NPR's "Undecided" Voter Exposed

Overseas reader David has been doing some investigating into an "undecided" voter who is being featured on NPR.

This week NPR's Morning Edition with Renee Montangne started a feature called "Questions for NPR's Swing Voter" which is described as:

A first in a series of chats with NPR's very own swing voter. Commentator John Ridley is still undecided. What catches his eye? What does he make of recent events in the campaigns? And what is he waiting for? NPR's Renee Montagne talks to him in his home state, and swing state, of Wisconsin.

You can listen to it here.

In it Ridley is described as a writer living in Los Angeles who is "commuting" to his home state of Wisconsin to report on what it's like to be an "undecided" voter in a swing state. Which is all fine and good.

Except that Ridley has not had much problem deciding who to give his money to. He dropped a cool $500 into John Kerry's coffers in March according to Open Secrets and Fund Race 2004. Open Secrets also has him tossing Wes Clark $500 in January.

Now there's nothing wrong with giving money to a candidate. But it certainly brings into question whether Mr. Ridley is actually an "undecided" voter.

David e-mailed Jeffrey Dvorkin at NPR to inquire about Ridley's undecided status (among other issues) and received this response:

I agree with you that Ridley's status as a swing voter is problematic because of the donations. I was told that the producers are going to address that for next week.

Morning Edition had planned to continue with this "undecided" voter series up until Election Day. Now, thanks to the efforts of David, it looks like they're considering pulling the plug. Or at least providing a bit of history on Mr. Ridley's campaign donation history. Full disclosure and all that.

UPDATE: I see that Jim Geraghty at The Kerry Spot on National Review Online was on this story at 2:20pm today. I don't know how he heard about it, but I do know that David e-mailed us well before that time, so I'm still going to give him credit for this one.