TPM digs into the background of the author of a new report on voter ID being promoted by the conservative mediasphere.
Horace Cooper, the author of the paper, told the Daily Caller this week that voter fraud “criminals — more often than not — are Democrats violating the rights of people who tend to be black or senior.”
Cooper may not have any expertise on voter fraud, but he does know a thing or two about falsifying documents. Cooper was indicted in 2009 on five public corruption charges, charged with exchanging political favors for gifts from Jack Abramoff. Cooper allegedly accepted bribes as a staffer to former Majority Leader Dick Armey, as chief of staff for Voice of America and when he worked for the Department of Labor. Cooper later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of falsifying a disclosure report and was sentenced to 36 months of probation. [...]
Cooper authored the paper on behalf of the National Center for Public Policy Research. As TPM reported in April, the NCPPR — which described itself as a “conservative, free-market, non-profit think-tank” — formed a Voter Identification Task Force to continue ALEC’s “excellent work” in “promoting measures to enhance integrity in voting.”
And the conservative noise machine will do its part.
The Ministry of Truth Fox News is currently flogging the report drafted by Cooper, the convicted former protege of Jack Abramoff and Dick Armey.
From Media Matters
Fox News hyped a flawed report from the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) purporting to claim that voter ID laws protect the poor and minorities. But Fox host Steve Doocy failed to acknowledge the conservative group's self-proclaimed mission to continue the "excellent work" of the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council.
On Fox & Friends, Doocy promoted a NCPPR piece, claiming that the report demonstrated that "blacks and the poor are the most common victims of voter fraud, and would be protected by voter ID laws."
That's right. Voter suppression laws are here to protect you.
Also -- pollution has what plants crave. And tax cuts for the rich will trickle down to you. We promise. The Fox is perfectly qualified to guard the hen house.
The good news is it's unlikely this kind of propaganda will hold up in court, especially if the state admits there is no evidence that voter fraud is a problem, as was recently the case in Pennsylvania.
The ACLU and NAACP presented their closing arguments yesterday in their case against the state of Pennsylvania's new voter ID law which could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters. A ruling is expected before the November election.