{"id":6942,"date":"2012-04-24T08:27:45","date_gmt":"2012-04-24T15:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=6942"},"modified":"2012-04-24T08:27:45","modified_gmt":"2012-04-24T15:27:45","slug":"fox-news-distorts-wikileaks-data-to-advance-phony-voter-fraud-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=6942","title":{"rendered":"Fox News Distorts WikiLeaks Data To Advance Phony Voter Fraud Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republicans have lately been busy pushing a manufactured fallacy that there is rampant, in-person voter fraud destroying fair elections across America. Of course, they haven’t put forth any evidence of it, but they are pushing nonetheless. They held a hearing<\/a> in the House last week that was brimming with emptiness and misinformation. And they have retained their personal PR machine – aka Fox News – in the effort.<\/p>\n

Now, just when you thought that the GOP\/Fox News racket was already so far gone that reality for them was a distant memory, they dispatch their inbred cousins at Fox Nation to dispense a story that is rooted in nothing but a frantic illusion.<\/p>\n

\"Fox<\/center>
\n<\/p>\n

Let’s set aside the irony that Fox is now fronting for allegations emanating from Wikileaks, an enterprise they have previously discounted as disreputable and even traitorous. More troubling is that they have utterly misunderstood the data Wikileaks has released. The data at issue is emails that were acquired through the hacking of the secretive, private intelligence firm Stratfor. In particular there was an email from one Stratfor executive to another that Fox is alleging reveals vote tampering on the part of Democrats in the 2008 election. However, that is not what the email says<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“The black Dems were caught stuffing the ballot boxes in Philly and Ohio as reported the night of the election and Sen. McCain chose not to fight. The matter is not dead inside the party. It now becomes a matter of sequence now as to how and when to ‘out.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clearly the email states the alleged tampering was “reported the night of the election.”<\/em> So that is not the revelation. If anything is considered newsworthy here it is whether the McCain camp chose to make an issue of news that was already known. But even that is dubious in that there are no reports I can find of any vote tampering in Ohio or Philadelphia post-2008 at all. So this may just be some wild speculation between a couple of private, right-wing spooks upset that their guy lost. It is certainly not evidence of anything by any stretch of the imagination. Where are the “black dems”<\/em> who were supposedly caught? None of that, however, stopped the Fox Nationalists from publishing the questioning headline above at the top of their web site.<\/p>\n

To compound the fabricated propaganda, Fox also posted a story alleging “Massive Voter Fraud Uncovered in Virginia.”<\/em> And once again, the story was a phony piece of hyper-sensationalized nonsense. Fox was attempting to portray the news as proof of voter fraud that would justify enacting discriminatory voter ID laws. Had any of Fox Nation’s glassy-eyed readers bothered to click through the deceitful headline to the source article, they would have read this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“The majority of cases reviewed by The Times-Dispatch that resulted in arrests in central Virginia involved felons who either illegally registered to vote or who illegally voted in the general election, or both. Felons cannot vote in Virginia unless their rights are restored by the governor.<\/p>\n

“None of the cases appeared to involve someone who misrepresented his or her identity at the polls to vote.<\/strong>“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s right, none of the cases would have been prevented had there been strict requirements for photo IDs that disenfranchise thousands of legitimate voters. The article explains that prospective voters were told by registration collectors that their felony status would not impair their voting privileges. So this appears not to be a case of voter fraud at all, but a case of registration errors wherein the voter was doing what they believed to be proper. The person registering the voter may be guilty of something if they made knowing misrepresentations to the registrant. But in either case, the proposed voter ID laws would not have prevented any ineligible votes because the voter would have presented their own ID and would have been permitted to cast a ballot.<\/p>\n

Laws already exist that address the legal conduct of voting registration agents and, as this case demonstrates, they are being enforced. There are also procedures in place to purge ineligible voters from voting rolls (i.e. felons), and they can be enhanced by new technologies to become more accurate and efficient.<\/p>\n

This is another example of an allegation of massive voter fraud that failed to verify any such claim. This embarrassing dishonesty follows a special report on Fox News this weekend titled ‘Fox News Reporting: Stealing Your Vote.”<\/em> As an analysis by Media Matters<\/a> shows, there were no certified incidents in the entire hour long program of any votes being stolen that could have been prevented by new voter ID laws.<\/p>\n

For a problem that Fox and Republicans are trying so hard to build into a nationwide crisis, they are having an awfully difficult time of coming up with even a sliver of evidence. And of course the reason is that there is none. Their only aim is to hype the phony controversy so that they can get laws passed that will prevent thousands of mostly Democratic voters from being able to exercise their right to vote. This is a despicable campaign by a political party and their media accomplice to subvert democracy and dishonestly gain control of government that they otherwise cannot win fairly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republicans have lately been busy pushing a manufactured fallacy that there is rampant, in-person voter fraud destroying fair elections across America. Of course, they haven’t put forth any evidence of it, but they are pushing nonetheless. They held a hearing in the House last week that was brimming with emptiness and misinformation. And they have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[152,1,8],"tags":[527,33,301,845],"class_list":["post-6942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","category-general","category-propaganda","tag-fox-nation","tag-fox-news","tag-republicans","tag-wikileaks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-1NY","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7527,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7527","url_meta":{"origin":6942,"position":0},"title":"Fox News Latino: Voter ID Laws Could Block Thousands in November","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/8\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In another example of Fox News pandering to Latino audiences, the Fox News Latino web site featured an article today that contradicted everything that Fox News reports to their non-Latino audiences. This article is a reprint from the Associated Press and it covers the issue of voter suppression in a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":42125,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=42125","url_meta":{"origin":6942,"position":1},"title":"The Fake Fox News Story About Seth Rich Was Planted By Russia and Promoted By Hannity","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/9\/2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News has just published an extensive investigative report revealing that the bogus story about the murder of the Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, was originally planted by Russian intelligence. (Insert SHOCKED! face here). This was a completely fabricated piece of actual fake news that was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Fox News, Sean Hannity, Vladimir Putin","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-putin-hannity-puppet.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-putin-hannity-puppet.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-putin-hannity-puppet.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11109,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=11109","url_meta":{"origin":6942,"position":2},"title":"War On Voting: Fox News Exposes Voter “Fraud” In Ohio","author":"Mark NC","date":"12\/18\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The intrepid investigative journalism team at Fox News has uncovered a scandalous trend of voter fraud in the state of Ohio. Led by Fox News reporter Eric Shawn, the team delved into data provided by Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted. Here is what they found. Husted revealed that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"Fox News","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-ohio-votes.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3339,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=3339","url_meta":{"origin":6942,"position":3},"title":"Fox Nation And The Right-Wing Embrace Of Censorship","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/30\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The release of some 250,000 documents by WikiLeaks has stirred up a hornets nest of protest from the rightist martinets of virtue. There have been calls to shut down the WikiLeaks web site, to arrest its principals, and even to execute those responsible for treason. But what it all amounts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8361,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8361","url_meta":{"origin":6942,"position":4},"title":"Fox News Voter Fraud Reporting Leaves Out Pertinant Data","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/3\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"For years Fox News has been fear mongering about voter fraud activities that are almost non-existent. Despite their fixation on the subject, they have failed to identify any significant violations in sufficient volume to impact election outcomes. Most of their examples involved registration irregularities that could never have resulted in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8094,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=8094","url_meta":{"origin":6942,"position":5},"title":"Fox News Promotes Disreputable Voter Intimidation Campaign, True The Vote","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/26\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"For many months now, Fox News has been on the case of alleged voter fraud in America. And notwithstanding the fact that they have utterly failed to turn up any evidence of more than a handful of incidents (usually implicating Republicans), they persist in presenting it as a rampant crisis\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6942"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6944,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6942\/revisions\/6944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}