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Debunking The ‘Rigged Election’ Horror Story

Debunking The ‘Rigged Election’ Horror Story

Donald Trump’s “rigged election” shtick is the product of years of conservative fear mongering about voter fraud and election stealing, and it poses a unique challenge to journalists who want to ensure voter confidence in the election process.

Faced with dismal polling numbers in the final weeks of his presidential campaign, Trump has resorted to telling his supporters that the election will be “rigged” — stolen from him because of widespread voter fraud. He’s repeated that warning frequently on the campaign trail, and nearly half of his supporters now believe him.

The voter fraud talking point – the idea that Democrats will use voters who lie about their identities, dead voters, or undocumented immigrants to cast fraudulent ballots — has been debunked ad nauseum in research, court decisions, and expert testimony. Politifact rated Trump’s “rigged election” claim a “pants on fire” lie, stating there’s simply no evidence that widespread voter fraud is a real problem, especially in presidential elections.

But even before Trump’s campaign, a growing number of primarily Republican voters began to believe that voter fraud is a widespread problem.

That’s thanks in part to conservative media’s near-constant, baseless fear mongering about voter fraud over the past few election cycles. Right-wing outlets, and especially Fox News, have bombarded audiences with exaggerated or misleading claims of voter fraud to create the impression that Democratic victories at the ballot box are largely the result of illegal election rigging. Stories about dead or non-eligible or non-existent voters appearing on voter rolls are regularly touted as proof of nefarious activity, even though those voter registrations never actually translate into votes.

The most memorable example of this kind of fear mongering came during the 2008 controversy surrounding the non-profit group ACORN. A number of ACORN voter registration employees had been discovered submitting false or duplicate voter registration forms (the laws in many states require third parties who register voters to submit all forms they receive). Fox News devoted countless segments to the story in order to hype hysteria about widespread voter fraud, despite the fact that those forms never produced an actual fraudulent vote. ACORN was eventually cleared of charges of orchestrating voter fraud, but half of all Republican voters still believed ACORN helped steal the election for President Obama in 2012 — two years after ACORN had closed down.

Misinformation about voter fraud isn’t only the fault of conservative media. As GOP statehouses across the country have pushed for restrictive voter ID laws — laws aimed at disenfranchising typically Democratic voters — local news outlets have repeated Republican talking points about the threat of voter fraud without fact-checking them.

That kind of round-the-clock saturation helps explain why so many voters have started to doubt the integrity of elections without evidence that it is a problem. And that doubt poses a real threat to a democracy, which relies on voters trusting and accepting the outcomes of elections.

Trump’s “rigged election” shtick is just one element of a broader problem with media coverage of voter fraud. Regardless of who wins in November, journalists are going to have to be a lot more aggressive about fact-checking right-wing horror stories if they want to restore voter confidence in the election process.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Photo: A sample ballot is seen in a photo illustration, as early voting for the 2016 general elections began in North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S. October 20, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

5 Things For Progressives To Hate In The New Spending Bill

5 Things For Progressives To Hate In The New Spending Bill

US congressional negotiators have finalized a huge spending bill that funds most federal operations through next September, concluding weeks of haggling to avoid a looming government shutdown (AFP Photo/Jewel Samad)

(AFP Photo/Jewel Samad)

Congressional negotiators agreed Tuesday night on a $1 trillion bill to fund the government, apparently staving off a second shutdown in two years.

The 1,603-page bill is full of concessions from both sides, leaving the right wing of the Republican caucus wary — which means that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will almost certainly need significant Democratic support to pass it when it comes to the floor on Thursday.

That could be a problem. Like all massive spending bills, the current version is — as Senator John McCain (R-AZ) artfully put it — “jammed full of s**t.” And much of it has congressional liberals furious.

Here are five provisions of the spending bill that progressives will hate:

Even More Toothless Campaign Finance Regulations

Photo: Tobym via Flickr

Photo: Tobym via Flickr

Buried on page 1,599 of the bill is a provision that would even further weaken the nation’s already ineffective campaign finance regulations. The measure would raise the amount that a single donor could give to a national party committee to $324,000 — 10 times more than currently allowed. Combined with the amounts that one could give to party campaign committees, a donor could legally contribute $1,553,200 in any two-year election cycle.

“This makes the Great Train Robbery look like a petty misdemeanor,” Fred Wertheimer, president of the pro-campaign finance reform advocacy group Democracy 21 said in a statement. “These provisions have never been considered by the House or Senate, and were never even publicly mentioned before today.”

“Republican and Democratic congressional leaders have entered into a Faustian bargain to return the massive corrupting contributions raised by federal officeholders for the national parties that Congress banned in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002,” he added. “It is no wonder that Congress has a 12 percent approval rating from the American people.”

Gutting Dodd-Frank

Photo: Mathew Knott via Flickr

Photo: Mathew Knott via Flickr

The bill would also weaken financial reform, by altering a key section of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. As Mike Konczal spells out, the bill would eliminate a section of the law barring banks that receive federal insurance from dealing in the risky specialized derivatives market. The regulation was written “because having banks act as exotic swap dealers put taxpayers at risk in the event of a sudden collapse,” Konczal explains.

But big banks, which have long opposed the rule, successfully pushed to have it changed in the must-pass spending bill (the edit can be found on page 615). And that has angered the left.

“It is unacceptable to threaten a government shutdown in order to do the bidding of the biggest banks and put taxpayers on the hook again for their gambling losses,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen said in a statement. “We can keep the government open without these big money giveaways that hurt working families.”

Overturning Washington’s Marijuana Vote

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

In November, Washington D.C. voters overwhelmingly passed an initiative that would allow residents and visitors over the age of 21 to legally possess up to two ounces of marijuana. But congressional Republicans — who usually profess support for local governments that push back against onerous federal regulations — decided otherwise. A rider on page 213 of the spending bill bars D.C. from implementing its legalization law.

“It is disheartening and frustrating to learn that once again the District of Columbia is being used as a political pawn by the Congress,” pro-legalization D.C. Council member David Grosso told the Washington Post. “To undermine the vote of the people — taxpayers — does not foster or promote the ‘limited government’ stance House Republicans claim they stand for; it’s uninformed paternalistic meddling.”

Attacking Sage Grouses

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Republicans delivered a big win for the energy industry on page 725 of the bill, in the form of a measure that would block the Fish and Wildlife Service from listing the Gunnison sage grouse or greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act.

As Katie Valentine explains at Think Progress, the measure is a gift to oil and gas companies which have hesitated to bid on leases to drill or frack in the birds’ habitat, due to concern that the grouse could soon gain greater protection.

ACORN Is Defeated! (Again)

Photo: Frank Vest via Flickr

Photo: Frank Vest via Flickr

Perhaps the oddest provision in the bill appears on page 963, where Congress declares that no funds may be given to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — better known as ACORN.

If that strikes you as odd, it may be because the community-organizing nonprofit shut down in 2010, after the backlash from a right-wing video hoax helped drive it into bankruptcy. But that hasn’t stopped Congress from officially banning it from receiving taxpayer money — more than a dozen times.

If nothing else, the provision should please the Republican base. After all, as of last year nearly half of GOP voters were under the impression that the nonexistent group stole the 2012 election for President Obama.