Four years ago Fox News helped turn ACORN into a dirty word among conservatives by leading an often-hysterical right-wing crusade against the community activist group, charging it time and again with "voter fraud" on behalf of candidate Obama. In order to bolster its flimsy "voter fraud" attacks, the network repeatedly harped on reports that ACORN canvassers had submitted questionable voter registration forms. Yet this week Fox has shown little interest in covering the unfolding story out of Florida, where the state's Republican Party has cut ties with a consulting firm accused of handing in more than 100 dubious voter registration forms. From Tuesday night's Palm Beach Post: In an interview with blogger Brad Friedman, Bucher described the "similarities in the signatures and certain characteristics in the applications that were very disturbing" on registration applications collected by the firm. The "disturbing" defects on the forms included addresses of existing registered voters changed to commercial buildings or addresses and, "in some places, they were changing political parties." Yesterday, Michael Isikoff reported that the registration troubles had spread: And Thursday afternoon, Republicans in Colorado also pulled the plug on the voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, run by veteran GOP consultant Nathan Sproul. The allegations lodged against Sproul's company are similar to the ones ACORN faced in 2008; workers submitted voter registration forms that contained dubious information. In `08, that was enough to light a short fuse on Fox News and within the right-wing media, as players rushed in to condemn the independent ACORN group as a corrupt and a criminal extension of the Obama campaign. (In 2009, a majority of Republicans believed ACORN had stolen the election for Obama.) Note that in the unfolding Florida story, the firm in question was paid directly by the Republican Party and is accused of ACORN-like activities. But on Fox News, it's crickets. Read more: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/09/28/why-isnt-fox-news-covering-florida-voter-fraud/190195
