When he submits alternative facts
Always great when the Attorney General of the whole country says things that aren’t true on national tv – especially when the untrue things convey that voter fraud is a much bigger problem than it is, weeks before an election which could see an evil corrupt monster re-elected.
In his latest warning about the dangers of mass mail-in voting, Attorney General William P. Barr pointed to a case in Texas that he said highlighted the risk of fraud.
“Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion,” Barr told CNN on Wednesday. “For example, we indicted someone in Texas, 1,700 ballots collected, he — from people who could vote, he made them out and voted for the person he wanted to. Okay?”
Federal prosecutors brought no such indictment. And while a Justice Department spokeswoman said Barr was referring to a local prosecution involving suspected mail-in voting fraud in a city council election, the assistant district attorney on that case said Barr’s description doesn’t match the facts.
Not what happened at all, that ADA said.
“Unfortunately, it speaks volumes to the credibility of Attorney General Barr when he submits half-truths and alternative facts as clear evidence of voter fraud without having so much as even contacted me or the district attorney’s office for an understanding of the events that actually occurred,” he added later.
The genuine evidence is that voter fraud is tiny.
A Washington Post analysis earlier this year of data collected by three vote-by-mail states with help from the nonprofit Electronic Registration Information Center found that officials identified just 372 possible cases of double voting or voting on behalf of deceased people out of about 14.6 million votes cast by mail in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, or 0.0025 percent. Local officials in those states pointed to what they called their sophisticated systems to detect and prevent fraud.
But William Barr desperately wants us to believe otherwise. He’s a very bad man.
The trouble is, once Barr had made the claim on CNN it became ‘true’ in the minds of those who want to believe it, and no amount of evidence to the contrary will change their minds because they simply won’t look at it.
It’s that age-old technique of sowing misinformation and confusion: if somebody – preferably in a position of authority – makes a claim with enough confidence, it will be believed by many people, and it can take years to change their minds. It’s how cigarette manufacturers convinced people there was no link between smoking and lung cancer: how the petroleum industry got away with adding lead to petrol long after science had proven the dangers: how CFCs were still being used despite the damage they cause being known.
It’s the same method as used by those who use slogans instead of dialogue. Shouting Transwomen are Women often enough and loud enough has made believers of an alarming number of people who should know better.
So, because both Trump and Barr have stated that mail-in voting is wide open to fraud, that lie has become fact in the minds of the Right and will not be dislodged, certainly not before the next election.
A coup is underway in this country
The fascist propaganda machine at work.
All that just after his master publicly encouraged his followers to commit voter fraud by voting twice.