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chatterbox: Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.

Whopper of the Week: Ben Affleck

Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, April 27, 2001, at 11:58 AM ET

"Today is the get-out-the-vote day and ... I think this is the time to get involved, especially the young folks who are here. I'm about to go vote."

--Actor Ben Affleck in a Nov. 7 appearance on The Rosie O'Donnell Show, as quoted by The Smoking Gun. The show is aired from New York City, where Affleck resides when he isn't at his home in Los Angeles.

"RECORD NOT FOUND."

--Document from the New York City Board of Elections concerning Ben Affleck's voter registration--or, in this case, lack thereof. The Smoking Gun also checked every voter registration for Affleck's apartment building and came up empty. Affleck spokesman David Pollick told The Smoking Gun that Affleck didn't vote because of an unspecified "bureaucratic snafu at the polls."

"Elections Non-Voted: 2000 Primary and General
 1998 Primary and General
 1996 Primary and General
 1994 Primary and General"

--Document about Benjamin G. Affleck from the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk in Los Angeles, where Affleck is registered to vote.

"[W]e have no record of Benjamin Affleck being a registered voter ... from the years 1990 to present."

--Letter to The Smoking Gun from the Board of Election commissioners in Cambridge, Mass., where Affleck lived until the age of 18.

Got a whopper? Send it to . To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.

Whopper Archive:

April 20, 2001: South Carolina state legislator Chip Limehouse
April 13, 2001: Gray Davis
April 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
March 30, 2001: Spencer Abraham
March 23, 2001: George W. Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department
March 16, 2001: George W. Bush
March 9, 2001: Russ Freyman, spokesman, National Association of Manufacturers
March 2, 2001: Paul O'Neill
Feb. 23, 2001: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Feb. 16, 2001: Oscar spokesman John Pavlik
Feb. 9, 2001: Lynne Cheney
Feb. 2, 2001: Bobby Thomson
Jan 26, 2001: Denise Rich

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