The Boston Globe story State reports few problems with voter ID law is a good example of Greenberg’s Law of the Media.

The overwhelming majority of voters who cast ballots this year in Rhode Island had no problems complying with a new voter identification law. Secretary of State Ralph Mollis’s office reported Friday that of 560,000 ballots cast in this year’s elections fewer than 190 provisional ballots were submitted because the voter failed to present a driver’s license, bus pass, or other form of ID. Lawmakers passed the law last year to prevent voter fraud.

This proves that 190 people who had no ID still attempted to vote despite the law.  It does not tell you how many people decided not to vote because they did not have the required ID.  If these people without ID who did not vote were otherwise legally eligible to vote, then I would say that these were problems.  We have no idea of how many such people there were.  So while the story appears to be true that the state reported few problems, that does not mean that there were only a few problems.  In fact there is no report of the state trying to measure how many problems there were.  It is very likely that you will not find what you do not seek.

I predict that the “information” published in this article will be used as a means to justify the continuation of the voter ID law. Perhaps a better headline would be the one I used for this article.