In this morning's Washington Times, Marieke van der Vaart writes up GOP activist Eric Eversole's report attacking the Department of Justice for its handling of military absentee ballots. There are any number of problems with both the article and the report, and I'll get to those in a later blog post.

First of all, though, let's deal with van der Vaart's chronic inability to get Eversole's name right.

In the piece's second paragraph, van der Vaart introduces us to “Eric Loveland, MVP [Military Voter Protection Project] founder and author of the report.” While people named “Eric Loveland” certainly exist, those people are not MVP's founder or the author of the report. As noted above (and on the report's title page), that individual is Eric Eversole.

Somehow, van der Vaart seems obliquely aware of this, as the author of the report is correctly identified as “Mr. Eversole” in paragraphs 3, 4, 5, and 8. But then, backsliding: “Mr. Loveland” returns in paragraphs 11 and 12.

If the Times doesn't know who they're reporting about, why should we expect them to know what they're reporting about?

UPDATE: The Times has updated without comment the online version of their original article, replacing all references to “Loveland” with “Eversole.”

An image of the article from the Times' print edition is below the fold, with van der Vaart's bizarre name problem highlighted.