Conservatives Still Searching For Voter Fraud
Instapundit Edition

Taking time out from their on-going search for Iraqi WMDs, our friends across the aisle are now frantically searching for evidence of significant voter fraud in America. The myth of Democratic voter fraud is beloved on the right, and they are, as usual, loathe to abandon it merely because it's false.

As you know, I've mostly been staying away from the righty sites of late because their irrationality is just pushing me even farther toward Obama. So, in order to help maintain the tattered remains of my objectivity, I'm just staying away.

But I thought I'd just peek in at Insty's digs to see what's up. Right off the bat, there's this:

BUT VOTER FRAUD IS A MYTH: A newspaper investigation finds more than 30,000 felons who should have been stripped of their right to vote are still registered in Florida.

Here's the info he links to, in its entirety:

A newspaper investigation finds more than 30,000 felons who should have been stripped of their right to vote are still registered in Florida.

The Sun Sentinel discovered that at least 4,900 felons turned out in past elections and another 5,600 are still in prison.

Of the felons who are registered, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning tells the newspaper that his staff has failed to remove thousands of ineligible felons because of a shortage of workers and so many new voter registrations.

He says elections workers are now reviewing the voting records but would not say how long the investigation will take.

Now, I'm no lawyer, but I find it rather hard to believe that it counts as voter fraud if the state of Florida is failing to purge its voter rolls. Bu it might. Perhaps it counts as voter fraud if a person votes when he isn't supposed to, even if the government has failed to purge him, and his name remains on the rolls. In that case, it's certainly nothing like the paradigm of voter fraud that conservatives have in mind, and nothing like what they've been trying to convince us exists. Unless they think that the Republican Secretary of State Kurt Browning, serving under Republican Governor Charlie Christ, is intentionally running a scam for the Democrats.

So, again you see why I've been avoiding the rightosphere. This kind of bullshit is so irritating it would drive any sane person leftward. Shrieky, frothy, wild-eyed claims about widespread voter fraud...but no actual evidence of it. Instead, evidence of incompetence or underfunding, tarted up and pressed into service as evidence. Lipstick on a pig. Or more like: a pit-bull mask on a pig.

This has gone from sad to pathetic to downright damn infuriating.

Reynolds knows better than this, of course. But, like the denizens of the Corner--and so many other conservatives--his dander is up, so objectivity is out the window. I can't believe he'd make the same mistake here if the tables were turned.