Remember reports of "widespread" voter complaints in Virginia, including the story that potential voters were threatened with arrest? Our contributor Noel Sheppard investigated the way the story broke, and Newsbusters today has his investigation.

the media have been all over allegations that Republicans are using a variety of tactics to intimidate Democrat voters in Virginia. Information obtained from the Virginia State Board of Elections (VSBE) suggests that these reports are exaggerations based upon information released by the James Webb for Senate campaign.

Furthermore, there is evidence that liberal bloggers were used to disseminate this material, in particular Daily Kos.

It appears that this firestorm began Monday when the Webb for Senate campaign created a press release that was e—mailed to a variety of recipients (complete text here). Oddly, this release doesn't appear to be at the Webb for Senate website, and is not materializing in any LexisNexis searches. It does, however, appear at some blogs

In such a tight race, this could have made a difference. But the op doesn't seem very black if it originated in a Webb press release. Noel properly focuses on the way the story fed into wide circulation and he names names. Read it and see.

Thomas Lifson  11 8 06