Calumnies: What The Left Is Saying About Wis. Recall Petition Verification Effort

-By Warner Todd Huston

Several different left-wing political sites as well as the Democrat Party of Wisconsin are pulling out all their rhetorical tricks to cast aspersions on the recall petition signatures verification effort in an attempt to damage the legitimacy of the campaign in the minds of Wisconsin’s voters. These organizations have launched a campaign of attacking the messenger by turning against True The Vote and its partners in the verification process.

Representatives of True the Vote are being called “thugs,” and every false claim, unproven allegation, and oft-told tale are being presented to readers as truth quite regardless of any verification of the calumnies.

The biggest false claim, one echoed by three separate left-wing sources, is that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is using True The Vote — called a “bizarre” out-of-state tea party group by Wisconsin Democrat operatives — to do his dirty work. The fact is, though, True The Vote has had no contact at all with Scott Walker’s office and is but following its own self-realized mandate to assist anyone in any state that wishes to get involved in efforts to assure the veracity of the election process. True The Vote has no connection to any officials or political campaigns quite despite the false claims of its opposition.

Another rhetorical trick being used against True The Vote is to say that the organization has been “accused of a variety of voter suppression tactics.” While it is true that many false accusations have been cast at the Houston-based group there have been no indictments, no official charges, and no convictions for any such claimed offenses.

Sure a lot of True The Vote’s enemies have made these accusations, but accusations are easy to throw around. The fact is that there have been no actual cases of “voter suppression” perpetrated by True The Vote. The fact is this is just a mean-spirited whisper campaign aimed at undermining a group that has followed the law and never actually been charged with any violations of election law much less convicted of any violations.

Of course there are many reasons why these left-wing groups and political operatives are desperate to discredit the recall petition signatures verification effort. For one thing a big deal was made of the claim that recall supporters, union operatives, and Democrats had turned in over a million signatures on recall petitions. But the some sources have shot that claim down saying that only somewhere between 850 and 875,000 signatures were actually turned in. This is far short of the one million signatures claimed.

Further, if the verification process eliminates thousands of illicit signatures, their recall effort would be brought into serious question.

Lastly, one has to wonder why anyone would be all up in arms about efforts to make sure an election — or in this case a recall election — is legal, proper and true? Why would anyone be upset that a group wants to be sure that everything is on the up and up? One has to wonder if someone trying to stop a verification effort has something to hide?

Our government was built upon the belief that election results represent the true will of the people; our election processes were always intended to be supported by citizen volunteers. If you are one of the millions of Americans outraged by the corruption of our government, help stop the corruption where it starts – at the polls. Get involved, right here, right now. Let’s work together to true the vote in every election across our nation!
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.


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