senate Democrats approved a rule change that will finally allow an up-or-down vote for President Obama's nominees, who have been the victims of unprecedented Republican obstructionism. NRO, like other right-wing media outlets, colorfully responded to the rule change, with John Fund calling Democrats "snake-oil salesmen."
From NRO's November 21 editorial:
The Democrats here are helping themselves to ill-gotten gains. Using the filibuster and other stalling techniques, they kept judicial vacancies open by closing them to Bush nominees.
[...]
The filibuster is not sacred writ, and we are on record supporting procedural changes to overcome partisan obstruction. The more serious concern here is that the Democrats are attempting to pack the courts, especially the D.C. Circuit court, with a rogue's gallery of far-left nominees. That is worrisome in and of itself, but there is a deeper agenda: Much of what President Obama has done in office is of questionable legality and constitutionality. The president no doubt has in mind the sage advice of Roy Cohn: "Don't tell me what the law is. Tell me who the judge is." He is attempting to insulate his agenda from legal challenge by installing friendly activists throughout the federal judiciary. That is precisely what he means when he boasts, "We are remaking the courts." Republicans are in fact obstructing those appointments; unlike the nomination of John Roberts et al., these appointments deserve to be obstructed.
The filibuster is a minor issue; the major issue is that President Obama is engaged in a court-packing scheme to protect his dubious agenda, and Harry Reid's Senate is conspiring with him to do so. The voters missed their chance to forestall these shenanigans in 2012. They made the wrong decision then, and have a chance to make partial amends in 2014, when they will be deciding not only what sort of Senate they wish to have, but what sort of courts, and what sort of country.
Fund joined the chorus in a separate post, minimizing GOP obstructionism and advancing the myth that new judges are not needed on the D.C. Circuit because the court's caseload is "provably so light." Fund went on to imply Senate Democrats were hypocrites because they spoke out against the use of the nuclear option by the GOP to push through President Bush's ultra-conservative jurists back in 2005.
==
wiki 12/17
John H. Fund (born April 8, 1957) is an American political journalist. He is currently the national-affairs columnist for National Review Online[1] and a senior editor at The American Spectator.[2]
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Life and career
Fund was born in Tucson, Arizona. He attended California State University, Sacramento where he studied Journalism and Economics. He worked for The Wall Street Journalfor more than two decades, starting in 1984, and was a member of the Journal's editorial board from 1995 to 2001. He wrote a column named "On the Trail" for the Journal's opinion page from 2000 to 2011, and also contributed to the Journal's newsletter, Political Diary.[3]
Fund has also written for Esquire, Reader's Digest, Reason, The New Republic, and National Review.
Fund cowrote a 1992 book, Cleaning House: America's Campaign for Term Limits (ISBN 0-89526-516-8) with James Coyne. He also collaborated with Rush Limbaugh on another 1992 book, The Way Things Ought to Be (ISBN 067175145X),[4][5] transcribing it from tape and editing it.
In 2004, Fund wrote Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (ISBN 1-59403-061-8), in which he strongly criticizes the American election system, describing it as "befitting an emerging Third World country rather than the world's leading democracy." He published an updated edition of the book in 2008 (ISBN 1-59403-224-6). IN 2012, Fund and Hans von Spakovsky wrote Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk (ISBN 1-59403-618-7), which argues voter fraud is a significant issue in U.S. elections.
Bibliography
- Fund and Hans von Spakovsky, Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk (Encounter Books, 2012, ISBN 1-59403-618-7)
- Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books, 2004, ISBN 1-59403-061-8; second, updated edition 2008, ISBN 1-59403-224-6)
- Cleaning House: America's Campaign for Term Limits (RegneryGateway, 1992, ISBN 0-89526-516-8)
References
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- :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Contributors : John H. Fund". The American Spectator. Archived from the original on September 26, 2011.
- :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "John Fund". The Wall Street Journal.
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External links
- Fund's columns at OpinionJournal.com at the Wayback Machine (archived January 11, 2010)
- "Leave it to Deaver" Fund writes about meeting Michael Deaver and Ronald Reagan while in high school.
- Appearances on C-SPAN
| Authority control |
- 1957 births
- Living people
- American columnists
- The Wall Street Journal people
- Writers from Tucson, Arizona
- National Review people
- American political writers
- American male writers
- The American Spectator people
2003
Who Framed John Fund? alterman
so
the right-wing journalist John Fund may not be a model citizen, but contrary to the implications of many left journalists and gossip columnists, he’s likely not the kind of guy who pretends to want to marry women and then beats them up.
Sure, Sidney Blumenthal fingers Fund as the original source for the malicious rumor, published by Matt Drudge, alleging that Blumenthal had a history of spousal abuse. (Fund denies this.) And his record vis-à-vis the late Vince Foster and the entire nefarious “Arkansas Project” while working as a Wall Street Journal editorial writer brings him no honor, either as a journalist or a citizen. I’m sure a careful study of his work would fill a “how not to” book for journalism schools across the land.
Naturally, it was fun to imagine, after he got himself arrested last year, that Fund was really a monster who had walked out on a planned marriage with his girlfriend and then beat her up–the dastardly deeds of which he was publicly accused in 2001. Even better, to his ill-wishers, was the rumor that Fund had long ago had an affair with the woman’s mother, and knocked up both of them.
Well, it’s a fact of life in our scandal-besotted culture that it does not take much in the way of evidence to publish charges that can ruin a man’s life. The charges against Fund appeared most prominently (and repeatedly) in Lloyd Grove’s gossip column in the Washington Post and Richard Johnson’s Page Six in the New York Post. They were trumpeted across the Internet on various leftist sites like American Politics Journal; by the controversialist John Connolly, who posted them on weaselsearch.com; and by Village Voicemedia reporter Cynthia Cotts, who reported on them twice and even escorted Fund’s accuser to David Brock’s Manhattan book party for Blinded by the Right, where Cotts introduced me to the woman in question, Morgan Francis Pillsbury.
Personally, I always thought the story was too good to be true. I discussed the accusations briefly, in this column and in my book What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News. In both places, I spoke of them as cautionary tales for conservative scandalmongers but added that I believed Fund’s denials, absent any compelling evidence to the contrary. I knew Fund a bit from our time together at MSNBC, and as I said in both places, he always struck me as a perfect gentleman (for such a political scoundrel). And Pillsbury and her mother, as I also wrote at the time, both struck me as “a little bit nutty,” to borrow Brock’s nefarious phrase. But I admit I enjoyed it. Right-wing smear artists had abused the constitutional impeachment process and all but destroyed Bill Clinton’s presidency for a lot less. Their scandal machine had now backfired on one of its own. I didn’t want to play myself, but I didn’t mind that others were eager and willing.
The details were pretty distasteful. Among Fund’s crimes trumpeted by Cotts in the Voice, for instance, was poor housekeeping. His apartment, she reports, was full of “dirty dishes, unopened mail, and bottles of alcohol from hotel minibars”; the floor was “covered with piles of black socks and dirty underwear.”
Pillsbury felt so betrayed by my calling her story into question earlier this year that she circulated an Internet attack against me for lacking the guts to call Fund to account. I wondered what the hell Fund had done to get involved with someone like this–and if he was completely innocent, why did he lose his high-profile gig at the Wall Street Journal editorial page and end up writing for its benighted little brother, opinionjournal.com?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve received a set of documents from a close friend of Fund’s–now posted on the Internet–that demonstrate to almost any fair-minded person that Fund is probably the victim of a deeply disturbed person. In a signed affidavit, the woman in question–whose true age is 36, seven years older than was reported, and who was born Carolyn Anne Barteaux but carries a passport (a copy of which was provided to me by Fund) under the name Carolyn Anne Pillsbury and now goes by Morgan Francis Pillsbury–withdraws any accusations of physical abuse, accusations that resulted in Fund’s arrest. She also denies in the affidavit that they had ever planned to marry....
John Fund | Fox News
www.foxnews.com/person/f/john-fund.html
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Who Framed John Fund? | The Nation
https://www.thenation.com/article/who-framed-john-fund/
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John Fund - Wsj Topics - The Wall Street Journal
topics.wsj.com/person/F/john-fund/5467
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John Fund - News, Articles, Biography, Photos - WSJ.com
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John Fund | Media Matters for America
https://www.mediamatters.org/people/john-fund
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John Fund's distorted history of Democrats, Republicans, and race ...
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Voter Fraud: We've Got Proof It's Easy - | National Review
www.nationalreview.com/article/368234/voter-fraud-weve-got-proof-its-easy-john-fund
by John Fund January 12, 2014 6:30 PM ... Those who did vote cast only a write-in vote for a “John Test” so as to not affect the outcome of any contest. ... New Hampshire's Democratic governor, John Lynch, sputtered when asked about O'Keefe's video, and he condemned the effort to test the election ...
How to Steal an Election | City Journal
https://www.city-journal.org/html/how-steal-election-12824.html
John Fund · Autumn 2004. Politics and law. New York. The 2000 Florida election debacle led many Americans to worry about the integrity of our voting system. They're right to worry: the system is haphazard and sloppy. How sloppy? Well, at least eight of the 19 foreign-national September 11 hijackers had registered to vote ...
John Fund: Wisconsin and the Voter Fraud Agenda - WSJ
www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704671904575193930226978178
In The Wall Street Journal, columnist John Fund notes that Democrats are pushing to weaken ballot security at the state and national level. Have they forgotten the 2000 election?
==
When right-wing activist James O’Keefe tried to pull together one of his undercover video operations in the Boston area in 2010, at the behest of right-wing button-pushers Foster Friess and John Fund, Roman was one of the people the disgraced smear merchant reached out to for tactical advice. A couple years earlier, O’Keefe had managed to destroy an organizing collective called ACORN — which Roman himself had been targeting for years on his election fraud website, with minimal success — with deceptively edited videos that tricked the media into believing ACORN had tried to help cover up child prostitution.
The particulars of Roman’s resume only reinforce the sense that Trump’s outfit is gearing up for a voter suppression effort far more explicit and modern than the traditional GOP approach. Republicans used to rely on a tactic called voter caging, where operatives would try to get tens of thousands of voters tossed off the rolls because they hadn’t responded to a sham letter generated by the party ahead of election day.
[stephen] Moore also worked as the Research Director for President Reagan's "Commission on Privatization," which included David Koch's right-hand man, Richard Fink. Fink was then the president of David Koch's "Citizens for a Sound Economy" (CSE), which later split off into David Koch's "Americans for Prosperity," and "FreedomWorks," which was briefly led by Armey. That commission -- which both CSE and ALEC strongly lauded -- recommended numerous ways to redirect tax dollars from government institutions to for-profit corporations.
Moore also was listed as one of ten members of the Board of Directors of Donor's Capital Fund, as of 2010, an entity that helps distribute funding from the Kochs and other billionaires and millionaires to right-wing groups, as noted in its tax filings and as documented [11] by Little Sis.
It is noteworthy that in his post with the WSJ, Moore also wrote [12] a glowing story about Charles Koch in 2006.
Moore Is Not the Only WSJ Editorial Board Connection to ALEC
Moore is not the only WSJ editorial board member who has had close ties with ALEC. Long-time WSJ editorial board member John Fund is also plugged into ALEC. He had a seat on the WSJ's editorial board from 1995 to 2001, and he also wrote for the WSJ's editorial page from 2000 to 2011.
ALEC Meeting Agenda 1999Like Moore, Fund made presentations to ALEC's secretive, closed door task force meetings where corporations vote alongside legislators on model bills to be introduced into law in statehouses across the country. Fund's most recent presentation to ALEC was in 2010.
Notably, one of Fund's closed door meetings with ALEC was in 1999 and was in support of the "Financial Services Reform Act," also known as the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act. That act effectively eliminated the walls beween banking, investing, and insuring. As ALEC described that presentation, the bill they praised "was the crucial first step toward overhauling the depression-er regulatory framework of the banking industry. To many, this bill is only a half-measure. More fundamental reforms need to take place to keep the American financial services industry competitive in the 'global' marketplace."
The destruction of that framework (known as "Glass-Steagall"), as urged by Fund and ALEC, laid the foundation for the devastating crash of the U.S. economy in 2008 due to risky gambling it allowed for the
==
o'keefe emails
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_Fund
John Fund is an editorial writer for the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal.[1]
According to a brief biographical profile on the website of the now-defunct National Journalism Center, Fund attended a course in summer '81 and has subsequently been "panelist, ABC, CNBC, Fox News Channel, editorial writer,**Wall Street Journal**, chief investigative reporter, Evans & Novak,co-author, Cleaning House: America's Campaign for Term Limits, published in Esquire, Reader's Digest, New Republic, National Review, American Enterprise, Imprimis, American Spectator, winner,Warren Brookes award for journalistic excellence (American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC))".[2]
- Advisory Board, Free Africa Foundation [3]
Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council
Fund spoke at the 2007 ALEC Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA, July 25 - 27, 2007. He received ALEC's "Warren Brookes Award for journalistic excellence" in 1993.[4]
| About ALEC |
|---|
| ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's ALECexposed.org, and check out breaking news on our PRWatch.org site. |
Articles and Resources
Related SourceWatch Articles
References
- ↑ John H. Fund, "Warming to Cockburn and Vice Versa", Hawaii Reporter, March 11, 2009.
- ↑ National Journalism Center, "John Fund", accessed November 27, 2003.
- ↑ Advisory Board, Free Africa Foundation, accessed June 26, 2009.
- ↑ Freedom21, Freedom21 National Conference 2001 Speakers, organizational site, accessed February 2, 2012
Articles
- "John Fund's book onvoter fraudis a fraud", Media Matters for America, October 30, 2004.
- John Fund, "Trouble in Paradise", Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2002. Discussespsuedo-news organization Hawaii Reporter, the related Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and the unseating of the Democratic Party.
- John H. Fund, "Warming to Cockburn and Vice Versa", Hawaii Reporter, March 11, 2009.
In his recent book *Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Democracy* (Encounter Books, September 2004), Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist and author John Fund uses distortions and half-truths to impugn Democrats who, he states in his introduction, "figure prominently in the vast majority of examples of election fraud described in this [Fund's] book."
Fund has made numerous media appearances to promote his book. In October alone, he appeared on FOX News Channel's Special Report with Brit Hume, CNN Daybreak, twice on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, twice on MSNBC'sHardball with Chris Matthews, and on National Public Radio's The Tavis Smiley Show. Numerous conservative columnists have promoted the book, including George F. Will, Michelle Malkin, Jonah Goldberg, and R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
Following are some of the false or unfounded claims in their order of appearance in Stealing Elections.
CLAIM: "[E]very single recount of the votes in Florida determined that George W. Bush had won the state's twenty-five electoral votes and therefore the presidency." (p. 28)
FACT: A post-election study revealed several plausible scenarios in which then-Vice President Al Gore would have won Florida.
As Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted (here, here, and here), the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC) studied Florida's disputed ballots and concluded that Gore emerged the winner in at least four recount scenarios. The NORC study was sponsored by news organizations including The Associated Press, The New York Times, and CNN, as well as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post Co., and Tribune Publishing (which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel). According to a November 12, 2001, Washington Post article on the NORC's findings: "[I]f Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots, or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different. An examination of uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the narrowest of margins."
CLAIM: The Palm Beach Post found "no more than 108 'law-abiding' citizens of all races who 'were purged from the voter rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the election." (p. 32)
FACT: The Palm Bach Post reported that "at least 1,100 eligible voters [were] wrongly purged from the rolls before last year's election."
In making this claim, Fund selectively quoted from a May 27, 2001, article in the Palm Beach Post. While the article did state that "[a]t least 108 law-abiding people were purged from the voter rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the election," it also stated that an additional 996 people who had been convicted of crimes in other states but were now eligible to vote were also cut from the rolls.
Fund then compared what he called the "trivial number" of 108 voters with the 1,420 military ballots that were rejected statewide, ignoring the other 996 who were eligible but were denied the right to vote.
From the May 27, 2001, article in the Palm Beach Post:
But a Palm Beach Post computer analysis has found at least 1,100 eligible voters wrongly purged from the rolls before last year's election -- the collateral damage from an aggressive and ill-conceived state plan to prevent felons from voting.
[...]
At least 108 law-abiding people were purged from the voter rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the election. DBT's computers had matched these people with felons, though in dozens of cases they did not share the same name, birthdate, gender or race. One Naples man was told he couldn't vote because he was linked with a felon still serving time in a Moore Haven prison.
Florida officials cut from the rolls 996 people convicted of crimes in other states, though they should have been allowed to vote. Before the election, state officials said felons could vote only if they had written clemency orders, although most other states automatically restore voting rights to felons when they complete their sentences. This policy conflicted with a 1998 court ruling that said Florida had "no authority" to deny civil rights to those who had them restored in other states. After the election, the state changed its policy.
CLAIM: Overvotes were fraudulent and helped Gore: "It appears that as many as 15,000 votes may have been altered and subtracted from the Bush total in Palm Beach County." (p. 35)
FACT: Overvotes hurt Gore more than Bush.
Fund claimed that "overvotes should concern us more than undervotes" and some overvotes "may have a less benign explanation." Citing "two former law enforcement officers and a poll worker [who told him] that they believe ballot tampering affected some Bush ballots," Fund made the otherwise unsupported charge that "using a nail, pencil, or other sharp device, they [Gore favoring precinct officials] would take a ballot and punch out Al Gore's name for president... Every Bush ballot would have been double-punched with Gore votes too, and possibly even straight-Republican ballots would have been punched with straight- Democratic holes too." Fund echoed the unfounded claims advanced at the right-wing online forum Free Republic that "[t]he news media is focused on the Democratic Party spin that voters were 'confused' in Palm Beach County. They are ignoring the 15,000 BUSH and 3,400 Buchanan votes [sic] were stolen by fraud in these 19,000 ballots."
But, according to a January 27, 2001, Washington Post report, it was Gore who had far more ballots invalidated because of overvoting. The Washington Post report stated: "[T]he biggest problem for Gore was in 'overvotes,' ballots invalidated because voters indicated multiple choices for president. ... Gore was by far most likely to be selected on invalid overvoted ballots, with his name punched as one of the choices on 46,000 of them. Bush, by comparison, was punched on 17,000." The St. Petersburg Times agreed in a November 12, 2001, report:
Badly designed ballots, such as the now notorious "butterfly" in Palm Beach County, cost thousands of Floridians their votes.
On about 66,000 ballots, in areas where voters complained about being confused, voters cast votes for two candidates. Who did they mean to choose? It's impossible to say. But consider: about 40,000 of the double votes included a mark for Gore; about 15,000 included a mark for Bush.
The St. Petersburg Times review included a computer analysis of five other recount scenarios using a statewide standard for counting votes. Bush wins every time a strict standard for counting votes is employed; Gore wins whenever overvotes also are included.
CLAIM: Democratic campaign workers in Wisconsin were caught on film in 2002 "handing out food and small sums of money to residents of a home for the mentally ill in Kenosha, after which the patients were shepherded into a separate room and given absentee ballots." (p. 47)
FACT: News reports directly contradict Fund's account.
As MMFA has documented, Fund's only citation for this example of voter fraud was "Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2002." The article Fund cited, titled "Chicago, Wisconsin," was a Journal editorial published while Fund was a member of the Journal's editorial board. MMFA could not verify Fund's and the Journal's description of the television broadcast, but several news articles contradict their account.
From an article in the November 1, 2002, edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
[Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim] Doyle volunteer Frank Santapoalo provided kringle to [Dayton Residential Care Facility] residents and a maximum of three quarters to the bingo winners. The television report also shows the facility's activity director reminding the residents that there were absentee ballots available "upstairs" if they wished to vote.
[...]
Kenosha City Clerk Jean Morgan said Thursday that about half the 33 ballots delivered to the facility had been returned to her office. Morgan said the ballots are not dated, making it impossible to figure out from the form whether any residents filled out the ballots the day of the party.
Other Milwaukee Journal Sentinel articles in 2002, on October 24, October 25, October 30, and November 2, also address the issue.
CLAIM: Democrats engaged in fraudulent activities in South Dakota during the 2002 election that led to Democrat Tim Johnson's win. (Chapter 6, pp. 77-94)
FACT: South Dakota's Republican attorney general dismissed the allegations, called affidavits supporting Republican charges "flat false."
Fund accused Democrats of a long list of wrongful activities during the 2002 election in South Dakota in which Democratic Senate incumbent Tim Johnson narrowly defeated Republican challenger Representative John Thune, including: fraudulent voter registration, keeping polling places open late, "improper counting of ballots," "interference with the election process" by "distributing campaign literature and organizing voter-hauling efforts in the polling places," and "inducements to vote" of cash and merchandise. Fund cites National Review White House correspondent Byron York's article in the December 23, 2002, edition of National Review to support his claims. York wrote:
The stories [of misconduct] are told in more than 40 affidavits collected by Republicans in the days after the election and obtained by National Review. That evidence, along with interviews with state and local officials, suggests that Johnson may have benefited from hundreds of votes that were the product of polling-place misconduct. Had those votes not been added to his total, it seems likely that the senator, who won by just 524 votes, would instead have lost, and John Thune would today be South Dakota's senator-elect.
But as blogger and journalist Joshua Micah Marshall pointed out in his Talking Points Memo weblog on December 16, 2002, South Dakota's Republican attorney general, Mark Barnett, stated in a December 10, 2002, article in theRapid City Journal that "[m]any of the things alleged [in the affidavits collected by Republicans in South Dakota] simply are not crimes. ...Those affidavits simply do not give me cause to think there was an election rip-off." Barnett went on to say, "A fair number [of the allegations] could be read as complaints about how effective the Democratic get-out-the-vote effort was." As for the charge that Democrats' misconduct altered the election's outcome in favor of Johnson, Barnett stated, "None of the allegations in the affidavits would change the election outcome." Barnett did state that he would open investigations into "two or three affidavits out of 50," including allegations of vote buying. After the investigations, according to a December 13 Associated Press report, Barnett "dismissed allegations in three affidavits" and called them "perjury or forgery ... just flat false."
From the December 13, 2002, AP report, as quoted by Marshall:
Barnett dismissed allegations in three affidavits, purportedly from people who were offered rides to the polling place in a Johnson van and offered $10 to vote. One of the people could not be located, and the others said they did not vote and were not offered money to vote. One said his signature had been forged on his affidavit, and the other said she signed hers because a friend told her to.
"These affidavits are either perjury or forgery, or call them what you will. They are just flat false," Barnett said.
Since the release of Fund's book, The Rapid City Journal noted on October 10 of this year that "then-Attorney General Mark Barnett, a Republican, dismissed the majority of election irregularity complaints from his fellow Republicans as sour grapes." The paper also pointed out: "In his 2004 book, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, Wall Street Journal editorial page writer John Fund devotes an entire chapter to South Dakota's 2002 Senate race. Fund recounts a series of improprieties -- many of which Barnett dismissed."