Y'all ready for a long ass thread about voting by mail? A warning: gonna link to some Heritage Foundation stuff via the White House website 😳. But, we gotta confront problems head on. Here’s the ammo you need for your friends who disagree that vote by mail can be safe! 1/
Obviously voter fraud exists. There’s also electoral fraud. Some use these terms interchangeably, but they’re different. FindLaw has a good explanation of the differences: findlaw.com/voting/how-u-s…
Voter fraud is mostly by voters, while electoral is by officials (but not always) 2/
Voter fraud is mostly by voters, while electoral is by officials (but not always) 2/
OK, what about all those cases?! Sounds scary, and yeah it’s actually pretty terrible when it happens. There's been elections swayed by voter fraud! At least, at local and state levels & turnout is low. Trump claims millions of fraudulent votes from 2016. Truth? Let’s dig in…3/
Here’s that link to the White House, a PDF courtesy the right wing Heritage Foundation. They’re working real hard right now to scare as many people as possible into thinking we can put a man on the moon but can’t vote by mail 🤷♂️ whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehou… 4/
Here’s where it gets interesting. If you search the names of the people in that document there are some legit cases, like the commissioner in Dothan, AL who won by 14 fraudulent ABSENTEE votes created by campaign staff. Sounds bad, right? Well, he and ran again, but lost… 5/
In AL, a notary and 2 witnesses req'd for absentee ballots. That’s the law they violated, although 1 dummy says he didn’t even read the ballot. Point is, AL has been making it harder for people to vote since SCOTUS hamstrung the Voting Rights Act nytimes.com/2018/06/23/us/… 6/
But that's 1 of a handful of cases like this. Many are clerical errors that may have resulted in a dozen or less “changed” votes, barely enough to sway a high school student council election. The Brennan Center did a takedown of this propaganda… brennancenter.org/our-work/analy… 7/
Go through the report state by state & look them up. Thank God for local journalism, because it’s all there. Here’s the thing — you think if MORE people voted we’d have *more* or *less* fraud? Soak on that while we fact check the president (we won’t tackle all the lies) 8/
Remember in 2017, about 100 years ago now, when Trump went on ABC and made bold claims about voter fraud? Here’s a take down of his most egregious nonsense, but mostly you can bet he’s just pulling stuff out of his rear end. factcheck.org/2017/01/more-t… 9/
'member Trump’s own hunt for fraud? It turned up bupkis. He ranted he'd have won the popular vote if it weren’t for “massive” voter fraud. Mostly illegals, and presumably their little dogs, too. Anyway, his own people quietly put that to rest apnews.com/f5f6a73b2af546… 10/
There’s a study that both POTUS and Sean Spicer 🕺 cited wrong (likely on purpose). This one’s about non-citizens voting. This was supposed to prove millions of illegal votes, but it didn’t, and could, at BEST account for less than a million washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca… 11/
According to the Brennan Center, REAL cases of voter fraud are “vanishingly rare” — even with our terrible turnout incident rates are between .0003 & .0025 PERCENT brennancenter.org/our-work/resea… 12/
Texas also tried to purge non-citizens but it ended in disaster, with thousands of citizens being kicked off the roster before an election. This has happened way too many times, and generally it seems to benefit the GOP, like in Georgia texastribune.org/2019/02/01/tex…
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Bottom line, Americans WANT to vote by mail. They get it. You get it. We get it. It’s safe, reliable, and ensures our Constitutional-guaranteed right. As per the President himself, “Of course, and I want the voting process to be legitimate.” npr.org/2020/04/28/847… 14/
And maybe if MORE people were able to vote by making it more accessible, we'd have a more representative democracy & the tiny % of fraud's impact would likely be lessened! npr.org/2018/09/15/648… 15/
So yeah, voter fraud exists. There’s also bug parts in your peanut butter, as Fox News reports foxnews.com/food-drink/mag… — but there’s about as many roach legs in your PB&J as there are fraudulent votes. Get the picture? 16/
This leads us to the most recent ELECTION fraud case, from just over the mountain in NC, which turns out to be one of the worst cases ever. An incredible story here: gq.com/story/north-ca… But it begs the question: Why can’t ALL Tennesseeans have absentee ballots? END/ #vote
