NPR Uncritically Acts As Stenographer to Florida Democrats' Complaints of Voter 'Purge'

May 31st, 2012 3:00 PM

NPR's Greg Allen has dutifully joined others in the liberal media in presenting the liberal Democratic spin on Florida's efforts to remove noncitizens from its voter rolls as a heavy-handed "purge." As I noted yesterday, the so-called "purge" has amounted to just 0.02 percent of the state's voters being called to address discrepancies in their voter registration that suggest they are noncitizens.

Predictably, Allen seized on the Democrats' poster veteran, Bill Internicola, a 91-year-old Bronze Star recipient who was born in the Bronx and is, of course, a natural-born citizen. But of course Allen failed to inform listeners of NPR's Morning Edition that Internicola's citizen status was questioned by state officials perhaps because of a date-of-birth discrepancy between his voter registration and his driver's license. Noted the Miami Herald:

Internicola admitted to one discrepancy in records. He says he was born in 1921, though he said his drivers’ license indicates 1919. The reason: in his youth he wanted to start driving early so “I bent the truth a little bit.”

Such a discrepancy should most certainly have raised red flags for government officials, and getting the matter reconciled as Mr. Internicola did serves the interests of preserving his right to vote while safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process.

But it sure as heck cuts against a convenient liberal Democratic narrative, that the Republican governor of Florida is hard at work trying to disenfranchise Democrats to secure the state for Romney.