When President Donald Trump complained on Twitter about the potential for voter fraud stemming from mail-in ballots, the messaging company’s “fact checkers” insisted there is “no evidence” that voting by mail increases the potential, according to Fox News.
However, by no small coincidence, the Washington Times carried a story at the same time about a postal worker who had been charged by federal prosecutors on mail-fraud charges for allegedly altering absentee ballot requests during a primary election last month.
And the Heritage Foundation announced finding 1,285 proven instances of voter fraud, while an Op-Ed in The Hill discussing the predicament suggests the Foundation’s data proves instances of vote fraud are “exceedingly rare.” The impression is that voters have nothing about which to worry.
But President Trump says “Not so fast.”
Proponents of mail-in voting want “to protect voters from COVID-19 exposure,” say a pair of opinion writers at The Hill. They are Amber McReynolds, CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute, and Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished professor of Political Science at MIT.
Twitter, according to the Fox News report, says that “experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.”
Yet, back in 2005, a report from the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, declared, “Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud,”
So whose version is correct, and does this donnybrook prove anything?
Trump has gone so far as to accuse Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election” by having his tweets fact-checked. He suggested, according to Fox News, Twitter is “stifling FREE SPEECH” by having his messages fact-checked.
The same Fox story noted “several experts have called mail-in balloting an invitation to widespread fraud.”
All of this apparently led the president on Wednesday to threaten federal regulation of social media if they continue to “silence conservative voices.” So far, nobody has been silenced by the fact-checking.
If it is fraud the president cares to discuss, there have been stunning revelations by the Seattle Times that Washington State has been victimized by a Nigerian fraud ring that apparently filed numerous bogus unemployment claims, stealing millions of dollars that were supposed to go to genuine unemployed workers.
The Evergreen State saw unemployment suddenly skyrocket when Gov. Jay Inslee imposed “stay-at-home” orders because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The newspaper said the actual amount of money lost to the unemployment fraud ring “hasn’t been determined.” The perpetrators, identified as a “Nigerian fraud ring, dubbed ‘Scattered Canary’” was able to siphon off a considerable amount of money.
Washington State has paid out “nearly $3.8 billion in benefits” since the pandemic was declared.
“By the time the fraud was recognized,” the Times reported, “scammers had made off with ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’,” according to Suzi LeVine, commissioner at the Employment Security Department (ESD).”
Such stories only increase public skepticism when proponents of mail-in voting insist there’s nothing to worry about.
If fraudsters can steal a small fortune from a state agency, others might be able to steal an election.
