The fact that nobody has ever found any significant election fraud in the 2020 election didn't keep WorldNetDaily from covering this year's midterm elections through the lens of election fraud.
By Terry Krepel Posted 12/19/2022
WorldNetDaily -- as you'd expect from a bunch of election deniers -- embraced the never-proven narrative that Democrats were going to steal the midterm elections even before the polls closed. Bob Unruh promoted a Federalist article making that argument on the early evening of that day (based on the inescapable fact that some election results will not be completely tabulated on election night) while rehashing old denier grievances:
Democrats, reacting to President Trump's claims of a stolen 2020 presidential election, launched into a campaign against "election deniers" that they still pursue, despite the fact members of their own party are outspoken "election deniers" after any election won by a Republican.
Of course, after the fact, we learned that in the 2020 race the FBI lobbied Big Tech to suppress damaging information about the Biden family's business dealings, and Mark Zuckerberg handed out, through foundations, $400 million plus, and the evidence shows either one of those factors likely changed the election winner from President Trump to Joe Biden.
But they still claimed that Trump was doing anything to hold onto power.
Now THEY will, charges John Daniel Davidson, senior editor at The Federalist.
In a column at that publication, he pointed out that Democrats and corporate media on their side "have been pushing hard the message that we won't know the results of key races for days, maybe weeks."
"It’s not just about counting absentee ballots, it’s about getting the rigging in place, either to claim victory or deny the legitimacy of the vote. Whatever Democrats say they fear Republican 'election deniers' might do, they themselves are preparing to do the same or worse," he wrote.
He pointed out Democrats have built their power by aligning "with elite interests and woke morality," and now control the White House and the administrative bureaucracy and are supported by corporate media and Big Tech.
WND's main article on the midterm results by Art Moore -- which has been updated since its original publication, something Moore didn't disclose even though the article still carries a Nov. 8 publication date while containing developments from the following day -- ultimately framed the Georgia Senate race as determining control of that body while also complaining that Democrats in Pennsylvania want all the votes counted:
Control of the Senate could once again be decided by a Georgia runoff, with neither incumbent Democratic Sen. Rafael Warnock nor Republican challenger Herschel Walker garnering 50% of the vote.
Earlier Wednesday, Dr. Mehmet Oz conceded the Pennsylvania race to Democrat John Fetterman, meaning the GOP has lost a seat in its bid to regain the majority. In the final days before the election, Fetterman, who suffered a serious stroke in May, signaled that the outcome of his race might not be known for days as all the votes are counted. On Monday, after hiring controversial Hillary Clinton lawyer Marc Elias, he filed a federal lawsuit contending mail-in ballots with an incorrect or missing date should be counted.
In his (also stealth-updated) summary on House races, Bob Unruh seemed happy that Republicans will take control of that body and gleefully hyped the obstruction they plan to implement, though he insisted on hyping early numbers that were later superceded by reality:
Republicans, as had been predicted, likely will be the House majority in the new Congress after the first of the year, and should that happen there will be a lot of changes in Washington.
The party held the lead in House seats throughout Election Night, taking the lead immediately and being up by as many as 60 seats before the last few dozen seats were heading for decisions. At about 2 a.m. Eastern, Republicans were up 189 seats to 154 for Democrats.
If they are the majority, Nancy Pelosi no longer would be speaker, losing her privileges, special status and extra pay.
"When you wake up, we will be in the majority, and Nancy Pelosi will be in the minority," Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said.
Pelosi's partisan Jan. 6 investigation commission? Likely on the scrap heap.
Instead, investigations of Anthony Fauci and COVID. And Hunter Biden and his laptop. Possibly even Joe Biden and those payments to the Biden family empire that appear to have come from unusual sources in China and Russia.
Further, Joe Biden's spending will be tempered by the GOP agenda and its priorities. Unless, of course, Biden jumps off into the ocean of random executive orders more.
And don't forget impeachments. Some GOP members already have discussed using it as a political tool against Biden, as Democrats did against President Trump. A simple majority in the House could leave Biden, as Pelosi charged against Trump, "impeached forever," even though involuntary removal from office would be unlikely.
Another article by Moore cheered the denial of reality from Republican candidates in Arizona:
On Tuesday night, amid voting machine breakdowns and other irregularities, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake trailed Democratic rival Katie Hobbs by 100,000 votes. But Wednesday morning the margin had narrowed to 10,000, with only 62% of expected votes counted.
And by Wednesday afternoon, Hobbs' lead was narrowed to about 4,000 votes with 67% reporting, 50.1 to Lake's 49.9, with 72% of votes reported.
The popular Trump-backed candidate – who had a substantial lead in opinion polling – condemned the state government's handling of the election in an address to supporters late Tuesday night but said she expects to win after all the votes are counted. Lake said that in the latest vote drops, she was winning more than 70% of the vote.
The Arizona elections are under the leadership of Lake's opponent, Hobbs, the secretary of state.
Lake called the voting machine problems in Maricopa County "another stark reminder that we have incompetent people running the show in Arizona," promising her "first line of action is to restore honesty to Arizona elections."
The next day, Moore hyped a sting by the discredited activists at Project Veritas:
Project Veritas journalists at a Philadelphia polling station Tuesday captured hidden-camera footage described by the group's founder as evidence of illegal electioneering for Democratic candidates John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro.
Fetterman narrowly defeated Republican Mehmet Oz, and Shapiro won by double-digits over Republican Doug Mastriano.
Needless to say, Moore didn't do what a reputable news organization did and point out Project Veritas' reputation for dishonesty and misleadingly edited videos. Instead, Moore played stenographer by repeating what was in the video without alerting his readers to the fact that it was likely edited to promote a conservative agenda.
Pennsylvania ballot complaints
WND didn't want all the ballots counted in the midterm elections -- at least, if it seemed those ballots might help Democrats. So it pitched a fit over a Pennsylvania case involving whether to count mail-in ballots that had not been properly signed or dated. An anonymously written Oct. 18 article cheered how "Republicans have sued the state of Pennsylvania over its decision to count flawed mail-in ballots, such as those without a date, even though the Supreme Court indicated that really isn't acceptable." By contrast, a Nov. 8 article by Art Moore complained that the Democrats had lawyered up -- and specifically attacked the lawyer:
Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman has hired controversial Hillary Clinton lawyer Marc Elias to spearhead his federal lawsuit contending mail-in ballots with an incorrect or missing date should be counted.
The lawsuit filed Monday challenges the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that such ballots cannot be included in the vote count because state law requires voters to write the date on the outer envelope. Fetterman, who is running against Republican nominee Mehmet Oz, argues that not counting the votes violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars election officials from denying someone the right to vote based on an error on the ballot that is "not material" to determining whether the individual is qualified to vote.
However, constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley – noting former Virginia Democratic governor and Clinton acolyte Terry McAuliffe's use of Elias one year ago in the race against Glenn Youngkin backfired – points out that the legislature "clearly concluded that such dates are material to the security of the vote-by-mail system."
Turley recalled that reporters alleged Elias falsely claimed that the Hillary Clinton campaign did not fund the bogus Steele Dossier, which was used to launch the Obama Justice Department's evidence-free Trump-Russia collusion case. Elias was sanctioned by the courts, and the Clinton campaign was sanctioned by the FEC for hiding the funding of the dossier through his prior firm, Perkins Coie.
Editor Joseph Farah then spent his Nov. 8 column predictably whining about it:
You are probably going to be waiting a long time for the Pennsylvania results in Tuesday night's midterm elections.
This was predictable.
It's probably because of John Fetterman – one of the guy's competing in the election.
According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday it is because the reining lieutenant governor who's seeking a U.S. Senate seat has joined the legal fight over whether mail ballots with no date or the incorrect date should be counted in the election. You know, it's the guy who had the stroke.
The Democratic campaign sued Pennsylvania elections officials Monday asking a federal judge to order that all mail ballots be counted regardless of what date, if any, voters wrote on the outside of the envelope.
The request was quite remarkable.
[...]
The federal court in Pittsburgh has not yet set a hearing for either the Fetterman suit or the one filed by voting rights groups Friday. And that's why we wait … and wait … and wait.
This is 2022, after all. The Republicans "won" a big victory. But nothing comes easily.
Mike Pottage also went into conspiracy mode over the Pennsylvania lawsuit in his Nov. 8 column:
The polls had not opened on the West Coast when Democrat partisan and Hillary Clinton sycophant Marc Elias had filed a challenge to the Pennsylvania vote count. Elias characterized the action as an effort to protect the most vulnerable voters against the burdensome rules of despotic Republicans. Pure bovine excrement.
Arguing the logical issue "to count or not to count" is not the true purpose of the Marc Elias lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in federal court, ignoring the constitutional assignment of elections to the states. Why? Because with some careful judge shopping Democrats will be able to piece together federal case law and nationalize elections.
Once nationalized, elections will have no more meaning than the vote in Beijing or Moscow. The U.S.A. will be in one-party lockdown mode.
Fetterman defeated Oz, which made the ballots a moot issue. Still, Farah was quick to play the voter fraud card in his Nov. 9 column: "John Fetterman 'won' the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania over Mehmet Oz. Fetterman can barely communicate because of a stroke. But the fix was in, nevertheless, for Fetterman. ... Pennsylvania has a long history of voter fraud – and this was further evidence things have not changed." Farah offered no actual evidence of voter fraud in this election.
Suddenly, sober analysis
Before the results of the midterm elections came in, Larry Tomczak declared in his Nov. 8 column: "Knowing that the only hope for America in our dark time is another Great Awakening, we should celebrate the midterm elections as a sign of God's intervention to set our nation back on the right track as we follow "the General's" example of personal passion for God that helps ignite nationwide revival and reformation." Well, that didn't quite work out -- there was no "red wave" as Tomczak and other WND denizens were fervently hoping for.
Joseph Farah set the tone in his Nov. 9 column by going Luddite and advising making it harder for people to vote:
Do you remember the days when elections were normally settled in one day?
Whatever happened to those days?
Kari Lake, the most important leader to emerge in 2022, said it best: "Another election run by clowns, and we're not gonna take it anymore."
The other most sensible observation of an insane Election Night came from Tucker Carlson: "What happened today in Maricopa County [Arizona] where some huge percentage of voting machines, electronic voting machines ... 30 percent, they claim these are Dominion voting machines, but it almost doesn't matter. Electronic voting machines didn't allow people to vote apparently. And that, whatever you think of it, the cause of it, it shakes people's faith in the system. That is an actual threat to democracy. And it points up the core problem, which is, we're not really very serious about democracy if we're using electronic voting machines, or not requiring photo ID to vote. We could have secure elections. But until we do, you're going to have these moments where everybody in the country fears volatility, because one side doesn't believe the result is real."
Bingo!
What's wrong with our election system?
No more election machines! Get rid of them. They're insecure. They're dangerous. They don't deliver reliable results under the best of circumstances. What's wrong with paper ballots? No more "ranked choice" gimmicks to help people like the corrupt Lisa Murkowski of Alaska remain as perpetual incumbents. Make certain only U.S. citizens vote. And, we ought to outlaw routine mail-in ballots other than absentees. Period.
Actually, the main reason why Arizona election results were slower to come in was an influx of mail-in ballots dropped off at voting locations in Election Day instead of being mailed in in advance as they were intended. And the only "voting machines" the state uses are tabulation machines that count votes, and even when they malfunction, all votes will still be counted eventually, just not immediately.
For a number of reasons, I would have preferred to see the Republicans take back both the House and Senate in fairly decisive ways. This would have effectively thwarted the implementation of what I believe to be a very destructive leftist agenda. And I voted accordingly in my own state.
But I am not in the least bit discouraged or downcast, since the "red wave" I am really looking for is a spiritual one, not a political one. As I tweeted on Oct. 20, "I have voted Republican for many years, but my vision for a 'red' America is for a nation washed in the blood of Jesus."
Laura Hollis' Nov. 10 column on "8 key takeaways from the midterms" was heavy on sore-loser takes like "Early voting is problematic" and "Democratic Party is deliberately running candidates who are empty shells, absent from (or disastrous on) the campaign trail and/or demonstrably incompetent." but she was getting tired of Donald Trump's antics:
Trump's policies as president were immeasurably superior to those of the present administration. Trump continues to draw tens of thousands to his rallies, and he is at his best when his focus is on the issues that concern huge swaths of Americans: crime, illegal immigration, the economy, inflation. But when he attributes a candidate's success or failure to loyalty to him personally, the message falls flat. His jabs at failed Republican Senate candidates Don Bolduc and Joe O'Dea are examples. This self-absorption is mildly amusing when Trump's candidates win. But Tuesday has even diehard Trump supporters rethinking the future. Support within the MAGAverse on Twitter was shifting toward DeSantis even before the implosion of Republicans' midterm hopes. Now the sentiment is spreading that DeSantis' approach worked; Trump's didn't.
Odds are Trump will be announcing his candidacy for the presidency in 2024 next week. A Trump-DeSantis ticket presents interesting possibilities. But if Trump thinks he's going to parlay "Ron DeSanctimonious"-style barbs into a preordained anointing as nominee, I think he's mistaken. Trump already faces powerful headwinds from every institution controlled by the left: the Deep State, the media, academia, woke CEOs, Hollywood. If he fragments his own base into chunks, he'll go down and take the party with him. It would be an unforced error of catastrophic proportions to hand such a victory to the left.
Nicholas Waddy lamented in his Nov. 11 column that "the Dems' big bet on abortion in their ad spending was not in vain, and the GOP effort to make crime a centerpiece of the 2022 election fell somewhat flat. Again, the pre-election polling mostly suggested it was the Dems who were barking up the wrong tree, but electoral realities do not always take shape in the way pollsters predict." He added that "played an outsized role in helping Republicans to choose some of their most important candidates, and some of those candidates were demonstrably flawed." He was also critical of Republicans as a whole:
Republicans must heed their own warning signs. Even before the 2022 election was finished, Donald Trump had begun to direct criticism at DeSantis, who he understandably perceives as a potential rival. That Trump intends to run again appears obvious. That many Republicans, especially in the leadership of the party, have grown weary of Trump and fear that he could lead them to abject defeat in 2024 is equally obvious. Whether DeSantis, or someone else, can best Trump in the primaries, however, is doubtful, given the immense leads Trump has in virtually every poll of Republicans' preferences.
Whoever emerges as the GOP nominee in 2024, there is a strong possibility that candidate will be scarred by a long, vicious internecine battle that may damage the party fundamentally. Tens of millions of Republican voters are loyal and passionate Trumpers – and whether they would continue to vote in support of a party that spurned their idol is the $64,000 question that Republican Party leaders, and potential candidates like Ron DeSantis, now have to weigh. In other words, Republicans and conservatives need to ask themselves: Can Trump win in 2024? And, if the answer is no, then the next question has to be: Can anyone else on the Republican side win, absent Trump's blessing and enthusiastic support?
But such sober analysis was sparse at WND, which ultimately did what it usually does and blamed Republican failures on Democrats cheating. Farah went full bore on this in his Nov. 11 column:
They're playing games again in Maricopa County, Arizona. In Clark County, Nevada, as well – indeed around the country.
The Democratic Party is proving once again that they are capable of stealing elections – even though, overall, Republicans outperformed them in the midterms.
In Arizona last night officials kicked out some of the free press covering the governor's race between Kari Lake and Katie Hobbs. This was a stark indication things are about to get real serious. A representative of Real America's News and the Gateway Pundit were blocked from the Maricopa County vote center. They were told officials are not interested in the First Amendment.
Expect to see, in the coming days, the blatant theft of the election from Kari Lake, U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem and Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh. The steal is the Democrats' window dressing behind the heroic performance of the Republican team in 2022. The Democrats and the fake media will sell the idea that this is how the Republicans' Big Red Wave died an ugly death.
Over in Nevada, expect to see Adam Laxalt's victory for U.S. Senate potentially snuffed out as well.
This is a travesty – an apocalypse for America.
Yes, Farah would think that having the country run by anyone but far-right conspiracy theorists like himself is a "travesty." After ranting about mail-in ballots, Farah concluded:
Yes, Democrats have been experimenting with voter fraud for years. And it's happening right now – in far more nationally consequential races – like Lake's, Masters' and Laxalt's. Not to mention President Donald Trump's just two years ago.
This is a nightmare! Are we going to accept this?
Don't fall for the fake media's narrative. Once again, our election is being stolen, rigged, ripped off – in plain sight!
Brad Lyles pushed the same narrative in his own Nov. 11 column:
Democrats cheated in 2020, and they're cheating again right now – and why wouldn't they? It does not require a Ph.D in Skinnerian Behaviorism to understand that: a) given that Democrats were rewarded handsomely for their cheating in 2020, and b) given that they suffered no punishment for their treachery, it follows that c) they cheated more in 2022 than in 2020, but this time they were two years more practiced at it.
Moreover, given that the most accurate polling predicted a huge Republican win, Democrats were fully aware they were facing a decisive defeat up and down the ballot. In such a case, is it really so paranoid to suspect they did not simply wait to be overcome – that they would not hesitate to deploy their proven skills at winning ballots instead of votes? Really?
Logic dictates they did not hesitate for one millisecond. Unless one believes Democratic leadership were somehow transfixed by ethical constraints in the interim, then a) given that they knew they would be crushed in 2022, and b) given that they possessed the skills to thwart that ignominy, it follows that c) of course they would cheat again, but now would have become so adept at it they would be capable of stealing the more tedious down-ballot races, in contradistinction to the singular race for president in 2020.
And, while it is true the RNC deployed legal and logistical interventions as we approached Nov. 8, they were, per usual, late to the party.
Lyles then suggested taking extralegal and possibly violent action against those whom he has baselessly attacked: "Our only option, now, is to defeat them utterly – and in every possible manner – without mercy, and to punish them beyond their defeat."
Craige McMillan served up a more general rant against mail-in ballots as evidence of "election corruption":
Take Election Day. Go ahead – take it. They did. The U.S. Post Office was enshrined into the U.S. Constitution. What part did the Oost Office play in Election Day before the anathema of "mail-in voting"?
Well, um ... ah ... none, I guess. People were far more spread out during our early days than they are today, yet voting day mandated they travel sizable distances to cast their ballot at a fixed location on Election Day. Could it be than when the founders mandated that people travel to a fixed location to cast their ballot, they understood the moral failures of corrupt, career politicians who could have formed networks of corruption within our governing structure, from local to state to federal offices? Could they have been concerned about the possibility of the political party in power using corrupt processes to control the results of the elections in one or more states? Could they have feared one party rule?
Today entire states – Oregon, for instance – mandate mail-in ballots for everyone. Blank ballots mailed to wherever the voter says, then filled out, signed and returned by mail to government offices where the ballots are counted and winners and losers determined by employees loyal to the party in power. Is there room in that system for fraud? Yes, that is why mail-in ballots are used. It's almost as if the voter becomes irrelevant to the process – because we are.
And who is to say what voter turnout really was – when there is none? Impossible to judge sentiment for one candidate over another when we don't see the crowd and talk to one another. It's easy for the corrupt to win elections when their fellow corruptocrats control the entire electoral process.
A Nov. 14 column by Jonathon Moseley managed not to invoke purported election fraud but a different (but similarly wacky) excuse for Republicans losing -- too many Americans believe climate change is real and not enough Republicans are climate deniers:
Imagine if Republicans had picked up another 8% of votes, what the Republican "red wave" would have looked like in the Nov. 8 election. Exit polling showed that roughly 8% of voters ranked non-existent "climate change" as their No. 1 issue when going to vote last Tuesday in the midterm elections. (See: Karlyn Bowman, "The 2022 Exit Polls: A-Z," Forbes, Nov. 9, 2022.
Since 1974, Republican and business leaders have been too afraid to address the clearly false superstition that humans are changing or ever could change the temperature or climate of gigantic planet Earth. Because they thought it would just go away if they ignored it, we now have actual, real votes for Congress changed based upon a myth.
But now we see that real votes for real House members and U.S. senators are being affected by the climate cult. This is not just something we can shake our head at and go back to real things. This myth is actually harming our nation ... and the world.
As proof that global warming doesn't exist, Moseley served up ... this:
The entire climate change hypothesis is that CO2 increased in the atmosphere. Then the planet's temperature increased. Therefore, more CO2 caused Earth's planet-wide, global temperature to increase.
But that's not science. A happened then B happened does not mean that A caused B. There is no evidence that CO2 causes higher planet-wide temperatures. It's never been tested. Note that opinions are not experiments. Papers are not experiments. Studies are not experiments. Published articles are not experiments. Experiments are experiments. Science runs on experiments, not on conjecture and speculation.
Andy Schlafly returned to the prevailing conspiracy theory in his Nov. 15 column:
The midterm election confirmed rampant ballot manipulation by Democrats to overcome their deficit in the polls. RealClearPolitics, the premier forecaster, predicted a 53-47 Republican majority in the Senate based on its careful analysis of all the polling and historical data.
States that maintain some election integrity, such as New York, Ohio, Texas and Florida, reported outcomes consistent with polling. In Florida the top vote-getter was the Trump-supporting Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody, at 61%, who sided with Trump in challenging the 2020 election.
But in states lacking election integrity, such as permitting dumps into drop-boxes totaling hundreds of thousands of ballots that are not verified in any meaningful way, the outcomes changed, and Democrats claimed pivotal victories in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. "Drop-box Dems," they might be called, stuff the ballot box without monitoring.
Schlafly has no credible evidence to support any of those claims. Instead, he concluded:
Donald Trump is the leader in calling for election integrity, and this recent election shows how much our nation needs him. "We will restore the vital civic tradition of in-person voting on Election Day," he pledged at the Jan. 6 Capitol rally.
