Monday, April 16, 2018
notes for a possible an unsent letter to ari berman.
first, ari berman is a great reporter and could be nominated for a pulitizer for his ongoing coverage of voter ID and voting rights issues.
second, his reporting about public officials on matters of public concern gets a high level of first amendment protection, as it should, under the new york times v sullivan standard, a case involving doctor marty king.
so let's look at his story in mother jones, a rag i like, but which is even further to the left than the times.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/top-republican-official-says-trump-won-wisconsin-because-of-voter-id-law/
Election officials and Democrats in Wisconsin have repeatedly argued that the state’s strict voter ID law allowed Donald Trump to win the state in 2016 by keeping thousands of voters—predominantly in Democratic-leaning areas—from the polls. Now a top Republican official in the state is saying the same thing.
That second sentence is false, defamatory, and was made with reckless disregard for the truth.
The official, Brad, let's call him Brad Schlemiel, was actually saying something completely different, and Berman, a really sharp guy, knows better, which is why this is such a non-story.
There is no molehill here to make a mountain out of.
The article continues:
“We battled to get voter ID on the ballot for the November ’16 election,” Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, who defended the law in court, told conservative radio host Vicki McKenna on April 12. “How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Sen. [Ron] Johnson was going to win reelection or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest and have integrity?”
the argument is that 'reforms' such as voter ID have stopped a form of voter fraud that involve a procedure called vouching, which crooks could use to vote multiple times.
i could be wrong here though. maybe schemeil referred to the 3 million illegal aliens hiding in eu claire and green bay and appleton who would have voted but were deterred by voter ID. so my criticism is off and i'll just let this drop.
first, ari berman is a great reporter and could be nominated for a pulitizer for his ongoing coverage of voter ID and voting rights issues.
second, his reporting about public officials on matters of public concern gets a high level of first amendment protection, as it should, under the new york times v sullivan standard, a case involving doctor marty king.
so let's look at his story in mother jones, a rag i like, but which is even further to the left than the times.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/top-republican-official-says-trump-won-wisconsin-because-of-voter-id-law/
Election officials and Democrats in Wisconsin have repeatedly argued that the state’s strict voter ID law allowed Donald Trump to win the state in 2016 by keeping thousands of voters—predominantly in Democratic-leaning areas—from the polls. Now a top Republican official in the state is saying the same thing.
The official, Brad, let's call him Brad Schlemiel, was actually saying something completely different, and Berman, a really sharp guy, knows better, which is why this is such a non-story.
There is no molehill here to make a mountain out of.
The article continues:
“We battled to get voter ID on the ballot for the November ’16 election,” Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, who defended the law in court, told conservative radio host Vicki McKenna on April 12. “How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Sen. [Ron] Johnson was going to win reelection or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest and have integrity?”
the argument is that 'reforms' such as voter ID have stopped a form of voter fraud that involve a procedure called vouching, which crooks could use to vote multiple times.
i could be wrong here though. maybe schemeil referred to the 3 million illegal aliens hiding in eu claire and green bay and appleton who would have voted but were deterred by voter ID. so my criticism is off and i'll just let this drop.
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