Another embarrassing juxtaposition for PolitiFact

Oy vey.

A little over two weeks ago, I panned a PolitiFact Florida fact check that found "Mostly False" the claim that one can register to vote without proving citizenship.

Just now I stumbled over a parallel fact check from PolitiFact Wisconsin.  Apparently state Rep. Donna Seidel claimed that a new Republican-backed law would allow persons without firearms training to receive a state permit to carry a concealed weapon.

In the Florida case, a person registering to vote needs to sign an affidavit affirming possession of legal citizenship status.  That's it.  That's the proof requirement unless one registers through the "motor voter" program.

In Wisconsin, the law continues to require firearm training but does not specify the amount of training required.  Here's how PolitiFact Wisconsin summarized it:

States typically do one or more of the following: certify the training organization, their instructors or their courses; mandate specific topics for training; set a minimum number of hours; require the instructor to sign the training certificate.

Wisconsin now requires none of those.

The finding?  They ruled Seidel's statement "True" without reservation.  The justification for the ruling provides an amazing comparison with the reasoning applied by PolitiFact Florida with respect to voter registration:

PolitiFact Wisconsin:

The law is still on the books requiring an instructor-led training course, but it’s hard to prove that someone skipped it. So the door is open to "untrained" individuals getting a permit.

PolitiFact Florida:

Individual supervisors of elections do have the ability to determine if an applicant is an U.S. citizen, Cate said, though it would be difficult for a supervisor to ascertain citizenship.

In the former case the difficulty of proving the lack of qualification serves as a key point supporting the Democrat's statement.  In the latter case, the difficulty of proving the citizenship of a registered voter is apparently completely ignored as a reason contributing to the truth of the claim.

If a Wisconsin Democrat raises concerns about untrained persons carrying firearms, PolitiFact sees a problem with a soft standard for proving training status.

If a Florida Republican raises concerns about illegal immigrants registering to vote, PolitiFact finds hardly any problem with a comparable standard of proof.

Despite the similarity of the claims and the related set of facts, the Democrat receives a "True" while the Republican receives a "Mostly False" from the Truth-O-Meter.

And doesn't that fit pretty well with the liberal preferences for easy voting and stricter controls on firearms?

Grading PolitiFact (Wisconsin): Scott Walker and the budget repair plan

Words matter -- We pay close attention to the specific wording of a claim. Is it a precise statement? Does it contain mitigating words or phrases?
--Bill Adair, PolitiFact

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Bill Adair, PolitiFact

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Dave Umhoefer:  writer, researcher
Greg Borowski:  editor

Analysis:

PolitiFact's presentation of this fact check raises an immediate red flag for those who agree with Bill Adair that words matter.  The quotation of Gov. Scott Walker includes a parenthetical portion provided by PolitiFact.  Those editorial embellishments are customarily intended to assist the reader in understanding the context of the statement.  But reporters and editors sometimes fail to accurately convey the context with such interpolations.

PolitiFact examines two associated statements from Walker.  In each, we get an accurate idea of Walker's exact words:

1)

A reporter asked if the move to limit union power was payback for pro-union moves made by Democrats in the past.

"It’s not a tit for tat," Walker responded. "The simple matter is I campaigned on this all throughout the election. Anybody who says they are shocked on this has been asleep for the past two years."

2)

Asked if he was "ramming through" the budget-repair bill, Walker said:

"We introduced a measure last week, a measure I ran on during the campaign, a measure I talked about in November during the transition, a measure I talked about in December when we fought off the employee contracts, an idea I talked about in the inauguration, an idea I talked about in the state of the state. If anyone doesn't know what's coming, they've been asleep for the past two years."

And, for review, the PolitiFact paraphrase of Walker's position based on the two quotations above:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says he campaigned on his budget repair plan, including curtailing collective bargaining.

PolitiFact described/justified the above framing in the story like so:

There is no dispute that Walker campaigned on getting concessions on health and pension benefits from state employees. And, to be sure, that is an important part of the measure.

But for Walker to be right, he has to be correct on the entirety of the plan. So we’ll look more deeply at the collective bargaining side of the equation, which has caused the ongoing firestorm in Madison.

The key premise in PolitiFact's argument occurs at the start of the second paragraph just above:  "(F)or Walker to be right, he has to be correct on the entirety of the plan."  That key premise is based, in turn, on PolitiFact's interpretation of Walker's words at two press conferences, one on Feb. 17 and the other on Feb. 21.

Given the critical nature of the respective interpretations, we examine each in turn.