During World War II, American soldiers in the Pacific listened to Radio Tokyo and other English-language programs on Japanese-run stations. Servicemen wrote home that “Tokyo Rose,” who was actually an amalgam of several female broadcasters, played American music and taunted them in a seductive voice about wives or girlfriends cheating on them.

The new Tokyo Rose

A case against Japanese-American Iva Toguri D’Aquino as the “Tokyo Rose” eventually fell apart, leading President Gerald Ford to pardon her on Jan. 19, 1977. Still, “Tokyo Rose” is synonymous with propaganda designed to demoralize.

In fact, Tokyo Rose an apt metaphor for the current propaganda campaign of misleading polls and pundits who claim that Barack Obama is coasting to victory.

“Give up now,” she soothingly coos. “It’s all over but the counting. Barack Obama is a shoe-in. That rich, insensitive Mitt Romney? Not a chance.”

For weeks, polls have shown President Obama in the lead, especially in battleground states like Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. In 1980, most polls right through October had incumbent President Jimmy Carter up by a few points over Ronald Reagan. On Oct. 26, Gallup had Carter up by three points. On Oct. 30, the Washington Post had Carter up by four points. The New York Times proclaimed it a dead heat on Election Day. Reagan beat Carter in a landslide.

Rigged polls and absurd results

Canny political veterans like Dick Morris are warning us that these so-called scientific polls are weighted toward Democrat respondents and that a more objective count would paint a different picture.

Many polls seem to defy common sense. A Washington Post telephone survey released this week claims that more registered voters in Florida (49 percent) trust Mr. Obama “to do a better job” than Mr. Romney (45 percent) of “dealing with the federal budget deficit.”

Under Mr. Obama, federal debt has soared by an astounding $6 trillion. If and when Obamacare fully blooms, it will be trillions more. Do these voters really think Mr. Obama is the fiscal hawk in this race?

Sixty-one percent in Ohio say that Mr. Obama would do a better job “dealing with social issues like abortion and gay marriage.” In 2004, 62 percent of Ohio voters approved a marriage amendment. Ohio has a large Catholic population, many of whom are appalled by Mr. Obama’s unconstitutional order to Catholic hospitals to provide abortifacients, contraceptives and sterilizations. Who’s answering the phone? (Tokyo Rose herself, maybe?)

All 32 states – including ultra-liberal Oregon and California – that have voted on marriage have strongly backed the real thing. In 2008, Mr. Obama insisted that he believed marriage was the union of a man and a woman. Now he says he can’t tell the difference. This won’t bother some people?

Other polls report double-digit leads for Mr. Obama in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Electoral College maps on some sites indicate that he needs only 15 more electoral votes to wrap up the election.

“Give up now, G.I.!” whispers the “Tokyo Rose” media. Don’t believe it. The presidential debates haven’t even commenced.

Who really is suppressing the vote?

A wooden ballot box, once used in the Northeast in the 1870’s. Photo: The Smithsonian Institution.

While busy trying to demoralize Republicans, the same media frequently air unexamined claims by liberals that voter ID laws “suppress” the minority vote. From Al Sharpton to Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., hustlers are playing this race card with wild abandon. They know that “Tokyo Rose” won’t question them.

In 2008 and 2010, with photo ID laws in place, minority participation increased in Indiana and Georgia. So what do the ID-phobic activists offer as contrary evidence?

In 2006, the leftwing Brennan Center at New York University published a junk science report, “Citizens Without Proof.” That’s the big gun. Based on a single phone survey of 987 people, the report claims that 21 million voting age Americans lack a photo ID, including 25 percent of African-Americans. Heritage Foundation scholars Hans von Spakovsky and Alex Ingram utterly demolish the report in their paper Without Proof: the Unpersuasive Case Against Voter Identification.

If you believe Brennan, one in every four adult black Americans cannot drive, cash a check, buy beer or do anything else requiring an ID. If you believe that, I have some choice land for sale in the Great Dismal Swamp. Just pull over here to my van and I’ll help with financing, too.

A new charge against voter ID laws is that they’ll cause chaos. “It’s a possibility of a complete meltdown for the election,” Daniel Smith, University of Florida political scientist, told the Associated Press. That’s because states allow provisional ballots for people without proper IDs who can return in a few days with proof. In a close election, this could be problematic.

Well, okay. One solution would be to dispense with provisional ballots, except for invalids. Is it too much to ask voters to bring an ID? If they can’t manage that, why would we want them choosing our law makers?

For a different reason – the possibility of fraud – we should all worry about delays in counting, so it would be good to vote early.

Noting that the 2000 election hinged for weeks on vote counts in Florida, John Fund, co-author with Mr. von Spakovsky of the book Who’s Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk, told C-Span’s “Book TV” that in 2012, “we could have five, six, or seven ‘Floridas.’”

In Michigan, the ACLU is suing to prevent Secretary of State Ruth Johnson from adding to the ballot application a yes/no question: “Are you a United States citizen?”

The ACLU says the question should be removed, partly because it could cause long lines in November. Why? How long could it take? If you’re not a citizen, why are you there – unless you want to vote illegally?

From hyping skewed polls to airing unfounded claims about voter ID laws, “Tokyo Rose” is alive and well, trying her best to suppress the “wrong” voters.

Pay no attention to that crazy lady, only to the one who doesn’t sing until the votes are counted.

Robert Knight is Senior Fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a columnist for The Washington Times. Reprinted from here.

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