Another fabrication from Lott?

Lott has responded to Media Matters criticism of his comments on Florida 2000. Lott writes:

Media matters makes it look like I was talking about "voter disenfranchisement" (which I assume includes the non-voted ballot issue) by adding into what I said the broader statement "[on voter disenfranchisement]," and misconstrued what I was saying. I have written extensively on the myths regarding the Florida vote here, and would have been happy to get into the issue of non-voted ballots, but the amount of time available was just so limited we barely got to talk about the intimidation part of Dobb's question. Second, even if the point I was making wasn't clear at first because I was cut off, when I was allowed to continue I clearly stated what I was talking about involved voter intimidation.

But here is what Lott said:

Well, probably no way you can get around that. Different people gain and lose as a result of how well I think the system can operate in different places. I think a lot of the discussion about disenfranchising African-American voters, in particular I think it's been fairly sad, because I think there have been a lot of myths in Florida, for example. I mean, you have the Commission on Civil Rights did an extensive set of hearings, they weren't able to identify even one person.

Media Matters did not add the mention of "disenfranchising African-American voters" to what Lott said. Now maybe Lott meant to say voter intimidation but that doesn't change what he actually said.

Lott continues:

From the US Commission on Civil Rights report on Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election, chapter 2 entitled "First-Hand Accounts of Voter Disenfranchisement":

As a result of its investigation, the FHP found that some policy violations had occurred, but concluded that no citizen was unreasonably delayed or prohibited from voting as a result of the Oak Ridge Road checkpoint.

Neither of these witnesses' testimony indicates how their or others' ability to vote was impaired by these events. . . . Despite this one, highly publicized incident, there has been no evidence whatsoever of police intimidation of voters. . . . Colonel Hall's testimony conclusively demonstrates that there was no intent by members of the Florida Highway Patrol to delay or prohibit any citizen from voting on Election Day. All pertinent evidence shows that in fact no one was delayed or prohibited from voting by virtue of the equipment checkpoint operation.

Only the first paragraph of Lott's alleged quote actually comes from chapter 2 of the report and it is describing the findings of a Florida Highway Patrol investigation, not the findings of the Commission on Civil Rights which were:

Regardless of the motivation for the Florida Highway Patrol's actions on Election Day, it appears that a number of voters perceived, at minimum, that they were negatively affected by the proximity of law enforcement officers to the precincts around Tallahassee.

Lott's second paragraph does not appear in the CCR report at all, despite the fact that Lott claimed that it did. In fact, a Google search for it indicates that it only appears on Lott's blog, so it might have been fabricated by Lott..

Update: Alert reader dmm found the source of Lott's second paragraph---it's not from chapter 2 of the Commission on Civil Rights report, it's from the dissent to that report. So Lott did not fabricate it, he just presented something as the findings of the Commission when it was the opposite of the findings. The Commission did find some intimidation. Lott can certainly argue that the dissent was right and the Commission was mistaken, but it is wrong for him to claim that the Commission found that there ws no intimidation.

An interesting feature of the dissent is their attack on Allan Lichtman's statistical analysis:

The choice of Dr. Lichtman to carry out this work is problematic. When he appeared at the June 8, 2001, meeting of the commission to present his findings, he took pains to present himself as a scholar above party, who had "worked for Democratic interests... and for Republican interests." At the time, the American University web site identified him as a "consultant to Vice-President Albert Gore, Jr."[34] His partisan commitment was evident in his media appearances throughout the campaign and the period of post-election uncertainty.

Instead, the dissent relies on ananlysis by... John Lott, nowhere mentioning that Lott might be partisan. (And a third, independent analysis by Klinkner agreed with Lichtman and not Lott.)