Actually, no. It doesn't.

You know, you can just overplay a "study" from a group that wants to stroke your audience all you want, but you don't really bump it across the goal line unless you cook the hed a little too.

Here's the story, in case (for some reason) you didn't see it on the front page of your local paper:

The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities.

That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

Which is a big deal because?

The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes -- fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority's newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records.

And of course ...

"The only way we can be wrong is if someone with the same first, middle and last names, same year of birth as the felon, and living in the same community, has voted. And that isn't very likely."
Still wondering about something? Like, say, how we know who all the felons voted for? Oh, please. We're going to let that get in the way of a good story exactly why?


We've frequently made the point here that it's hard -- in some cases, nearly impossible -- to tell Fox's fundamental dishonesty from its fundamental incompetence. This sort of blunder is easy to make in a hurry, especially if you see what you expect to see. Better editors don't make that sort of mistake. It'll be interesting to see what happens if Fox ever starts to hire editors for their skill, rather than their adherence to the party line.