Koch Brothers Front Group Feeds Fox News Phony Figures On Voter Fraud

A report by Fox News alleges that “Over 40,000 voters are registered in both Virginia and Maryland.” It’s a shocking statistic that stirs fears of massive election fraud that could sway the results of pivotal campaigns and upset the balance of power in Congress.

Koch/Fox News

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There’s just one problem with this report: There is no evidence that any of it is true. Fox News cites as their source an organization (Watchdog.org) that purports to be a news enterprise, but is actually a strand of the tangled web of political and media affiliates funded by the notorious Koch brothers.

Watchdog.org provided Fox News with a story about voter registration in Virginia that implies that thousands of Virginia voters are illegally voting twice in Maryland, saying that…

“A crosscheck of voter rolls in Virginia and Maryland turned up 44,000 people registered in both states, a vote-integrity group reported Wednesday.”

In fact, the data referenced in the report only identifies registrations with similar names, but it does not assert that they are the same people. In addition, it would not be unusual to find numerous cases where people re-registered after having moved from Virginia to Maryland, which is perfectly legal so long as they do not cast votes in both precincts. Even the president of the group that provided the data acknowledges that…

“…the number of voters who actually cast multiple ballots is relatively small. In the case of Maryland and Virginia, he revealed that 164 people voted in both states during the 2012 election.”

So 164 people, out of 44,000 registered voters, are alleged to have voted in both states, although they were more than likely different people with similar names. Yet this utterly insignificant and unfounded assertion of election fraud was elevated by Fox News to a scandal of huge proportions. And this isn’t the first time. Just last week Bill O’Reilly offered a slightly different version of the same story. In his broadcast he referred to allegedly duplicate voter registrations in North Carolina and other states, but his story had the same flaws as the Virginia story.

As for Watchdog.org, News Corpse reported on their propaganda wire service last year finding that…

“Watchdog.org is actually a right-wing, propaganda-spewing project that is funded by the Koch brothers through their Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. It is an unabashedly partisan source of slanted opinions and attack pieces. […] A quick Google search on Fox News, and their related Fib Factory Fox Nation, turned up dozens of previous Watchdog-sourced articles that were published by Fox. Many of these articles are hit pieces on unions and environmental science, two issues that deeply interest the Koch brothers whose businesses have fought workers rights and have contributed to dirtying the air and water of every place they have a presence. In none of the articles did Fox provide disclosure of the Koch affiliation to the reporting.”

This is one of the great advantages of being a billionaire who can bankroll a phony news service and funnel the fictional propaganda to friendly media. And by taking the tainted stories from a biased source with vested interests, Fox News proves again that it is nothing more than a PR agency for Republicans and the conservative agenda.