Cooking the books on referendum

The Wisconsin State Journal has joined the spin machine on the Iraq war referendum, fudging the numbers and cooking the books to conclude the vote really didn't mean much of anything.

If you exclude Madison, which everyone knows is against the war, but include Watertown, which is for it, then it's a close vote, the paper says.

Duh. If you don't count Madison or Milwaukee when you hold an election, the Republicans win every time, too. But that's not the system, despite GOP attempts to make it harder for Democrats to vote.

Forward Our Motto says, among other things:

Apparently they don't teach math in journalism school. You can't just exclude numbers you don't like because they are expected.

"War vote yields muddled result" is the headline on the editorial. The only thing muddled is the State Journal's thinking. The results are quite clear -- 75% of the communities and 61% of the voters said they want the troops to come home.

UPDATE: Conservative blogger James Widgerson says Wisconsin had a statewide referendum on the war in 2004. Bush lost, Feingold won.