02 Aug 2012 Media Matters Distorts Facts While Attacking Fox News for Covering National Center Paper
Instead of Examining Facts, Media Matters Rehashed Stale Talking Points
Washington, D.C. – George Soros-funded Media Matters once again is distorting facts: this time, in a post criticizing a National Center paper analyzing election fraud investigations across the nation.
Today, Steve Doocy, on Fox News’s Fox and Friends morning news program, highlighted a paper released August 1 by the National Center demonstrating that poor and minority voters are often the victims of voter fraud. Instead of attempting to rebut that fact, Media Matters resorted to distortions and rehashing of stale data.
In that recent paper, National Center for Public Policy Research Adjunct Fellow Horace Cooper examined a number of recent voter fraud prosecutions across the nation and concluded that poor and minority voters often are the “unacknowledged victims of election fraud.”
“Looking at the actual data regarding arrests and prosecutions, it is clear that minorities in general, and blacks in particular, are frequently targeted by election fraudsters,” Cooper explains, “and voter ID would be particularly useful to combat these crimes.”
Media Matters claims the Fox program should have focused on the evidence that Voter ID disenfranchises existing voters. But actually there is little evidence to support such a claim. In fact, when the Department of Justice and other groups are forced to make claims against Voter ID, they either invariably drop the argument that there are sizable numbers of individuals affected by the requirement or they are forced to admit the data they refer to is subject to different interpretations.
“Instead of consulting state secretaries of state or other neutral sources, Media Matters repeats the claims made by the Brennan Center that there are 3.2 million people they identify as potentially without identification cards and all of whom will be prevented from voting this November. In fact, most analysts suggest that the 3.2 million number of people is highly inflated — based on extrapolations and outdated data — and in no way reflects the number of people who would be prevented from voting. A far more accurate study was done by the Pew Center on the states and its findings are far more disturbing: ‘The report found that there are about 1.8 million dead people listed as active voters. Some 2.8 million people have active registrations in more than one state,'” Cooper concluded.
“Media Matters seems unfazed by the reality that poor and minorities suffer disproportionately from voter fraud,” Cooper says.
Cooper notes that these insidious voter fraud plots prey upon the weakest members of our society: “They violate the public trust, they erode faith and confidence in our democratic process, and they ultimately disenfranchise people many of whom are poor and minorities – people whose votes should be rightfully counted.”
Cooper’s paper, “Victims of Voter Fraud: Poor and Disadvantaged are Most Likely to Have Their Vote Stolen,” is available online at https://nationalcenter.org/NPA635.html.
Cooper’s other 2012 papers on Voter ID for the National Center include:
“When the Dead Vote, the Living Suffer; Department of Justice is Wrong to Oppose Voter ID,” available online at https://nationalcenter.org/NPA631.html
“Voter ID and South Carolina: The Supreme Court Speaks Yet DOJ Won’t Listen,” available at https://nationalcenter.org/NPA634.html
“Justice Department Plays Fast and Loose with Facts and Constitution in Challenging Texas Voter ID Law,” available at https://nationalcenter.org/NPA633.html
These and other National Center for Public Policy Research publications on voter integrity issues are available collectively at https://nationalcenter.org/legal.html.
Horace Cooper is an adjunct fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, a member of the African-American leadership group Project 21 and a legal commentator. He taught constitutional law at George Mason University in Virginia and was a senior counsel to Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX) when Armey served as U.S. House Majority Leader.
The National Center For Public Policy Research (https://nationalcenter.org) is a conservative, free-market, non-profit think-tank established in 1982. It is supported by the voluntary gifts of over 100,000 individual recent supporters, receiving about two percent of its revenue from corporate sources. Contributions to it are tax-deductible.
-30-