Same Day Twitter Fact Checks Trump on Election Fraud, Fed Employee Accused of Election Fraud
It was the fact check heard ’round the world: Twitter slapping a tag on a tweet by President Donald Trump suggesting the president’s comments about the potential for fraud in voting by mail were inaccurate.
Not that the media noticed, but it wasn’t a particularly good day to do it, since it was the same day a federal employee was charged with attempted election fraud involving mailed ballots.
Whoops.
So in case you didn’t see Twitter’s “fact check” on Trump’s tweets, the social media network appended a notice to the bottom of two of Trump’s tweets on the subject, saying “Get the facts about mail-in ballots.”
There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020
“Trump claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to ‘a Rigged Election.’ However, fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud,” Twitter’s fact check read in part.
So, naturally, the same day this fact check came out, a mail carrier in West Virginia was charged with election fraud in relation to mail-in ballots.
Thomas Cooper, a 47-year-old mail carrier from Pendleton County, West Virginia, has been charged with “Attempt to Defraud the Residents of West Virginia of a Fair Election,” according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of West Virginia.
“According to the affidavit filed with the complaint, Cooper held a U.S. Postal Service contract to deliver mail in Pendleton County. In April 2020, the Clerk of Pendleton County received ‘2020 Primary Election COVID-19 Mail-In Absentee Request’ forms from eight voters on which the voter’s party-ballot request appeared to have been altered,” the news release read.
“The clerk reported the finding to the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office, which began an investigation. The investigation found five ballot requests that had been altered from ‘Democrat’ to ‘Republican.’ On three other requests, the party wasn’t changed, but the request had been altered.”
So Twitter is saying no expert authority has confirmed voting by mail can lead to fraud? I’d say the Department of Justice can be considered an expert authority.
And yes, this is some small-stakes stuff. In terms of large-stakes stuff, well, look at what happens when you have a national election which is mostly vote-by-mail — which is what the Democrats want.
Voter fraud is a tradition as old as voting and it’s still alive and well, even in these United States.
Take former South Philadelphia election judge Domenick DeMuro, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy for adding to vote totals for Democratic candidates for Common Pleas Court judge in 2015. In 2014 and 2016, he did the same thing for candidates in the Democratic primaries.
Take Mark Harris, the North Carolina Republican who appeared to have won a congressional seat in North Carolina in 2018 before it was revealed he had independent contractors collecting unsealed ballots, according to The Hill.
The North Carolina Board of Elections refused to certify the election and a new election had to be held — this time without Harris, who withdrew citing health problems. McCrae Dowless, the political operative behind the alleged election fraud, is facing a host of charges relating to the ballot harvesting scheme and Social Security fraud, according to Raleigh’s News & Observer.
So yes, Virginia, there really is voting fraud.
That voting fraud becomes much easier when the entire election is conducted via mail.
And yet Twitter seems to be getting much more aggressive about trying to prove Trump isn’t just disagreeable but fake news. And they decided to dunk on him on mail-in voter fraud — which was sort of a problem when you consider it wasn’t the smartest thing to dunk on. The announcement of charges against the alleged vote-fraudster on the same day was just a bonus.
We can expect to see a lot more of this from Twitter in the months to come, particularly given the company’s political bent.
If it’s bungled this badly, however, I can’t imagine Trump will mind too much.
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