Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh did what he could to overhype a minor election controversy, declaring in a Nov. 2 article that A judge in Connecticut has overturned a mayoral primary election because of a mail-in ballot stuffing fraud, setting a standard that holds serious implications for the entire nation." He cited the wildly unreliable Gateway Pundit as his main source for his story, which undercuts his credibility. Nevertheless, Unruh went on to try and tie this story to WND's dubious election-fraud narrative, repeating his old, discredited talking points:
The issue is the same that raised numerous complaints during the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden purportedly got 81 million votes – more than any presidential candidate ever and far more than the leftist but popular Barack Obama got during his elections.
There were a multitude of concerns about ballot harvesting, ballot box stuffing and worse. But the issue remained fogged because many jurisdictions actually changed their voting procedures and processes because of COVID-19, leaving the accountability for such behavior uncertain.
What is certain about the undue influences on the 2020 president was that Mark Zuckerberg handed out some $400-plus million that was used by the election officials often to recruit voters from Democrat districts in an agenda to help Joe Biden. That actually prompted many jurisdictions to ban the use of such outside money in that manner.
Further, the FBI decided to interfere in the election results by telling media and other corporations to suppress what turned out to be accurate reporting, based on evidence found in a laptop computer abandoned by Hunter Biden at a repair shop, about the scandals in which the Biden family was involved.
The FBI suggested it all was "Russian disinformation" even though the bureau at the time knew it was accurate reporting. A subsequent polling revealed that undue influence almost certainly took the election victory away from President Trump.
In fact, as a credible media outlet has reported, the incident is analomous and not connected to anything else, and the city in which the incident happened, Bridgeport, has long had voting issues. Former Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill was quoted as saying, "There are so many conspiracy theories out there and yet for years we’ve had study after study tell us that it doesn’t happen."
That lack of credible evidence to prove there was any widespread fraud in 2020 undercuts Unruh's talking points -- not that it will stop him from repeating them. Meanwhile, WND has given space to other right-wingers to do the same. A Nov. 8 column by Betsy McCaughey invoked the Connecticut election and other isolated cases to push her talking points:
Across the nation, Republicans are pressing state legislatures to eliminate drop boxes and bar third parties from collecting huge numbers of completed ballots – a practice called "harvesting." Republicans also want to use software to match the signature on the mail-in ballot to the signature on the voter registration form.
Democrats almost universally oppose these safeguards, calling them "voter suppression." "Cheating suppression" is more like it.
Perceptions of unfairness are corrosive. At a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing in June, polls were cited showing 37% of Democratic-leaning voters and 71% of Republican-leaning voters doubt the honesty of elections.
Of course, right-wingers like McCaughey and Unruh are the ones most dedicated to manufacturing doubts about election integrity, despite insisting that they are "corrosive."
