FACT CHECK

Do Mitt’s ‘Binders’ Exist?

Only sort of.

The first debate had Big Bird. The second debate had “binders full of women.” The Twitter-seizing, meme-sparking line came from Romney, who said that as part of an effort to appoint more women to leadership posts when he was governor of Massachusetts, he “went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.” It turns out his recollection of events is only partly true. The binders did exist, according to a fact check by David Bernstein at The Phoenix, but they were given to him by outside activists and not at his request—important, as Romney used the anecdote to trump his own efforts to recruit more women.