Lose your house, lose your vote on The Michigan Messenger

chetlyzarko

The correction above, while it is welcome and should be accepted in some spirit of good will, forces one to doubt the other "legs" of this story. The carelessness of conflating Doug Preisse's statement with foreclosure challenges forces one to question how accurately Melzer quoted Carabelli. The sensational-ness of the headline calls for a high-burden of evidence to make this a valuable story - if that burden had been met, the story could have been valuable. As is, we're left with a he-said, she-said battle.

First, this whole "Republicans are trying to intimidate black or poor voters" is part of a 30-year old "script" we hear in every election. Does that mean the author, Ms. Melzer, is part of a "conspiracy"? No, absolutely not. She's investigating leads based on a script she's been conditioned to accept. Does it mean that Republicans are completely guiltless throughout time and space? No, certainly there have been "incidents" where overactive individual partisans thought they were helping the cause and probably became too zealous (I'd note that those incidents occur on the left too, with different types of "voter fraud," as the historically-infamous political machines of Chicago, LBJ, and even here in Detroit often prove). Here, we know part of Ms. Melzer's "script" came from the July 6 Columbus Dispatch, which she misquotes. That's a human error, as would be asking "leading questions" (Carabelli in his Beckman interview claims), so Carabelli's story that he didn't say it the way Melzer said he did is plausible. I have a hard time believing Melzer would "fabricate" the quote out of whole cloth a la Jayson Blair, but its not a hard step to take to believe that she'd ask a leading question, get an ambiguous answer, and take the notes down wrong in some way.

Ms. Melzer interviewed me twice on this subject while I was in Arizona (by phone) during the course of this story, trying to find out if I knew of some "foreclosure list". I told her I was unaware of such a list, although I wasn't in "the loop" for such things, I do deal with voter information regularly and that it struck me as unlikely, and frankly not very valuable if it was the plan, that Republicans would use foreclosure lists. Not valuable because such lists aren't accurate as to whether the voter is in the home, or even if not in the home legally entitled to vote (a recent foreclosure would not necessarily change the residence as Hebert points out). We agreed that "returned mail" would be more valuable and easier to list, although I don't know that the Party uses it since I don't the Republican Party. I spoke of Democrat list broker Mark Grebner, and some of the tricks he's (and accurate points) he's been involved with, and suggested that both sides were likely to use sophisticated mail lists for their purposes in challenges (indeed, Grebner actively sought to disenfranchise petition signers in 2006's Proposal 2, and Drolet's 2008 Dillon recall (on the basis of residency)). She asked if an inefficient tactic might be used just to delay voters and decrease turnout - I disagreed because deploying such a tactic is time and resource consuming to have any meaningful numerical effect, and that it was unlikely to be a good way to change an election outcome (traditional message is just plain more efficient), if it didn't in fact backfire. I told Melzer my experience with the relevant players lead me to disbelieve the foreclosure idea would be used as a tactic. In a second interview, she asked why Carabelli would lie and retract his quote - I told her at that early time (there was no lawsuit by the DNC and the story just broke) I didn't necessarily believe anyone was lying, that I couldn't speak for Carabelli, and that it was possible there was a mis-communication and that she should place herself in the shoes of her interviewee. This perspective was not quoted in the article, and while I understand that to be within reasonable editorial discretion particularly given the length of the article as is, it might have given the article some perspective.

Some stories are so good they penetrate through the "script". There's a "smoking gun," or chain of logic that is impenetrable. Here, you have one quote stretched to the conclusion with one of the supporting background quotes being retracted. This story doesn't have either, unless there is some future break that breaks the log-jam of "he-said, she said." Certainly, if proven true this story would be important, but the more sensational the truth, the higher the burden in proving it. If this story proved its case, I'd stand behind the author in a bi-partisan way, but I just don't see it. The truth is likely somewhere in between - I suspect Carabelli answered a question about foreclosures, and it was either leading and he wasn't precise or the answer misunderstood or notated. I doubt Melzer intended to fabricate a quote, but to make this one stick she's needs more.

Rayne1

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Lose your house, lose your vote

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