20 Vote Fraud LIES!

 

There are so many claims of voter fraud out there that they are hard to keep track of. So far, just about all of them are completely false. But that hasn't stopped the Right-Wing Media Cult from spreading them all over the place like the Coronavirus. It is institutionalized lying on a grand scale! Josef Goebbels would be proud! 

Now, it's laughable that Republicans, of all people, would dare complain about voter fraud. After decades of gerrymandering, requiring nearly-impossible-to-get voter I.D.s, and even deliberately undermining the Post Office, Democrats would be entirely within their rights to say, "Serves you, right! Welcome to OUR world!" But they have not done this. They won fair and square, and Republican claims to the contrary are nothing but sour grapes.

Sour grapes - but from a fucking LARGE vineyard!

Here's my own non-comprehensive list of cases of fake voter fraud which have been initially reported as true, but turned out to be complete horseshit.

1) Tucker Carlson reported on Thursday, November 12 that James Blalock of Covington, Georgia had cast a vote in the 2020 election, even though he died in 2006. But when the story was checked, it turned out that the vote had been cast by Blalock's widow, who was still very much alive and whose ballot and signature clearly said "Mrs." on it! Tucker Carlson was forced to issue a retraction on Friday the 13th (appropriate) and John Oliver blasted him for it in the season-ending finale of his show last Sunday. If any one of us had fucked up that badly at our jobs, we would have been fired. But Tucker Carlson, it seems, is getting promoted. Apparently, at Fox News, like in Hollywood, you "fail up."

2) It was claimed via social media that a 118 year-old man named William Bradley of Wayne County, Michigan, who passed away in 1984, cast a ballot in the 2020 election. Turns out, It was William Bradley, Sr. who passed away in 1984. William Bradley, Jr., who lives at the same home and address as his deceased father, was the one who cast the ballot, and legally.

3) As I reported on this blog when I debunked Sean Hannity, Michigan GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox claimed that ballots were counted in Entram County for Democrats that were meant for Republicans, causing a 6,000 vote swing in Democrats' favor. This, according to her, was due to a 'tabulating software glitch,' She then claimed that 47 counties use this same software. But Michigan's Secretary of State swiftly debunked this, pointing out that it was a human error which led to the miscount, and that the error was caught and corrected, just like the system is supposed to do. The correction, which benefited Trump, was a shining example of the system working well. But in the upside-down world of Conservative Cult Media, it's somehow proof of fraud.

4) Wild claims were made by many on social media that Sharpie markers were distributed in Republican districts in Arizona, causing those votes to be thrown out because the tabulating machines couldn't read that type of pen. But Maricopa County officials debunked this, assuring people that all votes would be counted regardless of what type of pen was used. This was later re-confirmed by the Arizona Secretary of State.

5) A man named Matt Mackowiak spotted a change in the reported Michigan State tabulation which showed roughly 130,000 votes added for Joe Biden, and none for Donald Trump. He called this into question with a post on Twitter, and it went viral. Now, it's not unusual for huge chunks of votes to come in from one county all at once, but Mackowiak and others wondered why this block went 100% for Joe Biden. The answer to that is simple: That was an error, and it got reversed off right away. When Mackowiak learned about this, he retracted his claim. But that hasn't stopped the RRM Cult from re-posting the original Tweet, sans any correction.

6) It's been commonly claimed that Wisconsin had more votes cast than there are registered voters in the State. A man named Mike Cowdry Tweeted that there are only 3,129,000 registered voters, and yet 3,239,920 people voted. But Cowdry's figure of 3,129,000 is an out of date figure from 2018. The current figure as of November 1, 2020 is 3,684,726! And besides, Wisconsin is a same-day registration state! People who are not registered to vote may register right there at the polling station. So any claims about more people voting than registered are completely baseless! Mike Cowdry's Tweet has been taken down, but that hasn't stopped people from re-sharing a screen shot of the Tweet anyway.

7) Video of Delaware County, Pennsylvania ballot-counters has been shared with the false claim that the poll workers were taking blank ballots, marking them as "received," then filling in the ballots themselves. But as the Delaware County officials themselves pointed out, they were only taking damaged ballots and filling out replacements. This is normal procedure, and if it were fraud of this kind, the pollsters would be silly to do so when they clearly knew they were on a live-stream camera!

8) A viral video supposedly shows poll workers stuffing ballots in Flint, Michigan. But as the Associated Press pointed out, that video actually showed Russian workers! The video clearly shows Russian iconography, and all the poll workers are white! You'd think poll workers in Flint, Michigan would be black! Seriously, if someone is going to lie, at least one should TRY and make the lie hold water!

9) Video claims to show a list of deceased Michigan voters via Michigan's Voter Information Center as having voted in the 2020 election. But as numerous news sources have discovered, those voters are very much alive, and reporters have found them and interviewed them!

10) Right-wing commentator Steven Crowder (remember him?) shared a grainy video of a man unloading something out of a white van, placing it onto a red wagon and lugging it inside Detroit’s TCF Center. He claimed it was potentially ballots for Joe Biden. “This only creates MORE questions about votes and ballot security concerns in Michigan,” Crowder tweeted. Social media users and conservative websites quickly seized on the video, calling it “highly suspicious.” But it turned out to be video of a photographer who worked for the local news station WXYZ-TV. He was using the wagon to carry his heavy camera equipment.

11) A wild claim went out that 40,000 absentee ballots were rejected in DeKalb County, Georgia. Turns out, only 201 ballots were rejected, and every single one of those voters were notified beforehand. DeKalb County officials notified the press via Twitter itself.

12) A popular tweet on Nov. 14 declared, “Biden Campaign Staffer, Dallas Jones was arrested for Voter Fra_d. Accused of harvesting thousands of ball_ts and voting under names of homeless, elderly, dead people. MSM is suppressing the story.” Except that Dallas Jones has been making media appearances, TODAY, very much NOT ARRESTED. FactCheck.org and Snopes have both interviewed him! The photograph of him supposedly being "arrested" turned out to be a photo of Cuba Gooding, Jr!

13) One of the crazier claims is that a supercomputer was used to switch votes from Trump to Biden. Sydney Powell, a former attorney for Michael Flynn, espoused it on Fox Business back on November 6th, saying that ballots were changed using the "Hammer" program and a software program called "Scorecard." Which computer? He doesn't say. Any verification on "Hammer" or "Scorecard?" Nope. The claim comes from dude named Denis Montgomery, who has a history of making crazy, bogus claims.

14) In a press conference on Nov. 9, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany accused Pennsylvania’s Democratic secretary of the commonwealth, Kathy Boockvar, the top election official in the state, of using ballot curing as a way to “tip the scales of an election to functionally favor the Democrat Party.” But it wasn’t only Democratic counties that “cured” ballots, as opposed to Republican ones that didn’t. The "curing" happened along county lines, not party lines. All counties got the same guidance the night before the election instructing them to notify political parties and update the ballot-tracking online system about ballot errors, thus allowing voters to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day. Some counties notified voters, and some didn’t. In the “red counties” cited in one Republican lawsuit, however, Biden outperformed Trump in the mail-in ballot vote, often by considerable margins. By not allowing voters to cure ballots, those counties were more likely to hurt Democratic voters than Republicans. So if anything, "ballot curing" in Pennsylvania actually hurt Biden more than Trump!

15) Trump re-Tweeted an anonymous post on a pro-Trump message board which claimed that Dominion Voting Systems switched millions of votes from him to Biden. The post came originally from the ultra right-wing source, Gateway Pundit. After Trump's re-Tweet, the claim was picked up and echoed by Lilia Fifield of OANN. But the claim has zero evidence. 

16) A postal worker in Erie, Pennsylvania, claimed that his superiors were backdating postmarks on ballots. Then he flip-flopped and told federal investigators that he didn’t actually know that. Then he went back to his original position. We have only his unreliable word for it.

17) There is a faulty claim being circulated that Joe Biden received nearly 100,000 votes in Georgia through ballots that only included selections for president. The though is that this is suspicious because why would someone vote for president and not fill out the rest of the ballot? But there are plenty of people who do that, because they know about who's running for president, but don't follow politics enough to know about anyone else. It's sad, but true.The Nov. 12 totals for Georgia show
4,992,420 votes counted in the presidential race, and only 4,945,792 votes counted in the Senate race between Republican Sen. David Perdue and Ossoff. That’s a difference of 46,628 total votes, which is almost half of what’s being alleged in the viral posts. So maybe there's a grain of truth to this one, but there's nothing to indicate fraud.

18) I debunked this one back on November 11th. The Nevada Republican Party sent a criminal referral to the Attorney General Bill Barr regarding 3,062 cases of alleged voter fraud. The votes appeared to have been cast by people who no longer live in Nevada. The voters were identified by cross-checking voter registration names and addresses with the national change-of-address database. But most of those names were of servicemen serving overseas! And Nevada law allows for people who moved less than 30 days prior to the election to vote.

19) A conservative group claims that more than 21,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania are dead. But this same group failed to convince a federal judge in October that its list was accurate. Also, Biden was leading Trump by over 45,000 votes when this claim was initially made. So even if true (which it isn't) it wouldn't change the outcome of Pennsylvania's Electoral College votes.

20) A viral video from Project Veritas suggests that U.S. Postal Service employees backdated ballots in Michigan. The claim is unproven, but, even if true, no ballots in the state are accepted after Nov. 3, regardless of the postmark! So the falsehood of the claim is laid bare. No such directive from the Michigan Post Office would have existed. It is 100% proof that "Project Veritas" is nothing of the short. It is more like "Project Vociferation."

It's time to tell it like it is. The institutionalized LYING has gone on long enough! News organizations which allow a pundit to knowingly spread falsehood on the air must be STRIPPED of the title "News" from their label! They can go on spewing bullshit, but no longer with the disguise of "News" shrouding them.

There must be consequences to this level of unabashed fraud! Yes, there is a sort of voter fraud, but it comes in the form of misinformation regarding the vote and its integrity. Surely, there must be some laws which already cover this. But if there aren't, we need to write some.

Enough with the bullshit, already!

Eric

*