frankenlies.com
#5: Franken Casts His Vote
On page 256 (paperback, p. 265) of Lies, Franken charges that the Republican party in Florida set out to "deliberately purge" "tens of thousands of blacks" before the 2000 presidential election. Franken doesn’t cite any source for this claim. No wonder.
The truth is that long before the 2000 election, the voter rolls in Florida were a monstrous mess, and voter fraud was a big problem. For example, a man named Manuel Yip was a regular voter who cast ballots four times between 1993 and 1997.1 But when the 2000 election rolled around, his name was nowhere to be found on the voter rolls. Why? Was it a Florida Republican Party gone rabid, as Franken would claim, trying to "deliberately purge" potentially damaging Democratic votes? Was Yip a convicted felon? The answer is no to both. Yip had been dead for nearly eight years.2 Yet he had cast ballots in four Florida elections.3 This should amaze everyone but Shirley MacLaine.
It was actually the law and duty of the government of Florida to try to reform the voter rolls before the 2000 election. Back in 1998, they passed major legislation in an attempt to mend their badly broken system.4 Were mistakes made in the ensuing two years in trying to clean things up? It appears so. But were "tens of thousands" of blacks "purged" from the rolls as part of a vast, right-wing, Republican, racist maneuver, as Franken so clearly implies? With the facts, the answer should be no.
By the way, the Miami Herald’s 1997-1998 investigation into Miami’s vote fraud was so explosive, it earned the paper The Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1999. (The piece was first published on February 1, 1998).5
Say hello again to Franken’s "impossibly high standard."
[Also: Here and here are two articles by Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, further debunking the "Florida myth" ... Here is an Opinion Journal article addressing the issue as well.]
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Notes:
1 “Voters Crossed the Line in Miami,” Miami Herald, February 1, 1998. [See the full article at the Pulitzer website here.]
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Warren Richey, “Florida Makes a Move to Reign in Voter Fraud,” Christian Science Monitor, May 4, 1998.
5 “Voters Crossed the Line in Miami,” Miami Herald.