Spurious Talk Radio Arguments

So, conservative nut #23 was on the radio today ranting about ACORN, which is "under investigation in THIRTEEN states" regarding possible voter fraud. Okay sure. However, let us not forget that investigation is not the same as indictment, especially under our current administration's political games.

So then, conservative nut #23 plays a tape of a college student in Ohio being interviewed about being approached by ACORN representatives to register.

So, she tells the interviewer, "yeah sure, I'll fill out more than one ballot" because "it's hard work getting people to sign petitions, I feel bad for them." Conservative nut #23 explodes at this, because this girl is apparently contradicting everything democracy and the United States stands for by filling out a form more than once. Then, and this is the clincher, he goes on his rant about voter fraud. Now - I want to point out, at no point did this woman say she had registered under different names or addresses, and even stated at one point that she had not been asked to do so by the ACORN representatives. But he keeps going on, equating the multiple signatures on the ACORN forms to planned voter fraud. And this is how they get you, not by comparing apples to oranges, because everyone (hopefully, these are talk show listeners) will catch that, but by comparing oranges and tangerines.

As reported by Slate, ACORN, although it has had its share of problems, has never been found to have anything near the amount of illegal activities that the conservative nuts (#'s 1 through 105) want you to think. They'll throw words like suspected, investigation, and allegations at you, but I've never heard a single one actually mention a specific incident.

For instance, check out this article. According to it, "She is among the more than 4,000 people whose names are listed both on Harris County’s voter rolls and also in a federal database of death records, a Texas Watchdog analysis has found." Okay, voter fraud bad. Then they follow a little later with this little treasure: "The findings come as the group ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has faced scrutiny in multiple states for allegedly improper voter registrations," and complete the picture for the reader with "That’s as officials in at least six states may have improperly removed tens of thousands of voters from the rolls or prevented them from registering, the New York Times reported Wednesday." So, it would seem that ACORN was involved in Harris County, Nevada, and Six Other States! Except they weren't. The only actual fact about ACORN in the article is that their offices were raided in Las Vegas. Everything else is just conflation. Liberal biased media my ass.

Sometimes my country scares me.