It's taken five months, but the traditional media are reporting on the dispute that Palm Beach County has had with Ann Coulter's vote since February. The KRT wire has picked up the story from the New York Daily News:
Election officials in Palm Beach County, Fla., are reportedly investigating why Coulter voted in the wrong precinct in a local election in February - even though a poll worker tried to stop her.
Knowingly voting in the wrong precinct is a felony in Florida, and Coulter has hired a former U.S. attorney to defend her there.
Moving the story into the mainstream was Alan Colmes on Wednesday's Hannity & Colmes. Excuse me for editorializing if I call the exchange disingenuous:
COLMES: You're talking about godless liberals not having values, not being values people. In light of that you've been in the news a little bit lately, accused by election supervisor Arthur Anderson in Palm Beach of voting in the wrong district and not answering a registered letter that they sent to you. And they say that you might have committed a felony. So could you address those charges and tell us what happened?
COULTER: I think the syphilis has gone to their brains.
COLMES: Is that what it is?
COULTER: Yes.
COLMES: Did you knowingly vote in the wrong district?
COULTER: No..... No. I live in New York. And I'm not going to tell you anymore about where I live, Alan. ....
COLMES: You didn't knowingly walk into the wrong district?
COULTER: Correct.
COLMES: And did you -- is there a reason you didn't respond to the authorities when they sent you a registered letter?
COULTER: This is all false, I'm telling you. You've got -- I mean, the "Treason Times" may hate America, but they're at least accurate. When you go to the bush-league newspapers, you get all the venom of the New York Times, but they're all retarded.
Blurting that out on a national TV show has finally got the rest of the media's attention. Jose Lambiet at the Palm Beach Post (scroll down for second item), who's been on the story from the very beginning, reported on the registered letter and retaining the lawyer last week. There's no shortage of documentation to back up the "bush league" newspaper: Ms. Coulter's sworn voter's registration form and appraisal of her Palm Beach property, retained on line by the BradBlog, which has also been tenacious on the story.
So far, the alleged crimes are that Ms. Coulter knowingly swore to a false statement (giving her real estate agent's address as her own), knowingly voting in the wrong precinct and, if her legal address isn't Palm Beach, improperly taking a homestead exemption in Florida to pay a cheaper tax rate. The Daily News supplies another one:
Meanwhile, Coulter is also registered to vote in New Canaan, Conn. - though the local registrar told the Daily News yesterday it's illegal to be registered in two places at once.
Coulter cast an absentee ballot in New Canaan in the 2004 election. She also owns a $1.5 million condo on Manhattan's East Side but has never registered to vote there.
Editor & Publisher, which has also been following the story, adds this update: "Universal syndicates Coulter's column. A spokesman there told E&P it had no response to the latest firestorm."
Thanks to Brad Friedman for the tip on this update.
NOTE ON COMMENTS: Please stick to the topic, and note that transgender jokes will be deleted. Ms. Coulter, an alleged lawyer, may choose to use sexual slurs to smear Florida voting officials, but that doesn't mean that the Huffington Post has to sink to her level. Thank you.