The Lazy ProPublica Hit Piece On Cleta Mitchell Isn’t ‘Reporting’

Framing exposes bad faith. A whole bunch of feelings-words shape and direct the fact-words, pushing them beyond their provable meaning. And then, when the supposed facts do show up, a bunch of them are obviously false.

ProPublica has just published a lazy hit piece on election integrity activist Cleta Mitchell, and any degree of media literacy would allow an alert reader to see through it. The phrase “conspiracy theories” puts in the usual work, making its first appearances in the third and sixth paragraphs. Mitchell is Captain Ahab, crazy and unbalanced: “ProPublica traced her obsession with politics and elections back to its roots.” 1.) She’s trying to keep noncitizens from voting. 2.) What are the psychological roots of her bizarre and obsessive behavior?

Election integrity? How did she become so insane?

Here’s a whole paragraph, and see if you can discern its narrative function:

Much of Mitchell’s influence derives from years of groundwork she’s done to put a foundation under the so-called election-integrity movement, once dismissed as a collection of oddballs and fringe actors.

It’s so subtle, right?

The story repeatedly depicts normal things as strange and esoteric things, as in this description of the SAVE Act: “The bill set a high bar for proving citizenship, demanding that would-be voters produce documents like certified birth certificates and passports that many Americans don’t have.”

I mean, have you even heard of this strange “birth certificate” document? Has anyone ever really seen one? Proving citizenship is like working at the cutting edge of quantum physics, and the deeply arcane processes involved in this complex scholarly maneuver are only understood by a small team of top researchers at Caltech.

But finally, watch with great care when lazy journalists start using the word “unprecedented.” Federal involvement in elections, the story keeps saying, has never happened before. Elections belong to states, and the federal government has never had anything to say about topics like voting and ballots and registration: “Since Trump returned to the White House, Mitchell and her acolytes have been deeply entwined in his unprecedented bid to assert federal control over voting, an effort that has increasingly defined his second term.”

Another example: “As the midterms near, she has become increasingly vocal — in media appearances, online and with her network members — in calling for the president to exert unprecedented powers to sway the vote.”

Lock this language in your head: “… his unprecedented bid to assert federal control over voting.”

Now, let’s explore.

The Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 were Reconstruction measures aimed at political control of the defeated South and the full enfranchisement of freed slaves. Among them, the Second Force Act of 1871 “placed administration of national elections under the control of the federal government and empowered federal judges and United States marshals to supervise local polling places.” You can read the full text of the Second Force Act here, and note that it opens with language about the federal regulation of voter registration.

Then you’ll want to go read Part IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which again focuses entirely on federal intervention in voting and voter registration: “No person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise, shall intimidate, threaten coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten or coerce any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose …”

The Department of Justice has a Civil Rights Division because the Civil Rights Act of 1957 authorized its creation, giving the attorney general the authority to sue over the denial of voting rights. If a state or local official tries to prevent someone from voting, the act says, “the Attorney General may institute for the United States, or in the name of the United States, a civil action or other proper proceeding for preventive relief, including an application for a permanent or temporary injunction, restraining order, or other order.” So: Direct and explicit federal intervention in voting and voter registration.

Every time you see a news story that mentions the Civil Rights Division, remember that it was created, first and foremost, as a federal institution that would intervene in state and local voting practices.

The Civil Rights Act of 1960 expanded the ability of the federal government to enforce federal voting rights laws by requiring state and local election officials to preserve their records for federal inspection. Go read Title III of that act.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 restricted the use of “any literacy test as a qualification for voting in any election,” among several other new measures on voting rights. If you read the law for yourself, Title I deals entirely with voting registration and the right to vote.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 entirely forbade literacy tests as a barrier to voter registration, and “directed the Attorney General to challenge the use of poll taxes in state and local elections.” Though courts struck down portions of the law that imposed direct federal regulation over state and local elections, elements of the act were “readopted and strengthened in 1970, 1975, and 1982.”

The Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984 requires “each State and local government responsible for conducting elections to assure that all polling facilities for Federal elections are accessible to handicapped and elderly voters.”

The federal “motor voter” law of 1993, the National Voter Registration Act, required every state to “establish Federal election voter registration procedures by: (1) application made simultaneously with a driver’s license application; (2) mail; and (3) application in person at a designated Federal, State, or nongovernmental office, or at the applicant’s residential registration site in accordance with State law.”

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 “creates new mandatory minimum standards for states to follow in several key areas of election administration,” with an extensive menu of grants and federal assistance to states. It also created the federal Election Assistance Commission, a real oddity if you believe ProPublica’s claim that federal involvement in elections has never happened before.

Go back to ProPublica’s claim: Donald Trump is making an “unprecedented bid to assert federal control over voting,” something no one has ever done before. Aside from the Second Force Act of 1871, the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the Help America Vote Act of 2002, and a few other federal laws on voting and elections that we’ve left out for the sake of brevity, that’s totally correct. Completely unprecedented!

Journalism has become a circus act, performed mostly by clowns.