Mainstream media, including our local Star Tribune newspaper’s Associated Press articles have labelled any assertion that voter fraud exists in America as unproven and worthy of being censured.
Take Gregory Krieg of CNN, who stated on November 22 that “Trump lawyers and loyalists are seeing their baseless allegations of system voter fraud treated with increasing contempt by disbelieving judges.”
The animosity of that piece is in sharp contrast with the reasoned commentary by Jonathan Turley, linked below..
But are the allegations “baseless”? If we referred to it by the broader term “election fraud” would it at least be acknowledged by the media?
The Heritage Foundation maintains a database of election fraud examples that highlights proven points of vulnerability.
In mid-November, the Trump Team 2020 emailed they had 234 pages of sworn affidavits alleging election irregularities from one county in Michigan. The allegations included:
• Eyewitness saw a batch of ballots where 60% of them had the SAME signature
• Eyewitness saw a batch of ballots scanned 5 times
• Eyewitness saw 35 ballots counted that were NOT connected to a voter record
• Eyewitness saw poll workers marking ballots with NO mark for candidates
• Voter said deceased son was recorded as voting TWICE
• Eyewitness said provisional ballots were placed in the tabulation box
• Failed software that caused an error in Antrim County used in Wayne County
• Republican challengers not readmitted but Democrats admitted
• Republican challengers physically pushed from counting tables by officials
• Democrats gave out packet: “Tactics to Distract Republican Challengers”
• Republican challenges to suspect ballots ignored
Do these allegations prove systemic voter fraud? As legal scholar, attorney, and commentator Jonathan Turley told Sean Hannity of Fox News nine days after the November election, “We still don’t know. But we wouldn’t know – unless we had greater access to the system itself. That is held by election officials and that requires a court order that information to be turned over.”
And that can be problematic, particularly here in Minnesota. The New House Republican Caucus posted on November 25
“a group of activists, candidates, and lawmakers shared information about what they saw on election night. They decided to file a legal petition to try to postpone the certification of the election and collected witness statements, affidavits, and other information to report these irregularities. They filed their petition to the Minnesota Supreme Court but were unable to serve it in person before [MN Secretary of State Steve] Simon certified the election. The plaintiffs served him by e-service, but he did not acknowledge the service. Any good process server will recognize this dodge, but in this case, the delay was fatal to the success of the petition.”
Making something illegal doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist any more. Especially when state voting procedures are changed by the MN Secretary of State in ways that effectively weaken safeguards put into place by the Minnesota legislature.
With systemic voter fraud, like with other problems, the first step is for the media and our elected officials to acknowledge that anomalies were witnessed, that improper actions were taken. Once we do that, we can start fixing these systems so they truly treat all people/voters equally.