Speaking of keeping people from the polls (see "Pulling out the Stops" below).... Democracy Now!, broadcasting live from Tucson, Arizona, yesterday, reported on a local scandal involving young feminists and Fox News. In late August members of the Network of Feminist Student Activists at the University of Arizona were conducting a voter registration drive on campus when a Fox ("Fair and Balanced") News van rolled up and a reporter informed the registrars that they might be encouraging students to commit felonies.

It seems there was some serious confusion (or subterfuge) on Fox's part--students are allowed to register and vote in their school communities. Natalie Tejeda, the Fox reporter, had insisted to the bewildered feminists, however, that it was illegal to register students. Since the confrontation, lawyers have been consulted and the student activists confirmed that they (and the students they were registering) were well within their rights, but Fox failed to broadcast a clarification of the law or retract their insinuations that student voters were committing a crime. (Read Katha Pollitt's take on the situation.)

This episode brings to the forefront the differences between the two traditional movements in voting-rights law: voter access (as exemplified by the Voting Rights Act and championed by Dems) and voting integrity (favored by Repubs). Jeffrey Toobin recently published a very interesting piece in The New Yorker about the future of the Voting Rights Act under John Ashcroft's Justice Department. It's scary stuff--much much scarier even than the goons rolling around in Fox News vans.