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Philly voters denied regular ballot, Fox News obsesses over solitary Black Panther
Fox News (and The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News) less interested in bigger story: hundreds, perhaps thousands, voters denied access to regular ballots.
Philly voters denied regular ballot, Fox News obsesses over solitary Black Panther
Follow on Twitter @DanielDenvir
Philadelphia has become the epicenter of conservative hysteria over bad things Democrats (who happen to be black) allegedly do to win elections: voter fraud! Voter intimidation! An Obama mural at one precinct (a Northeast Philly public school cafeteria) and a flap over Republican voting inspectors being denied access to polls added further fuel to the fire.
But Fox News (and, perplexingly, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News) seemed less interested in the bigger story: hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Philadelphians registered to vote were denied access to regular ballots and told to cast provisional ballots, which are not counted until days after the election--if they are counted at all.
Fox News, like outlets from around the country, descended upon a North Philly polling place at 13th and Fairmount to answer an ostensibly burning question: was the marginal New Black Panther Party causing trouble? "New Black Panthers back at Philly voting site," blared the front page of Fox News' website.
Indeed, Fox News displayed "Voter intimidation in Philly?" as their top headline earlier today.
What reporters found at the North Philly precinct was Jerry Jackson, a Party member and 14th Ward Democratic Committeeman, handing out sample ballots and holding the door for the sometimes elderly African-American voters.
"I don't have no comment," said Jackson, an older man himself. "You ain't going to get a rise out of me." A Philadelphia Police Department civil affairs officer sat in a nearby unmarked car. Nothing, he said, was going on.
14th Ward Democratic vice-chair Willie Brown agreed.
"None of that's going on here," he said, walking outside. He steadied his donut and coffee to shake my hand. "They need to cut it out. That stuff happened in '08 and they keep harping on it...It makes no sense."
The frequent media visits, Brown said, were the only sort of voter intimidation he was worried about. "It causes a problem when people come in to vote and there are people standing there with cameras," he said. "That's why the police are here, to keep these people away."
Conservatives, such as "voter integrity" group True the Vote, have been obsessed with what they describe as the Obama "administration's refusal to prosecute the obvious voter intimidation perpetrated by the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia during the 2008 election."
The incident was not, however, so obviously intimidation. Two members of the fringe organization, Jackson included, briefly stood outside of this North Philadelphia polling place, one carrying a nightstick. But as I reported in 2010, almost no one in the neighborhood had ever heard about the incident--even as it had become nationally infamous inside the right-wing media echo chamber. Republicans never put forth a single person in this overwhelmingly black neighborhood who accused these two obscure activists of "intimidating" them.
Jackson was here in 2010 too. He'll likely be back in 2014. And so, maybe, will Fox News.
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