I tuned out last night’s debate — my wife watched it, but I put on my headphones and listened to some industrial rock to drown out the drone. I knew I’d be able to get the highlights the next day.
And I did! Apparently Romney was asked about his role in hiring women, and he claimed to have worked hard to bring more women into leadership positions.
ROMNEY: Thank you. An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.
And I — and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are — are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?"
And — and so we — we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women’s groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.
Nice story. Good for him. Except that it isn’t true.
What actually happened was that in 2002 — prior to the election, not even knowing yet whether it would be a Republican or Democratic administration — a bipartisan group of women in Massachusetts formed MassGAP to address the problem of few women in senior leadership positions in state government. There were more than 40 organizations involved with the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus (also bipartisan) as the lead sponsor.
They did the research and put together the binder full of women qualified for all the different cabinet positions, agency heads, and authorities and commissions. They presented this binder to Governor Romney when he was elected.
…
I will write more about this later, but for tonight let me just make a few quick additional points. First of all, according to MassGAP and MWPC, Romney did appoint 14 women out of his first 33 senior-level appointments, which is a reasonably impressive 42 percent. However, as I have reported before, those were almost all to head departments and agencies that he didn’t care about — and in some cases, that he quite specifically wanted to not really do anything. None of the senior positions Romney cared about — budget, business development, etc. — went to women.
Secondly, a UMass-Boston study found that the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 29.7% in July 2004, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006. (It then began rapidly rising when Deval Patrick took office.)
Third, note that in Romney’s story as he tells it, this man who had led and consulted for businesses for 25 years didn’t know any qualified women, or know where to find any qualified women. So what does that say?
The man is great big smilin’ bag of lies, isn’t he?
You don’t say?
Even if 100% true, the question wasn’t on hiring woman, it was on paying them fairly.
Obama passed the Lily Ledbetter law helping woman to get fair pay. Let’s say it applies to about 130,000,000 women plus or minus.
Romney hired 14.
Gee, and Obama put a woman in #4 position in line of succession in case of his untimely death? *walks away whistling*
Rmoney just knows how dangerous women are. Especially the unmarried ones. Next thing you know, AK47 wielding mobs roam the streets.
Not much hash has been made about this specifically so far as I can tell, but note the clear implication here – in the world according to Mitt Romney, women do not have the qualifications to compete with men on an even footing in the normal process. They require Uncle Mitt to intervene on their behalf, magnanimously giving them jobs that they otherwise would not be able to compete with men for, as a special favor.
It’s a red-meat stealth catch-phrase for the rabid anti-affirmative action crowd.
What’s the problem? He’ll just shake his Etch-A-Sketch and start all over again. Most Americans won’t remember by tomorrow morning.
It’s more likely bullshitting than lying. He doesn’t care what the truth is.
Or perhaps he truly believes this is how it happened. I don’t particularly trust him to be able to tell truth from fiction.
OMG!!!!1!
A politician lied?
Say it ain’t so.
In a forum comment about this, the commenter said that (according to his wife), Romney lost the women’s vote right there. Even it it were true, it would have been terribly patronizing.
Not only that, when asked about assault rifles and gun violence on U.S. streets, his main points were (1) He didn’t want to pass any legislation against guns and (2) If people would just get married before having children, they’d be brought up in nice, two-parent families that would “bring them in the American system.” I guess single parents cause gun violence? (Transcript)
Note that he made specific mention of needing “moms and dads” working together to raise the kids.
Maybe SSM will lead to our offspring getting AK-47s. Will the gun show up when I go in for artificial insemination or will it be delivered later?
As I wrote on Crommunist’s blog, the most insulting isn’t the binder part, not even that he lied. It’s the part when he says his plan for women was to grow the economy, so that there’ll be so many jobs that bosses will end up hiring women. Because women ask for all this time off, vacation and time to cook dinner and do the laundry. I can’t wait to be hired because all the real capable male employees are already taken.
noone @ 8
In my experience, politicians don’t often lie. Not in the sense of making empirical statements that assert as fact something that is not a fact. Opinions, promises that they turn out to be unable to keep, spin — you hear all that. Romney is one of the few politicians of any ideological stripe I’ve seen lie outright.
For that matter, he’s one of the few I’ve seen say “I believe X” to people who (should) know damn well he believes not-X. I’ve seen politicians say “I believe X” when it’s a reasonable assumption that they believe not-X, or when believing X puts them in a tiny minority on their side of the aisle. I’ve even seen politicians say “I believe X” while, let’s say, assiduously avoiding acting on that belief. I wouldn’t call that lying. Romney, again, just lies.
I have to agree that R-Money is probably the most mendacious Pres. candidate we’ve had since Tricky Dick. It makes me wonder if all those years of deflecting questions about magic underwear might not have rewired the circuits in his brain… Or it could be that he is just a privileged, middle-aged, rich white guy who will say anything to preserve the position of priveleged, middle-aged, rich white guys.
Romney is not so much a liar as a person who will say or do anything to get elected, even if it means he has contradicted himself multiple times even on a daily basis. It’s impossible to mischaraterize a person who has no position about anything except hollowing out everything that stands in his way to increase his personal wealth.
The fact that a person like Romney could be a serious candidate in the US is a total fucking joke, and the joke is on us. The fact that the media is so degenerate that they prefer debates to be little more than MMA like theatrics rather than about actual issues. Romney’s natural constituency should be the 1%, plus perhaps the 30% evangelical zealots if our nation was sane. But those days are long gone -we live in a nation of easily manipulated moronsm strings pulled by the corporatists.
The idea that basically a polished up Gordon Gekko can essentially say after all we’ve been through
-I’m a business man
-I’ll massively cut taxes and not grow the deficit
-I’ll reduce the deficit
-this will result in millions of jobs
-gutting the social safety net will not be a problem through
the magic of the free market
-well go to war as soon as Bebe gives the word
Haven’t we heard this a few times before. It never ceases to amaze me how people fall for this stuff over and over again.
And he does it so blatantly. So openly and brazenly. While looking you straight in the fucking eye.
And the right wing nut jobs don’t even care. They’re so thoroughly ensconced within their own alternate reality, that they deny that they’re even lies.
But what probably blows my mind the most, is that there are so many people who will vote against their own best interests. They’re so pissed that a black man is president that they’ll vote for a man who will screw them back into the stone age while protecting end expanding his cronies’ fortunes.
If Romney is elected, kiss the USA as we know it goodbye. We’ll be well on our way to a third world theocracy by the end of his first term.
Is it a surprise that Romney is telling porkies? I’ve read (here) that the man is a bishop or something in the mormon church. That position would require excellent lying skills, as it’s all lies. He’s been selling the mormon nonsense for a long time and has honed his liar skills to a fine point. Why aren’t the Americans making more of this mans dishonesty?
Time to direct the SuperPACs to really go negative and inform the voters on Mormonism? Polls are close, plus the states where they’ll steal the vote.. could be time for a real game change, eh?
When I heard Romney tell that anecdote I thought it sounded like he was advocating affirmative action hiring of women.
Romney was a Stake President. He had half a dozen or so Bishops reporting to him. That takes a lot of skilled lying, so expect nothing less.
And in breaking news…General Franco is still dead…
I think Romney doesn’t actually believe in anything as much as he just wants to be President because.
And I think he doesn’t really want to be President as much as he wants to be a former President because former President’s can make a ridiculous amount of money for just showing up.
I wonder if someone will take a clip of Romney saying he is pro-choice from his Massachusetts days and air it in, say Virginia in an attempt to drive down Republican turnout there. Air it a bunch in the last handful of days before the election and see what happens.
Mitt Romneys insincerity resonates with the insincere.
Romney has massive cognitive dissonance, I am sure, what with his Mormonism, conservatism, wealth, privilege, maleness and all. The same can be said for many of his supporters.
When Romney tells a lie, he either believes it while he is saying it, and never processes it further, or he believes that telling it is somehow the right thing to do, and therefore not a lie. And he sincerely believes that his opponents are lying all the time, or they wouldn’t be opposing him.
He thinks it is his right and his job to tell other people what to think and to do, and, sadly, a lot of people want to be told by a person just like him. They don’t process what he says, other than to make it true in their heads, however much cognitive dissonance it takes.
The trick and trouble with telling people what to think and do, is that it pretty much requires lies and wrongness. Mitt can’t tell people the truth, because the truth is out there for them to work out without him. He can’t tell people to do what is right and natural, because they already have to do that to get along. He has to dish out the craziness, or he’d have nothing to say.
(It’s late, so I’m not writing well …)
When liberals get past the point of exclaiming once “OH NO, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT ROMNEY LIED!!!!” and realize the conservatives are too irrational to care, we will finally have liberals that will do something about it.
What should liberals do? Basically drown out anything that conservatives say by refuting lies ad nauseum instead of “rising above it and not stooping to their level.” Typically this means mentioning it once on TV, and then voting to renew the Patriot Act.
Liberals need a lot more hawkish generals than dovish, pussy, diplomats. In other words, disallow anything from conservatives till they acknowledge Romney’s lies. No dialog, no compromise, no “doing what’s right for the country even if it means compromising a little on principles”
I admire PZ for this attitude. If only more liberals that he votes for had it.
And the Billy Graham website took down all their anti-Mormon stuff. Focus on the Family and the AFA have taken theirs down too.
But seriously, Romney’s answer could not have been more patronizing. “The economy will become insanely great that even inferior women who wanna both have careers and do that other stuff that’s really woman stuff might actually have the ability to negotiate to have that woman stuff accommodated. I suppose that men (can you cay pussy whipped?) who care about that woman stuff too might have a fe bargaining chips too.”
So patronizing, even though it is partly true.
I am so happy this question went to Romney first. Gave Romney a chance to fuck it up and Obama a chance to talk about his strong record and also bring up Planned Parenthood and contraception coverage.
BTW, Planned Parenthood also helps many male patients. Yep; Dudes go to PP too. Back when there was the whole “come out about your HPV day” a couple years ago I posted my story about how PP helped me deal with a couple of HPV lesions when I did not have insurance. They were great. They even handed me a little chart with male and female external genitals from different angles with instructions in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese to put little X’s where the lesions were. This totally made the exam and treatment less embarrassing. Got an acid burn treatment in both spots and good advice to keep the symptoms from returning.
Seriously people, get your kids an HPV vax. I think I am at an age where I am unlikely to be a risk to most potential partners as they are probably already HPV+, but let’s not have another generation face these same risks. WTF? We always wanted a cure for cancer, and part of that dream has come true. We have a vaccine against a few types of cancer. Get it. Let science triumph. HPV is way vulnerable to herd immunity. Vax the majority of the girls and at least part of the boys, and we’ve got this one beat. And if the fundie girls won’t get vaxed, every non-fundie boy vaxed counts for more. We can win this war. Even someone as dumbass as Rick Perry totally endorsed the HPV vax, one of the first governors to do so. Of course, he backed down after the fundies piled on him, but if even Perry can figure out that this it is good, it’s got to be good.
And yet for all of Romney’s lies, PolitiFact still had to mumble and drag their heels into a bunch of false balance.
This is my favourite. Obama got the quote wrong, therefore false, pay no mind to the Kris Kobach behind the curtain.
Shocked, gambling, etc.
Yes. And the smiling liars are the most frightening of all.
And yet for all of Romney’s lies, PolitiFact still had to mumble and drag their heels into a bunch of false balance.
I’m betting factcheck.org did the exact same thing.
it appears inevitable that the truth is always for sale.
As a resident and citizen of the Great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I do wish Willard would stop referring to MA as “his” state. He was a legal resident of Utah when he ran for governor (at least according to his state tax documents).
I am convinced that Willard is a sociopath. I also think Willard thinks he is running for Emperor rather than for president.
I doubt it. There is very little skill in lying when you are a leader in an authoritarian structure; if anyone below your station accuses you of lying you just punish them for being disobedient or insist that the whistleblower is actually the liar. Obedience is one of the main virtues of the church.
And so it is in the election. ROmney isn’t a skilled liar at all. He lies on video on a daily basis hoping no one will notice or care. He lies about things that are easily verified as being lies within minutes of being said.
Mitt has gotten the second annointing in the church. it is a ceremony that tells him that he has done so well that he gets a spot in heaven, no matter what else he does in life. It is a license to behave like a sociopath, even if he was not one to begin with. Most mormons aren’t aware of the ceremony because only millionaire royalty like the romneys ever have it offered to them by the church.
Rachel Maddow does an excellent expose of the Willard Rmoney modus Operandi on her show of 17 Oct:
1) refuse to be pinned down on basic policy issues (do you support the Lilly ledbetter act? the campaign was supposed to “get back to you on that” six months ago *crickets*. “Can you detail what spending cuts you would make in order to fund a Trillion dollars in tax cuts? *crickets*)
2) say x to audience A and say not-x to audience B (In private”I don’t care about the 47%, in the debate, “I care about 100% of the Amrican people”)
3) Say one thing on one date and time then say the exact opposite at another date and time (Healthcare, TARP, Auto Bailout, Stimulus)
4) say something on the record, then “correct” the statement to a weasly or diametrically opposed position later (Mitt was against lilly ledbetter. Correction he wasn’t against the lilly ledbetter Act, he never weighed in on it.)
Any candidate who will hold diametrically opposite positions, refuse to answer what his position is, change his position from one minute to the next and intentionally hide any actual position he may actually have is dangerous. And yet the race is too close to call and conservatives will buy this pig in a poke.
I am amazed that my conservative friends refuse to see or acknowledge this, all they appear to see is “Not Obama”, “tax cuts (for the rich, like me)” and “cut government spending (on everyone less rich than me)”.
Maddow
If they only reported when Romney didn’t lie, we’d never hear his name.
I fail to see how that would be a bad thing :)
That said, when I see a debate with Romney, is unfolds something like this when ever the talk is about his tax plan, or tax returns:
Following up on what Markita Lynda (comment 10) said re the question about assault rifles and gun violence on U.S. streets:
He also said that automatic guns were illegal in the US. My jaw dropped when I heard that because it is so obviously not true. I’m sure gun advocates were even struck by that comment. Anyways, FWIW, here’s the fact check by CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/17/politics/fact-check-guns/index.html
It has been unlawful since 1934 (The National Firearms Act) for civilians to own machine guns without special permission from the U.S. Treasury Department. Machine guns are subject to a $200 tax every time their ownership changes from one federally registered owner to another, and each new weapon is subject to a manufacturing tax when it is made, and it must be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in its National Firearms Registry.
To become a registered owner, a complete FBI background investigation is conducted, checking for any criminal history or tendencies toward violence, and an application must be submitted to the ATF including two sets of fingerprints, a recent photo, a sworn affidavit that transfer of the NFA firearm is of “reasonable necessity,” and that sale to and possession of the weapon by the applicant “would be consistent with public safety.” The application form also requires the signature of a chief law enforcement officer with jurisdiction in the applicant’s residence.
Since the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of May 19, 1986, ownership of newly manufactured machine guns has been prohibited to civilians. Machine guns which were manufactured prior to the Act’s passage are regulated under the National Firearms Act, but those manufactured after the ban cannot ordinarily be sold to or owned by civilians.
Full on machine guns are a plaything for the rich. With a federally capped supply of registered pre-86 machine guns, it is a market ripe for speculation and has become like the fine art market: a way for extremely rich to hide their money in inflation resistant vehicles. If we stopped the ban on manufacturing for the civilian market, we could turn machine guns from things rich people use to hide their money into depreciating items that rich people blow their money on. Much more economically stimulating. Leave all the background checks and taxes and machine guns would be treated like suppressors are now.
This comment is a partial cross-post from the “Around FtB” thread:
On the issue of Romney’s “binders full of women” bit, he included in that mini-lecture this phrase, “If we’re going to have women in the work force …” [emphasis added by yours truly]
“If,” fucking “if”? Holy mormon crap, Romney. You expose your id every time you open your mouth. And we don’t want to see that anymore. Keep that thing under wraps.
Here’s the relevant “If” context: “I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school….”
And if you’re going to be elected Governor of Massachusetts you have to pledge to various women’s groups that will hire women to fill top spots in your administration. But, not to worry. After you’ve been in office for awhile, you can let the number of women employees dwindle down to a more comfortable 25%.
Romney’s record of hiring women looks more like expediency and not like principled committment to equality when you look at his record at Bain Capital. No women, none, were partners at Bain during Romney’s tenure. No women partners in the 1980s or 1990s.
So, when not forced to hire women for political reasons, Romney hires or recruits how many? Zero.
“I got everybody in my state insured,” Romney said in an interview three weeks ago. “One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don’t think there’s anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record.”
Romneycare makes use of federal funds for the subsidies it provides to low-income people, and it relies on an individual mandate that puts everyone, young, old, healthy, ailing — all of them are in the same insurance pool. That’s the only way to keep the insurance premiums low.
Romney promises deep cuts to Medicaid, repeal of Obamacare, and new laws that will allow people to buy insurance across state lines. In other words, he’s is going to wreck the foundations of Romneycare. He will kill Romneycare and Obamacare at the same time.
And he’ll insure just one thing, more profit for insurance companies.
Lots of romneyesque CEOs have been caught telling their
serfsworkers how to vote. And now Romney himself has been caught encouraging CEOs to tell their workers to vote for him.Hey, if you’ve lost the votes of most women, you have to get ’em where you can.
Friendly encouragementThreats from employers should work. Yeah, let’s do that.Video and text at the link.
Excerpt:
A relevant question: which industrial rock?
How can anyone vote for a man who has, on the record, expressed diametrically opposite positions on:
Lobbyists,
fiscal stimulus,
abortion,
Reagan,
health care,
social security,
immigration/dream Act,
climate change,
tax pledge,
gun control,
TARP,
auto bailout,
climate change,
eliminating the dept. of education,
no child left behind Act?
(Non-exhaustive list)
Here it is on tape.
Q.E.D., I agree, and when thinking of all that, wasn’t it the GOP that made such a big deal out of Kerry making just one “flip-flop”?
How many have Romney made so far?
When a Democrat does it, it is flip-flopping, wishy-washy lack of conviction and ideological inconsistency that should mean that no-one should dare to vote for such a spineless, principleless, undecided mess of a man. When a Republican does it, it is nuance. Or it is a case of those filthy Democrats bringing up stuff from the past that just doesn’t matter anymore and how they dare they . It’s fundamental attribution bias, brought up from the individual all the way up to the level of the in-group.
Romney lies so much that he has only one defense left, “I’m rubber, you’re glue.” That is, his campaign’s strategy is to claim that President Obama tells lies, nothing but lies.
Rachel Maddow explored the source of Romney’s lies last night:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#49456831
This video features the news that Romney has added Jerome Corsi of World
NetNut Daily to his ride-on-my-plane entourage. Yes, that’s right, Jerome Corsi, seller of “Where’s the Real Birth Certificate” yard signs, writer of the book Where’s the Birth Certificate (now 78 cents on Amazon), and purveyor of the new conspiracy theory that President Obama is secretly gay. Make that: secretly gay and secretly gay married and secretly a murderer of a bunch of his gay spouses.This is where Romney gets information, support, and campaign plane companionship.
We have a network of super computers dedicated to making that calculation.
Lynna, have they even built one capable of that?
I mean, real time simulations of nuclear blasts is peanuts in comparison.
We are breaking new technological ground. This is the only scientific advance for which Romney will get partial credit (he was the spur after all). After that, the MittBot itself will get elected, kill funding for scientific research, and, finding himself bereft of replacement parts, slowly rust on the beltway.
That’s Ann Romney, speaking on The View this morning.
Yes, she equated serving as a mormon missionary to serving in the military. That should bring all of our veterans over to Mitt’s side.
Link.</a
Video also available at the link.
You know if Military were the same as Missionary Romney wouldn’t have extended his mission to avoid Nam
Bill Clinton does some more arithmetic:
Video available at the link. Presentation is half the message here. Watch Clinton deliver this math lesson.
Romney definitely got special treatment. The LDS Church was given only so many deferments to hand out to missionaries. They handed them out to mormon aristocracy first. So Mitt got one. And then he got another one when the first one expired.
President Obama better bring his boxing gloves to the next debate. Romney’s son, Tagg, wants to punch Obama.
Hey, Tagg, I don’t have any Secret Service protection. Your dad is a serial, confident liar. Let me count the ways. I stand ready to be punched.
Mitt served his “mission” time in France, as assistant to the national chief of missions. He was not going door to door, and most emphatically not living in a jungle hut in a third world country like some missionaries. (Not that any Mormon missionary has it as bad as a soldier in Viet Nam did.)
RollingStone on Romney’s five nuttiest debate moments:
These moments include Romney’s claim that single moms cause gun violence.
Then there was the claim that Bain Capital was a “small business.” I’ve noticed a lot of this in both Romney’s and Ryan’s speeches lately. It’s as if they’ve found a new magic incantation, “Small business, small business, small business is my business.”
The Pell Grant “lying in your face” moment is also in the article.
Gawker’s take on Mitt Romney’s advice to bosses on how to order their wage slaves around:
In article titled Blue States are from Scandinavia, Red States are from Guatemala Jonathan Cohn take a philosophical look at the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. And after the overview, Cohn gets down into the weeds, into the details, to back up his analysis.
Lynna
It doesn’t really bother me that Tagg wants to punch Obama. I’ve often felt like punching politicians, and the younger Romney is probably still convinced that his father is being perfectly truthful.
Now, if he actually does jump up and try to punch Obama…actually, I’d pay money to see that happen.
There seems to be a certain teach-the-controversy attitude, as they demonstrated at least as far back as the convention, when R/R spoke dismissively about “fact-checkers.” I think they believe (or find it beneficial to act as though they believe) that “truth” is just something else people have opinions about, and no one’s opinions are more valid than anyone else’s.
So in this view, for example, Crowley was being partisan when she endorsed Obama’s truth over Romney’s at the debate.
And moreover, in this view, science is anti-freedom, simply declaring things not to be true and acting like that’s somehow more correct than someone’s belief that those things are true.
Hold on Hershele,
You’re piling blasphemy on top of heresy. You are describing Volvo driving, latte-drinking, elitist, godless, liberal, un-Amerikun “relativists”. Theothuglicans know what is TRUE about God, America, Freedom and being a real Amerikun.
Rmoney believes in magic underwear and that he will rule over a planet after death. Theothuglicans have special ways of knowing so all your sciency stuff is just a liberal “materialist” view of a godless world but Theothuglicans know better because god told them so.
I think this is worse than the binders quote. If (someone already criticized him on the if part) we have women in the workforce, they need to be let home early to cook & play with the kids….??? Because that’s the special privilege & responsibility of being a working mom? Please cue the 1950’s music & pan camera to white picket fence!
Does everyone else on his campaign have flexible schedules? And does “flexible schedule” indicate to the “wider economy” that women should be expected to work less & go home early because they “need” extra family time that men don’t. Lovely economy this moron has in mind.
(Hint: I was raised by my stay-at-home Dad; Mom always worked long hours; and I’d consider starvation a healthy alternative to some of my mom’s cooking)
Me too. I’d like to see the Secret Service take him down. Now that would be entertaining.
People are calling the debate a “fight” or a “brawl” already. Let’s make it one.
The idea that Romney raised five sons to emulate his inability to vet his sources, to distinguish bullshit from facts, and to read for comprehension really irritates me.
Video clip of the type of “binders full of women” that were kept by the heads of mormon polygamous colonies. Clip is from “Big Love” but is based on real books kept by the likes of Warren Jeffs.
http://jezebel.com/5952656/why-binders-full-of-women-was-such-a-curious-thing-for-a-mormon-to-say
Maybe Romney is not lying. Maybe he has Romnesia.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/19/14560394-i-think-its-called-romnesia
Video and text at the link.
Cross-posted from the [Lounge]:
Republican nasty tricks when it comes to discouraging or misinforming voters are multiplying.
Ethics fail.