You may have noticed a series of ads by American Crossroads that often run in what I assume is the premium ad space at the top of this site, or top right sidebar. They urge you to vote against the Democrat, McAuliffe, or for the R, Cuccinelli, but also feature prominently the admonition to vote early, and promote a link to information about early voting.
But when you follow that link, you find a tool that pretends to help you find the nearest location for early voting, but actually gives misleading information abut these locations.
Should dKos be running advertising that helps suppress the vote?
The tool in question prompts you to enter your zip code, then displays a map of nearby voting locations. But if you enter my, Fairfax County, zip code, 20191, you get a map with nine locations, only one of which is correct. Go to the other eight, and you'll just get a run-around.
The correct information, which I supply for comparison purposes and to redirect Fairfax County voters to where and when they should go to vote early, is here. Visit that site, and you will find that there are eight locations in the County where you can vote early, but only one is among the Crossroads ad nine, and that ad doesn't have the other seven.
The potential this misinformation has to suppress the vote should be obvious. A voter could easily become discouraged calling or visiting the wrong location, and the odds are that if you follow the ad, your first choice is going to be the wrong one. Even if the information in the ad is wrong because of incompetence rather than malice, either way, information that tends to suppress the vote is being put out, on our site.
Normally I am glad to see ads by conservative groups on our site. They're both wasting their money, and funding our side, and you rarely get a twofer like that in life. But this is different. This is voter suppression. These ads should be removed.