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NBC Taken in By Vote Suppressors in Disgraceful Attempt at Journalism

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November 23, 2018 8:00 p.m.
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Any discussion of voting rights, voter ID laws, voter suppression efforts and related matters requires journalists who have some understanding of the issue. So it was disappointing to see NBC News publish this piece by a reporter who seems to have not even the most passing familiarity with the issues involved. This isn’t just journalism criticism. These pieces, uninformed and tendentious, have real consequences in building political support to take away people’s ability to vote. The NBC story is tied to a scam in which a group of people allegedly went to Los Angeles’ ‘skid row’ district and paid homeless people either money or cigarettes to sign bogus voter registration forms and petitions to place referendums on the California ballot. This part of the story is real, as we can see from this report from a real news organization, The Los Angeles Times.

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