Fox Hunts Student Voters

[RedEarth]

Juliana Zuccaro and Kelly Kraus thought they were exercising their civic rights and responsibilities on August 31 when, as officers of the Network of Feminist Student Activists at the University of Arizona in Tucson, they helped set up a voter-registration drive on the UA mall. Imagine their astonishment when the local Fox affiliate news team showed up and lit into the young women. "The reporter asked if we knew that we were potentially signing students up to commit felonies," Juliana told me--by registering out-of-state students to vote in Arizona. When Kelly then asserted that Arizona law requires only that those registering be resident in the state twenty-nine days before the election, Natalie Tejeda, the Fox reporter, insisted it was illegal to register students. On the news that night, student voter registration was the crime du jour:


Tejeda: What many don't realize is that legally, students from out of state aren't eligible to vote in Arizona because they're considered temporary residents.

Chris Roads : If they are only here to attend school and their intention is to immediately return to where they came from when school is over then they are not residents of the state of Arizona for voting purposes and they cannot register to vote here.

Tejeda: ...Those caught misrepresenting their residency can face a severe punishment.

Roads: The form in Arizona is an affidavit; it is a felony offense if you are lying on that form.

Tejeda: So how easy is it to get caught? Well, starting this past January all voter applications are cross-checked with the Motor Vehicles Department and Social Security Administration. If they find that you are falsifying your residency you could be prosecuted. At this time we don't know if anybody has yet been indicted, but Roads says one of the easiest things you can do to avoid all that is simply go online or pick up the phone, call your home state's elections office and ask for an absentee ballot.

....

Misguided youth or hardened criminals? They report, you decide

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20041011&s=pollitt

[saigon68]

1. Fox as a tool of the Bush Criminals

Wants to hold down the ability to vote to anyone who isn't goose stepping, in time, with the Bush Criminals

[GainesT1958]

2. She (Kelly) had 'em by the short and curlies...

When it came to quoting Arizona law...they obviously had no real counter to that in their smooth, right-tilting brains!:mad:

FAUX: continuing the timeless tradition of "unfair and imbalanced" reporting!:eyes:

B-)

[OneBlueSky]

3. the notion of "fair and balanced" reporting goes out the window . . .

when a "reporter" inserts herself into the story . . . there's a difference between reporting news and making news, and FAUX has crossed that line . . . not that I'm surprised, mind you . . .

[Cocoa]

4. I'm curious how the Fox reporter got turned on to this story?

I emailed the station and asked if they've looked into how they got snookered (or worse) into spreading GOP misinformation...

[CHIMO]

5. Campus Crackdown: Fox News Attacks Student Voter Registration Effort

AMY GOODMAN: So how did this all change? Because there have been developments since, and there have been clarifying statements from the registrar and Fox has done another report. Sarah Ransom.

SARAH RANSOM: What we did is we looked at the Arizona State residency requirements for voters. It does say you need physical presence in the state and the intent to remain. We thought, what does intent to remain mean, and since the U.S. Supreme Court is authoritative on this issue, we decided to find out what the U.S Supreme Court said, and they say unequivocally in a case Symm v U.S. that a student -- there is no requirement that any student in order to establish that he is a resident of the place where he wishes to vote establish that he intends to remain there permanently or for any particular period of time. Therefore, when you look at the Arizona statute, simply, students need to have physical presence in Pima County and intent to remain for the 29 days before the election.

-------

SARAH RANSOM: Fox was relentless in attempting to portray the students as – for instance, we held a press conference on September 8 and they portrayed the students as defiantly registering to vote and telling the officials to come and get us and we have no limits to our right to vote and then, you know the phone calls kept coming. Pima County Recorder's office issued a retraction, stated that Fox had misinterpreted the law. Then on September 24, they ran another report where they stated that it was all the Pima County Recorder’s office, oh, but, if you are here for 29 days before the election, I guess you can go out and register to vote.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/27/1433241

[Supersedeas]

8. Fox had misinterpreted the law--if only Rather had thought of that alibi

[CHIMO]

11. Not Only Fox

AMY GOODMAN: That was Chris Roads, the registrar. Sarah Ransom, can you explain what it is he said, because there have been developments since then.

SARAH RANSOM: Yes. What I was essentially claiming was that if you are a student, then you are -- basically, if you are from out of state, you are a temporary resident and therefore, you cannot vote or else when you sign the voter registration document, you will be committing fraud because you will be claiming to be a resident of Arizona. I mean, I also volunteered to register students to vote, and I was disturbed. So, I went and checked into this assertion and it took me about 20 minutes to realize that everything that Fox News was saying and what Chris Roads was saying was actually completely contrary to what the state of the law is in the National Presidential Election.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/27/1433241

[DemFromMem]

6. Call Governor Napolitano's Office

I'm sure the Attorney General in Arizona would be interested in going after organizations engaged in voter intimidation. She's been very active in the Kerry campaign and I suspect they would take an interest in this.

[wtmusic]

7. I thought there was a 1979 Supreme Court decision

that said students could consider their residence permanent for the purposes of voting? :shrug:

[tom_paine]

9. All across the nation, Voter Intimidation is being practiced quite

shamelessly and above board.

Of course, with the SCADS of Bushevik Voter Frauds well-established, particularly vacation-home voting, it is unsurprising that elements of the Empire would subscribe to a law enforcement policy (let alone a Propaganda Mouthpiece for THE PARTY like Faux "News") with as much of a double-standard as the Old Soviet Union.

Imperial Party Fraud, is left alone, uninvesigated and, if the truth be told, condoned.

My God, I can still remember when Amerika was free.

This is going on in virtually EVERY STATE.

thes monsters, with their evangelical/facsist notion that they may perform ANY EVIL, so long as it combats the Evil of their Subhuman (though the evangelicals don't go that far in their hearts) Foes

And that is us, and any Free American!

[sweetheart]

10. Fox hunting is illegal

They should be in prison! ;-)

[LastDemStanding]

13. No it's not

Fox and coyote are considered varmints and there is no limit on bagging them in most states.

[sweetheart]

14. Oh dear, can they still hunt with horses and dogs

I'm seeing a solution for tony blair's "hunt" wrinkle... that might
involve an ethnic cleansing of the "hunt" population to places where
"Fox and coyote are considered varmits and there is no limit on
bagging them"

My question then, is what size of bullet does it take to down a
FOX TV. Would a 30-naught 6 with a scope rifle take down a TV
station? Fox huntin is more interesting in the states than in the
UK, as in the states, its television!

PS, mate, welcome to DU.

[eriffle]

12. kinda hard to prove intent

I ran into the same problem with the young repugs here in WV. WV has appears to have similar voting residency regulations as AZ. It's hard to prove that someone won't leave their college town when they graduate. Or, how long they'll be there. I know people who've been in college ten years, or atleast in the college town for ten years. One doesn't have to go very far to see how lienient voter registration residency regulations are, just look at Dick Cheney. He registered in Wyoming at the last minute because he was registered in Texas and since both Bush and Cheney were registered in Texas, they couldn't recieve Texas's electoral vote.

[enki23]

15. so fox is intimidating voters with their lies this time

.

[CO Liberal]

16. Stuff Like This Probably Won't Happen Here in Southern Colorado

The local Fox affiliate, when told they had to start carrying a local newscast, contracted with the local CBS affiliate to produce them. So you see the same people on both stations, with slightly different sets and different graphics.

But the reporting is the same.