From Colorado election fraud to a conspiracy about the Denver rally shooting, local lies have spread nationally
By Ian Silverii | Columnist for The Denver Post
There is confusion surrounding the origin of the old but prescient saying, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” It was true in 1710 when Jonathan Swift may have coined it, or 1919 when Mark Twain is alleged to have done so, or perhaps when FDR’s Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote my favorite iteration, “A lie will gallop halfway ‘round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.” And none of these people even had Twitter.
In late September, a story with the attention-grabbing headline, “Colorado Secretary of State mails postcards to non-citizens, dead people urging them to vote” aired on Denver’s CBS4. In the 48 hours before it was pulled down by station management, it was hyped nationwide online by conservatives up to and including Donald Trump Jr. Because it boosted their bogus election conspiracy narratives, especially concerning mail ballots.
The president’s eldest son tweeted a link to that story to his 5.8 million followers shortly after it appeared with the message, “Sure the Dems aren’t trying to cheat!!!” That tweet was seen by untold numbers of Americans who have now been made baselessly suspicious of Colorado’s gold-standard mail ballot system.
The misinformation sprang from a postcard that has been routinely mailed to voters by election officials of both parties, using consumer databases of non-voters and other data to achieve what should be a goal of every Coloradan regardless of party — registration of every eligible voter in the state. The postcard clearly states the eligibility requirements of voting in Colorado, which, and I can’t believe I have to say this, excludes dead people and non-citizens.
To his credit, Tim Weiland, CBS4’s news director, removed the story from the CBS4 website and thanked followers on social media for debunking it. Unfortunately, by the time the story was deleted, it had already spread to other news stations in Colorado (which have yet to correct or remove their versions), the popular conservative propaganda site Breitbart, and even syndicated to news giant MSN — which is still up online today.
President Donald Trump and his party have been spreading myths about voting by mail in order to undermine the results of an election that every poll on the planet suggests they are about to lose in a landslide. This, coupled with the well-coordinated right-wing disinformation ecosystem that starts with local conservative activists and ends with Fox News hosts, national right-wing personalities, and the Trumps themselves, makes it no small wonder that this roundly debunked story lives on.
Worse yet, Congressman and Colorado Republican Party Chairman Ken Buck, citing this false story after it’s deletion, asked the Department of Justice to “investigate.” Shortly after, a right-wing dark-money organization, Judicial Watch, filed a lawsuit against Colorado making false and eerily related claims about our voter registration system.
The only thing they’re missing is evidence.
Sadly, this wasn’t the only myth from Colorado that recently went viral. Last week, a so-called “patriot muster” turned deadly when an attendee named Lee Keltner was shot and killed by Matthew Dolloff, who was providing private security for 9News under contract. Dolloff shot Keltner with numerous cameras rolling after Keltner attacked Dolloff with an open hand and as Keltner sprayed pepper spray toward Dolloff.
Within minutes, conservative Twitter personalities from Charlie Kirk (1.8 million followers) to Colorado’s own Michelle Malkin (2.2 million followers) spread an unsubstantiated narrative that Dolloff was some kind of Antifa assassin — which then morphed into a bizarre conspiracy theory that 9News had hired a professional agitator to start the whole thing, and that somehow legendary Denver Post photographer Helen Richardson was in on it, too. On Tuesday, this baseless conspiracy theory was retweeted several times by the president of the United States himself. Donald Trump has the seventh-largest Twitter fanbase in the entire world.
Dolloff is in custody, and the justice system will decide whether or not using deadly force in that situation was self-defense. But once again the right was far too quick to let social media be judge, jury, and investigator.
CBS4’s belated removal of their false story failed to stop those who would like to see mail ballots undermined to give Trump a pretext to not concede defeat.
It’s a punishing lesson in the power of modern media, especially when amplified by bad actors. There are those who will advance a narrative at any cost, knowing full well that a Tweet will ricochet around the planet while the truth never gets its breeches on. (emphasis added)
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Just the bullet points, follow the hotlink in the headline for more detail.
Consider 8 Idiotic Things You Must Believe to Vote Against Trump in 2020
It’s Evil to Support Trump
Biden “Understands” Leadership Better Than Trump
Biden Economy Will be Better
Russia-gate Doesn’t Matter
Riots Aren’t Dangerous
Biden Son’s China & Ukraine Deals are Meaningless
Supersizing Supreme Court & Multiplying States Can Only Benefit America
Trump is ‘Rude,’ so Must be a Terrible Leader
CONCLUSION: America’s Leftist Education Creates a Peerless Foundation for Hate
America’s main menace to liberty is decades of leftist teachers spoon-feeding Marxist doctrine to defenseless American students. This created an army of socialists incapable of critical thinking to protect themselves from propaganda. Most alarming, the moral affectations of these victims is expressed in a tyrannical ‘Woke’ political religion, implacably vile to foes. For Trump to lose, mindless socialists created by decades of educational malpractice must storm the voting booths and demand socialism in opposition to all common sense and history’s opposition.
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Pennsylvania County Screwed up 30,000 Ballots; They Say They Will Review Them…. After the Election
“The Allegheny County Elections Division announced Wednesday that 28,879 voters received incorrect ballots out of the 32,318 that were in the state’s ballot tracker as of Sept. 28.
The Division said the mailings are being corrected and that new ballots will be delivered starting Oct. 15, with most expected to be delivered the week of Oct. 19.”
The problem that exists is that this issue was discovered not by the county, but rather by the voters and brought to the county’s attention. Despite the County promising to fix the ballots, it still eliminates a great deal of time that the voters would have had to return their ballots, to begin with.
But that’s not the most alarming part. What is terrifying is the county’s response regarding when they will be reviewing the ballots they received back from people who were not aware they were wrong.
“Voye [David Voye, Elections Division Manager] said that Elections Division staff were segregating ballots that were received from voters affected by the issue, and those will be set aside and reviewed following the election.” [Emphasis added]
The county admits that they know some of the faulty ballots were returned, but those ballots will not be reviewed until after the election. That likely means that if the ballot is faulty, those voters will not have their vote counted because there will be no new voting for them because the election will be over.
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Twitter now restricting access to an official government website in order to censor NY Post's bombshell Hunter Biden story
They really don't want people to read it
... Twitter went to great lengths to censor the story, blocking users from sharing it on the platform, barring users from sending it in direct messages, and suspending high-profile accounts that shared the story — including accounts operated by the New York Post, the Trump campaign, and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany...
... Users who tried to access the link had their screens flashed with a warning page, which said "this link may be unsafe," and users who tried to share the link were stopped from doing so.
"The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with Twitter's URL Policy," the warning page stated....
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In just one month, 15 cases of ballot errors, theft, harvesting, and dumping
...Below is a list of some of the ballot problems reported in the last month:
* In the Richmond, Virginia, area, six mailboxes were broken into, and mail was stolen.
* Washington, D.C., has made several errors, the latest being sending ballots to long-gone residents. In another case, officials put the wrong date on ballots, and earlier this year, change-of-address forms were sent out with a design so poor that when sent back, they didn’t include the name of the sender.
* Project Veritas uncovered ballot harvesting in Minnesota.
* Some 100,000 defective ballots were sent out in New York City.
* There was a case of suspected ballot harvesting in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, near Baltimore, prompting a voter warning by the county's Board of Elections.
* Voters near Columbus, Ohio, in Franklin County, were sent the wrong ballots.
* In Los Angeles County, California, the Los Angeles Times reported, “Some 2,100 L.A. County voters got ballots missing one thing: a way to vote for president.”
* About 18,000 ballots were rejected in the Massachusetts primary because of the type of voter errors Trainor warned about.
* More than 1,600 Sussex County, New Jersey, ballots from the July primary were found last month. They were counted, however, and didn’t change any outcomes.
* ver 100 blank, undelivered Jefferson County, Kentucky, absentee ballots were found in a dumpster.
* In Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, 29,000 people were sent the wrong ballot. The county moved to fix the error.
* In Pittsylvania County, Virginia, a voter unable to put a ballot in a voting box was able to pull open the box, raising security worries.
* In Teaneck, New Jersey, nearly 7,000 voters received the wrong ballot.
* A postal worker in West Orange, New Jersey, was arrested for allegedly dumping nearly 2,000 pieces of mail, including 99 ballots and 276 campaign flyers.