Just off the AP wire, the real story on Drudge’s bogus <$NoAd$>Philly voter fraud story …
An army of zealous, partisan political operatives descended on polling locations around the state Tuesday, looking for any signs of voting irregularities, and election officials planned to spend the day investigating fraud allegations.
Republican observers in Philadelphia lodged some of the earliest complaints, claiming that voting machines in the city already had thousands of votes recorded on them when the polls opened at 7 a.m.
City election officials and the district attorney rushed to some of the precincts in question, and quickly said the GOP poll watchers had gotten it wrong.
Deputy City Commissioner Ed Schulgen and Cathie Abookire, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Lynne Abraham, said the observers had pulled the numbers from an odometer that records every vote ever cast on the machine in every election – and not the counter that records how many votes will be counted for this election.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” Schulgen said.
Ridiculous or not, rumors of widespread fraud quickly made their way on to the Internet and circulated nationally.
Of course, it didn’t ‘make its way’ onto the Internet. It was planted there as part of the Republicans’ battle plan today. And how surprising that these good souls just happened to misread the machines in the heavily African-American neighborhoods in Philly. Imagine that.
Democracy starts at home.
