Truth-O-Meter rulings
The goal of the Truth-O-Meter is to reflect the relative accuracy of a statement.
The meter has six ratings, in decreasing level of truthfulness:
TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
MOSTLY TRUE – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
MOSTLY FALSE – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.
FALSE – The statement is not accurate.
PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.
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How does PolitiFact Georgia’s Truth-O-Meter work?
Our goal is to help you find the truth in American politics. Reporters from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution fact-check statements by local, state and national political leaders, including lobbyists and interest groups. We then rate them on the AJC Truth-O-Meter.
To fact-check a claim, reporters first contact the speaker to verify the statement. Next, the research begins. Reporters consult a variety of sources, including industry and academic experts. This research can take hours or a few days or even longer, depending on the claim. Reporters then compile the research into story form and include a recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling.
The fact check then moves on to a panel of veteran editors who debate the statement and the reporter’s recommended Truth-O-Meter ruling. The panel votes on a final ruling; majority prevails.
With the general election less than four weeks away, it’s crunch time for the campaigns.
Candidates in the top races are on radio and television and are starting to fill mailboxes with last-minute flyers.
Tensions between the candidates have been growing, and the calls for fact-checks of the back-and-forth-claims have been growing. Last week, we looked at a claim by U.S. Senate hopeful David Perdue dealing with his opponent, Michelle Nunn, and hot topic of amnesty. We checked another claim by Perdue dealing with candidate Nunn’s priorities. In the governor’s race, we looked a statement from incumbent Nathan Deal on the rate of recovery of state revenues after the official end of the Great Recession. On the national level, the claim put through the Truth-O-Meter dealt answered this question: Under which president did Fast and Furious start?
As we get closer to the election, we’re planning special round-ups, featuring fact-checks we’ve done in recent months on the major races.
Want to to comment on our rulings or suggest one of your own? Just go to our Facebook page (
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Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below.
Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com/georgia/.
David Perdue on Wednesday, September 17th, 2014 in an ad
Says Michelle Nunn is “for amnesty.”
The amnesty debate made its way into the U.S. Senate race and into an ad from Republican hopeful David Perdue against Democratic rival Michelle Nunn.
“She’s for amnesty, while terrorism experts say our border breakdown could provide an entry for groups like Isis,” Perdue says in his ad, Secure Our Borders.
Perdue spokesman Derrick Dickey said the claim is based on statements that she would have voted for the immigration bill that passed the Senate last year but stalled in the House.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida spearheaded that bipartisan bill, which was co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York and supported by 13 other GOP Senators, including former Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
The proposal created a 13-year path to citizenship instead of a blanket forgiveness for undocumented immigrants.
Still, there is some truth in calling the Senate bill an amnesty measure because of that long pathway, but just a grain. The bill also calls for much stiffer border control, and investment, first.
Ignoring those mandates pushes the claim down the Truth-O-Meter.
We rated the claim by Perdue as Mostly False.
Nathan Deal on Monday, September 15th, 2014 in candidate forum
The state’s overall revenue only returned this year to 2007 levels.
Unpaid furlough days. Larger class sizes. Shorter school years.
They’ve been a persistent issues for Georgia’s public school systems in recent years.
And they’re lingering effects are helping to make education funding one of the hottest topics of this year’s governor’s race.
At a recent candidate forum, Republican incumbent Nathan Deal told educators that state revenues have only now rebound to their 2007 levels.
Records of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget confirm that 2007 was a fiscal high water mark for the state. Taxes on everything from personal and corporate income to gasoline and alcohol hit $17.8 billion that year, up $1.3 billion from 2006.
Those same documents show that as the national and Georgia economies sank, so did state revenues. At the low point —- which was the fiscal year that ran from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010 — total tax collection were about $14.5 billion — or $3.3 billion off the peak.
It wasn’t until Fiscal 2014, which ended June 30 of this year, that total state tax collections were back to — and slightly above — 2007 levels, budget documents show.
Tax collections for 2014 were $17.9 billion — or about $100 million over 2007 levels.
We rated Deal’s statement as True.
Jane Harman on Sunday, September 28th, 2014 in a panel on “Fox News Sunday”
The Justice Department’s Fast and Furious gun-walking program “started in the Bush administration.”
Pundits are dissecting the legacy of Attorney General Eric Holder, who intends to resign the position he’s had since 2009 when the Senate confirms his successor.
Some have analyzed the move with less accuracy than others.
Jane Harman, a former Democratic congresswoman from California and CEO of the Wilson Center, argued Holder accomplished many good things as the nation’s first black attorney general, but he could be faulted “for being politically tone-deaf.”
“And some of the things he did, I think, backfired. Not dropping Fast and Furious, which started in the Bush administration, was a mistake, ” she said during a Sept. 28 Fox News Sunday panel.
Harman’s claim about the origin of the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” program was flagged by one of our readers. It is inaccurate.
President Barack Obama made the same error in the 2012 election season. PolitiFact rated his claim that it started “under the previous administration” as False.
There was a program run by ATF’s Phoenix Field Division called Operation Wide Receiver that started during the Bush administration, but Operation Fast and Furious was a specific effort launched after Obama took office in 2009.
We rated Harman’s claim as False
David Perdue in an October 7th debate in Perry
Michelle Nunn ranks agriculture issues as the 18th most important items facing Georgia.
Republican U.S. Senate hopeful David Perdue recently asked his Democratic opponent, Michelle Nunn: “How do you justify to the farmers that in your list of priorities there are 17 items more important than the farmers in this state?”
That question, posed at a debate last week, appeared to confuse Nunn. She also said it was untrue.
Perdue based his claim on two pages out of 144 pages of Nunn campaign memos that were produced in December 2013 and leaked this summer.
It is accurate that agriculture is listed as 18 out of 22 policy memos that need completing, according to leaked internal campaign documents.
But there is no evidence to support the idea that the list is a ranking of Nunn’s priorities.
We rated Perdue’s statement as Mostly False.
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