More dirty trickes from the GOP

On the October 18 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Fox News host Sean Hannity encouraged Democratic voters to "stay home on Election Day," adding that, "your vote doesn't matter anyway." He added that Democrats should not turn out to vote "for the sake of the nation" because Democrats' votes "won't change who occupies the White House" and Democratic "candidates have absolutely no idea how to win the war on terrorism." Hannity also appeared to predict he would be criticized for his remarks, stating: "This is how the press is going to report this: 'Hannity says Democrats should stay home on Election Day.' " He did not explain how that would be a mischaracterization of his comments.

Is there anything more un-American than telling the opposition not to vote? Well, maybe trying to trick them into not voting.

It's one thing to debate in the hopes of convincing them to change their vote. The dissemination of ideas, good or bad, should always be welcome. Telling people not to vote because you disagree with their ideas is quite another, and if Hannity had any intention of making a good-faith attempt to argue against the the platform of any democratic candidate, his focus would have been on changing votes, rather than discouraging them.

While there is something to the argument that the result of a vote will be better without uninformed voters participating, discouraging them from voting rather than encouraging them to become informed is immoral. Encouraging people not to vote because they have an informed opinion that you disagree with is downright unscrupulous.

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