In November of 2020, there was a media shift. The same people that called into doubt every election whose result they didn’t like suddenly blasted as ‘conspiracy theorists’ anyone doing the very same thing.
Because a Trump win is ‘illegitimate,’ but a loss must never be challenged.
Journalists took great pride in denouncing as ‘conspiracy theory’ or ‘disinformation’ any arguments raised against the legitimacy of the Biden election, ranging from vote-by-mail to drop boxes, to voter ID questions, to tranches of extra ballots, to cross-referencing of ballot signatures — and so on and so forth.
You can see real frustration among supposedly impartial news sources when Democrats start bringing forward evidence of the very same voter integrity problem the GOP has been complaining about.
You might think they would be concerned about tainted elections. In reality, they are far more concerned about giving credibility to the party they oppose.
Here’s the AP headline:
“Drop boxes have become key to election conspiracy theories. Two Democrats just fueled those claims.”
From that article:
A woman approaches a drop box in the dark with what appears to be handfuls of ballots. At a different drop box, someone else is seen making multiple trips to insert ballots. At yet another, the same car stops on at least three separate occasions, with different people stepping out and heading to the box.
It’s not a trailer for the latest conspiracy movie about rigged elections. Instead, the video footage has become central to a real-world controversy over potential fraud involving ballot drop boxes, a favorite target of right-wing conspiracy theorists since former President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
The accusations of drop box fraud are not coming from those pushing fringe election claims or from skeptical Republicans who have long favored eliminating or severely restricting use of the boxes. They are being made by Democrats — two candidates vying for mayor in Connecticut’s largest city, in a heavily Democratic state that began allowing drop boxes to be used during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Republicans have seized on the spat, which is now headed to a legal showdown that could result in a new election, to say it validates their concerns that drop boxes are ripe for fraud. — AP
Republicans ‘seized,’ did they? What, was ‘Republicans pounced’ too on the nose?
“How do we know that it’s only Bridgeport?” said Dubitsky, who represents an area of the state that has grown more conservative in the Trump era. “This exact same thing could be happening in every single municipality in this state. We should get rid of these boxes completely.”
On the surface, the controversy is a local matter: Two candidates are accusing each other of fraud in a municipal election. But its ripple effects travel far beyond the city of 148,000 and could have implications for the elections next year across the country.
[…]
Among the many conspiracy theories that have fueled that belief on the right are those surrounding ballot drop boxes.News of the Bridgeport videos has spread through right-wing social media platforms and on far-right media, connecting the controversy to the 2020 stolen election claims. Users have promoted the investigation as evidence for the persistent, false narratives about widespread fraud connected to ballot drop boxes.
The videos and the fact that the claims are being pushed by two Democratic candidates threaten to further inflame criticism from the right that drop boxes are vehicles for election mischief. It’s a perception that election officials have been fighting for three years.
“It risks making what is the exception the rule in some folks’ mind,” said David Levine, a former local election official in Idaho who is now a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. “It’s well established that drop boxes themselves are very safe and secure.” — AP
This might be a good time to mention that back in 2012, the New York Times was very critical of the security of mail-in ballots. For the same reason, Europe has discontinued the use of mail-in ballots. Jimmy Carter was part of a 2005 Commission of Federal Election Reform, and he told us “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
None of that matters. The journalists have their marching orders and are dutifully goose-stepping along to them.
ee
Cross-Posted with Clash Daily
xxx
