November 2, 2004: Rove, Fox News Host Trade Unproven Allegations of Massive Voter Fraud

On the evening of Election Day, Bush political chief Karl Rove appears on Fox News’s Hannity and Colmes to discuss his predictions for the elections and his observations on the day’s voting. After predicting comfortable margins of victory for President Bush, co-host Sean Hannity turns to allegations of voter fraud and efforts by Republicans to monitor votes in Ohio and other states. In Ohio, Rove says, Republicans have poll watchers on hand “in order to challenge people who are fictitious voters or felons, ineligible to vote, or people who have registered multiple times.… And we know particularly in Ohio, but in a lot of the other key battleground states, there has been a lot of voter registration fraud. We don’t want that to turn into voter fraud on Election Day.” He cites the NAACP as an organization engaging in voter fraud, and says one NAACP vote registrar registered 100 illegitimate names and was paid for his work in crack cocaine. Rove gives no evidence for this sensational claim. Hannity cites unverified stories of felons illegally voting in Florida, and Rove adds an unverified story of workers for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) bringing a sheaf of absentee ballots out of a prison in Pennsylvania and “attempting to vote them.” Absentee ballots have to be mailed personally in Pennsylvania and, Rove says, the actions by the ACORN workers to put the prisoners’ ballots into the mail were illegal. [Fox News, 11/2/2004] It is unknown where Rove obtained his information. No news reports of these incidents can be found.