We emailed PolitiFact on April 25, 2019 to encourage corrections to PolitiFact Vermont’s April 24, 2019 fact check of Bernie Sanders. Sanders said Vermont’s constitution has always allowed everybody to vote, therefore jailed persons in Vermont can vote. PolitiFact rated the claim “True.” We pointed out a number of errors. We will update this item if we receive any relevant response from PolitiFact.
Dear Truth-O-Meter,
An April 24, 2019 PolitiFact Vermont fact check of a statement by Bernie Sanders went awry.
The fact check glaringly ignores Sanders' false statement that the original Vermont Constitution allowed everybody to vote. Women were not allowed to vote, and Vermont also had age restrictions (to name the two most obvious contradictions to Sanders' claim).
The fact check later supports its conclusion ("True") with a false claim:
The Vermont Constitution requires people to be of "quiet and peaceable behavior," but otherwise places no restrictions on who can vote.
The modern version of Vermont's constitution linked in the sidebar of the fact check (falsely labeled as its 1793 constitution) contradicts that claim with restrictions based on age, citizenship and more.
Perhaps a rewrite of the fact check could resolve these problems.