JaxPolitix

POST 1111

One More Look At Our Terrible Voter Fraud Problem

You’ve heard the statistics about our voter fraud problem, like that it’s 0.00001% of votes cast, clearly not enough to sway even the election of a candidate for the mosquito abatement board, much less a megalomaniac fraud and sexual assaulter to the presidency. Nevertheless, we must have some fun with the numbers from the off-the-right-edge-of-the-continuum Heritage Foundation because they are Trump suck-up misleaders.

The Brookings Institution did that in a paper entitled Widespread election fraud claims by Republicans don’t match the evidence. Note that their analysis has nothing to do with how anyone feels or their confirmation bias or their delight in demonizing. They’re just the facts, ma’am.

Brookings reports,

[The Heritage Foundation finds] that there have been 1,465 proven cases of election fraud — 1,264 of these resulted in criminal prosecutions and the remainder resulted in civil prosecutions, diversion programs, judicial findings, or official findings.

These may sound like big numbers, however, they must be examined in context. The findings encompass more than a decade of data during which, nationally, hundreds of millions of votes have been cast. For instance, in Texas, Heritage found 103 cases of confirmed election fraud. However, those 103 ranged from 2005 to 2022 during which time over 107 million ballots were cast. There were 11 million ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election alone. The fraud in Texas amounted to 0.000096% of all ballots cast — hardly evidence of a fundamentally corrupt system.

Need more?

in Arizona, where President Biden won by a mere 10,457 votes in 2020, Heritage documents just four cases of fraudulent voting in the general election. Furthermore, while former Republican gubernatorial candidate and 2024 Senate candidate Kari Lake falsely claimed widespread fraud following her loss in 2022, there have been zero reported cases from that year thus far. To put these cases (or lack thereof) in perspective, Arizonans cast over 6 million votes in the 2020 and 2022 general elections. [That’s fraud  of 0.0% of votes cast.]

Other swing states have also recorded negligible numbers of election fraud. In Georgia, Heritage has reported no cases of fraud in the 2020 or 2022 general elections, in which nearly nine million votes were cast. [That, too, is 0.0% of votes cast.]

So, now we’re all convinced that there is no voter fraud problem, right?

So, what’s going on here? Nothing. Confirmed conspiracy theorists never take no for an answer, so they will certainly insist that there was massive fraud or that prosecutors were bought off.

Mmm, that right, Kemosabe. They will say that. And they will be wrong.

We have only one voter fraud problem and it’s the fraud that attacks voting rights, like:

1. gerrymandering
2. kicking eligible voters off voting rolls for specious and discriminatory reasons, especially when it’s done just before an election so there is no time to appeal
3. limiting access to voting, like closing polling places to make it extremely difficult to vote and eliminating drop boxes for mail-in ballots
4. requiring voter ID that is difficult for a targeted population to secure

Click here for a more extensive list of Constitution stomping, rights killing manipulation by .  .  .  guess who?

Note especially that even before mail-in and absentee ballots began to be filled out this year and with zero evidence for their claims, Trump and his entire entourage and his parroting millions were already claiming voting fraud. So, 1. Are they clairvoyant? or, 2. Are they frauds? You choose.

From The “Ya Gotta Read This” Department

First

Perhaps you’ve heard that right wing extremists, including our twice impeached, four times indicted, 34 counts convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter former president, Donald Trump, have used our hurricane disasters to demonize FEMA, saying they don’t have enough money for disaster relief because they gave away money to undocumented immigrants (they prefer to call them “illegals”). That’s complete  .  .  .  how is it said? .  .  .  you know. See this and this.

These lies are just a current attack on our institutions designed to make the easily manipulated distrustful of government. It’s so dumb that even “no stranger to airhead conspiracy stupid stuff” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) smacked down the no FEMA money idiocy.

Now the rabid right has told hurricane and tornado victims that FEMA is coming to seize their land and worse. That’s led to armed militias – actually, vigilantes – roaming western North Carolina hunting FEMA people. That has caused relief workers to pull back, interfering with relief getting to hurricane victims. Again, it’s just your presidential candidate doing what he can to stoke violence and undermine our trust in ourselves.

Here’s more on hurricanes from CNN:

Last week, [Rep. Marjorie Taylor] Greene, without specifying who “they” is, posted, “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

She offers quack patent applications from a hundred years ago to prove her airhead point.

Most important is that you’ve heard this kind of idiocy many times from those who were the kids who flung spitballs from the back of their science and civics classes. The problem now is that such inanities get forwarded millions of times until some people believe it, putting themselves and others at risk through their denial of reality and further eroding our trust in our institutions.

The scariest part of this latest MTG lunacy is that citizens of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District keep sending her and her AR-15 to Congress. What do you suppose is the key contaminant in their drinking water?

Right: it’s fraud.

Second

Read Prof. Timothy Snyder’s new post, From the Storm to the Stormtroopers. The Fascist Logic of Climate Lying.

Third

Are you a Boomer? If so, you’re a child of the Greatest Generation. Read Lessons From My Father. Then say a quiet – perhaps even sacred – thank you.

Bang Bang

Click me

We have 48 dead kids already this year, hundreds wounded and ten of thousands traumatized for life. And all of us are living with the threat of a grotesquely distorted Second Amendment hanging over our heads. Watch for a very personal account of that this Sunday.

It’s not the vibes and it’s not the polls: it’s the votes. 

Are you registered to vote? Check it out on any of these websites:

https://www.vote.org/am-i-registerilled-to-vote/

https://www.usa.gov/confirm-voter-registration

https://www.rockthevote.org/how-to-vote/am-i-registered-to-vote/

“Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”

• – Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), 2016

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