One of the things I have thought about as I plan my new course, American Conspiracy Theories, is whether or not I should announce on the first day that people who think that the 2020 presidential election was stolen are going to have a hard semester. The whole class is prompted by--in fact it's my response-- to the violence that took place a year ago. It's a question that is inextricable from the course's existence. I suspect that I will, because everyone needs a fair warning: I have standards.
Part of my preparation for what is sure to follow from that announcement is this short series about claims that the election was stolen. It's prompted by a conversation with a friend who has doubts and, when asked for evidence, kindly provided me with that evidence. I shall now, not knowing what exactly to expect, shall look at the second source on his list.
This is a story from The Epoch Times called, "Undeliverable Mail-in Ballots in Georgia Were Double the Official Margin of Victory, Report Says." Because context matters, it is proper to evaluate the source because insight about their perspective may help you understand why the article was written. The Epoch Times is affiliated with the Falun Gong movement, a New Age movement that appeared in China in the 1990s and has been the target of the Chinese government's religious repression, which I agree is very naughty of China. That said, this paper is a consistently anti-Chinese government paper. As evidence of this, I refer you to when, in 2006, a reporter from the paper interrupted a White House event with the visiting Chinese president by shouting: "Evil people will die early." Fair and balanced? You decide.
They are also a steadfast supporter and exponent of far-right politics, and they have grown popular in Trump world for their support of the Spygate conspiracy theory (which was debunked by the DoJ in 2019, i.e., under Trump). They also seem to have an obsession with communist subversion a la the 1950s, though they have every reason to not like communism, as mentioned above. The non-partisan News Literacy Project notes that the Epoch Times has run some questionable election stories. So, with their right-wing perspective in mind, let's look at the story.
And the paywall is in the way. So I look up the first line and find where it has been posted elsewhere and land on a page that is trying to sell me a lot of bullets. The story is based on a report from a group I have never heard of, the Public Interest Legal Foundation. So, following the trail, I'm gonna leave the Epoch Times and look at PILF, which sounds more dirty than it in fact is.
So, who is this group? Well, Politifact has only covered them once, and found that their 2017 press release claiming that Bryan County, GA voter rolls were "corrupted" was false, specifically:
The Public Interest Legal Foundation said Bryan County had corrupted voter rolls because it had more voters registered than the eligible population in the county. The foundation relied on the number of voters listed as inactive to reach that conclusion.
That is a worst-case approach that does not account for the reality of voter roll maintenance in Georgia. Based on all the data, there’s no evidence that the Bryan County rolls are corrupted. The group took a number that reflected an effort to keep the voter rolls current and used it to cast the county in a bad light.
Not an auspicious start. So, let's go to the report... hang on, it's...literally 2 pages long. It's main argument is 27,287 ballots were reported as "undeliverable" and that that number is larger than the margin by which Biden defeated Trump. The question that naturally follows is:
SO?
It was a tight race. Having a small margin of victory is the definition of a tight race. This is not a news story; it's not even slightly suspicious given the vast expansion of mail-in voting during the pandemic. You expect the number of undeliverable ballots to go up too, don't you? This simply is not an argument for doubting the veracity of the totals in Georgia. Furthermore, it's not especially surprising that the winning presidential candidate belonged to the party that also took two Georgia's two Senate seats.
I wonder what it would take to convince someone to accept that the election was not tampered with? I mean, I guess you might if you literally called the Secretary of State of each state and got them to affirm on the record the integrity of their state election outcome, that would work. It just so happens that is precisely what the New York Times did.
Since the report the news coverage relies on does not make a case for the unreliability of the election results, I simply can't conclude the election was fixed or fraudulent based on it. Sites and reporters who do should have to sit at the kids' table at the next White House Correspondents' Dinner.
B
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