Update (9/2/20): This piece has been updated with additional information.
Fox News personalities and right-wing conservatives are pushing a New York Post story published over the weekend alleging widespread mail-in ballot fraud by an anonymous whistleblower and “top Democractic operative.” The Post claims the whistleblower “says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he’s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades.”
The article claims the publication vetted the whistleblower’s purported longtime career working as a consultant, rigging various municipal and federal elections throughout New Jersey, and as a mentor to “at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.” However, the story fails to provide corroboration or a second source for any of the numerous accusations of mail-in ballot fraud that follow.
Among the accusations are:
- New Jersey mail-in ballots have no security features such as a stamp or watermark, allowing operatives to convince voters to let them mail completed ballots on their behalf and then steam open envelopes to replace with counterfeit ballots before mailing.
- Postal Service employees commit election fraud by throwing out mail-in ballots from Republican areas or sifting through ballots and handing them to Democractic operatives. The article links to an unrelated story on New York City election ballots to support this claim.
- Nursing home employees are paid political operatives who fraudulently fill out residents’ ballots for them.
- Operatives impersonate voters in states with no voter ID laws, such as New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.
- Operatives bribe homeless voters to vote during elections in New Jersey in a scheme that “resembled Mafia organizations” and left the actual candidate in the dark to maintain “plausible deniability.”
- Democratic election board members took part in fraud by checking ballots to see if they have bent corners — bent by operatives engaged in fraud — to see if they should keep them or throw them out for irregularities. The insider claims bent ballots go unchallenged by Democratic Board of Election counters.
All of these schemes require a large network of operatives to pull them off, however, the story cites no other source for confirmation, even though the main principle of investigative journalism is to never rely on a single source of information. Without secondary confirmation, the accusations are dubious at best. And the New York Post, a daily tabloid, does not have a sterling reputation for accuracy. For instance, in 2013, the paper erroneously reported that 12 people had died in the Boston Marathon bombing and wrongly identified two suspects in published photographs, leading to a libel lawsuit that was settled in 2014.
Furthermore, story writer Jon Levine tends to amplify right-wing walking points, sometimes under the guise of reporting, and he often boosts right-wing media personalities and outlets. For example, since he’s been at the New York Post, Levine has:
- Published what he dubbed the “AOC Tapes,” reporting mundane aspects of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) day to claim she was a hypocrite.
- Defended right-wing grifter Andy Ngo and decried the “unfair smearing” of him.
- Defended articles by the Post that demonize homeless people.
- Pushed immigration fraud stories about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
- Criticized Harvard when the university rescinded student Kyle Kashuv’s acceptance based on Kashuv repeatedly saying the N-word.
- Criticized Carlos Maza (a former Media Matters staffer), who was being harassed while at Vox by Steven Crowder, a right-wing YouTuber, for months. Crowder sold shirts mocking Maza for being gay, used homophobic slurs about him, and directed swarms of online mobs to attack Maza, whose content was being flooded with negative comments. Maza worked to get Crowder’s work demonetized or de-platformed from YouTube due to the harassment he faced, which immediately made him a right-wing target. A year later, Levine reported an in-depth profile on Maza’s mother, claiming it’s hypocritical for him to be a socialist if he comes from a rich family. Levine was subsequently locked out of his Twitter account after the article included personal and identifying information about Maza and his mother.
- Pushed hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment. The Food and Drug Administration has cautioned against the use of hydroxychloroquine outside of a hospital or clinical trial due to risk.
After the story was published on Saturday, Fox News and other right-wing personalities amplified it throughout the weekend.
Fox & Friends Weekend highlighted the mail-in voting parts of the article.
