Anti-LGBTQ Group Pushes Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theories Amid COVID-19
Family Research Council聽(FRC) has branched out of its usual anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice rhetoric to push longtime right-wing conspiracy theories about voting by mail. It鈥檚 a narrative that is gaining popularity during COVID-19 restrictions with regard to public gatherings and social distancing.
The claims appeared in an article titled 鈥淭he Election鈥檚 in the Mail?鈥� attributed to FRC president Tony Perkins and FRC staff that was posted April 16 on the 鈥淲ashington Watch鈥� part of FRC鈥檚 website.
Perkins claims in the piece that 鈥渟cammers鈥� are after your vote. To support his opposition to vote-by-mail, Perkins relies on a right-wing trope about imagined rampant voter fraud, part of conspiracy theories the right has peddled for years in concerted efforts 听迟辞 greater numbers of Americans. The voter fraud myth is widely used to defend and pass laws 鈥� like photo ID laws 鈥� 颅颅颅颅that suppress voting rights, specifically for black voters and other voters of color, younger voters, elderly voters and low-income voters.
The Brennan Center for Justice notes that politicians at all levels of government 聽that voter fraud marred the 2016 and 2018 elections. Extensive research, however, 鈥渞eveals that fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is virtually nonexistent, and many instances of alleged fraud are, in fact, mistakes by voters or administrators,鈥� according to the Brennan Center. The same is true, it continues, for mail ballots, which are 鈥渟ecure and essential to holding a safe election amid the coronavirus pandemic.鈥�
Perkins, who is a key figure in right-wing activist networks, often uses FRC to amplify and consolidate right-wing messaging that isn鈥檛 specifically anti-LGBTQ or anti-choice. In this instance, he may be responding to 听迟辞 聽that forced Wisconsin voters to go to a limited number of polling places during the coronavirus pandemic rather than extending the deadline to cast absentee ballots by one week.
A key state supreme court election, however, 聽for a progressive justice over a Trump-backed conservative incumbent.
In the FRC piece 鈥� which did not mention Wisconsin 鈥� Perkins accused the Democratic National Committee of using the COVID-19 crisis to push for a 鈥渘ationwide system that鈥檚 ripe for abuse: mail-in ballots.鈥� The article went on to quote an 鈥渆xpert鈥� unattributed source to make the claim that 鈥渕ail voting doesn鈥檛 work well for everyone.鈥�
That source is an 聽about voting by mail, which also pointed out that, 鈥淰oter fraud is extremely rare, independent researchers say,鈥� though a 鈥渉andful of cases鈥� have related to absentee balloting. Perkins neglected to include those quotes from the article, however.
Perkins also cited another right-wing talking point, 鈥渂allot-harvesting,鈥� using the 2018 elections in California as 鈥減roof鈥� of Democratic voter fraud because of major Republican losses that year. 聽is the practice of volunteers or workers going to places of residence to collect early-voting or mail-in ballots and depositing them at official voting sites. It鈥檚 designed to help voters who may have limited access to voting sites.
The Los Angeles Times editorial board 聽that there鈥檚 no evidence that California鈥檚 then-new ballot collection law 鈥� which allows third parties to collect and turn in mail-in ballots (ballot harvesting) 鈥� was misused. The newspaper recommended that the law should be revisited to ensure it doesn鈥檛 lead to future accusations of voter fraud.
Ballot harvesting did result in . Leslie McRae Dowless, an operative for GOP candidate Mark Harris, allegedly improperly collected and possibly tampered with ballots. Harris was leading his Democratic challenger by 900 votes, but the state overturned the election results because of Dowless鈥檚 alleged actions. Harris, who has participated in , was not mentioned in the indictment against Dowless, but he chose not to run in a new election.
The FRC article did not mention this incident.
Perkins also promoted two right-wing websites that push voter fraud myths. One, HonestElections, is a group run by Jason Snead, formerly with the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation also , an architect and 聽of rampant voter fraud.
Snead 聽titled 鈥淎lien Invasion鈥� by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF). The report claimed widespread voting by noncitizens in Virginia. In 2019, PILF settled a federal lawsuit related to the report Snead promoted; 聽requires that it apologize to four Virginia citizens it falsely identified as noncitizens who had registered to vote and it has to add that notation to the front of its reports.
J. Christian Adams, who founded PILF, is an attorney who served during the George W. Bush administration. He left government in 2010 and started pushing a myth that the Obama DOJ had an anti-white bias. PILF pushes voter fraud myths and sues counties with large percentages of voters of color to force them to purge their voter rolls.
The other group Perkins recommends is 聽(TTV), which also promotes false claims of rampant voter fraud and works in conjunction with Republican interests, though it calls itself 鈥渘on-partisan.鈥� Spakovsky has advised TTV and has served on its executive board while J. Christian Adams of PILF has .
TTV has a 聽of color and Democratic voters for years. Its founder, Texas-based Tea Party activist Christina Engelbrecht, provoked a campaign against voter registration group Houston Votes, falsely accusing it of affiliation with the New Black Panther Party (listed as an 澳彩开奖-designated hate group). The accusations ended up forcing Houston Votes to shut down its efforts to register low-income voters.
Regardless, Perkins doubled down on his fearmongering with regard to voting by mail. In an April 28 article on the FRC site titled 鈥�28 Million Reasons not to Trust a Mail-in Election,鈥� he cited a 鈥渞eport鈥� on right-wing site RealClearPolitics. That site鈥檚 parent company, RealClearMedia, was revealed last fall 聽with anti-Muslim memes and praise for Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The RealClearPolitics report Perkins cites claims that 鈥�28 million鈥� ballots have gone missing in vote by mail since 2012.
Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly , and discovered that the writer, Mark Hemingway, got most of his information from another report put out by PILF. LeTourneau noted that PILF鈥檚 report suggested that 40 million ballots are sent out every election. Since 2012, that鈥檚 roughly 160 million ballots, of which 28 million is 17.5 percent. PILF also included rejected ballots among its 鈥渕issing鈥� count; checking voter signatures against voter registrations is one of the security measures used in vote by mail, Washington Monthly notes, and ballots can be rejected because of signature errors.
鈥淥f course,鈥� LeTourneau writes in Washington Monthly, 鈥渢he whole point of reports like this is to scare people with numbers like 28 million 鈥榤issing鈥� ballots without any context whatsoever.鈥�
And according to an early April Reuters poll, 聽鈥� 72 percent 鈥� want mail-in ballots for the Nov. 3 elections as a way to protect voters from COVID-19.
Photo illustration by 澳彩开奖
