Liberal Forum

There is no voter fraud: But chasing truth in the age of Donald Trump’s big lies is almost pointless.

The New York Times published a big report today confirming what we already know: There is no significant voter fraud tainting elections in the United States.

The Times contacted election officials in all 50 states to see if any reports of voter fraud had surfaced in relation to the 2016 race, and the “overwhelming consensus” was that there were vanishingly few credible reports of fraudulent voting.

The Times report also shows something else: the disadvantage reporters, journalists, and other conscientious people face when taking on determined liars who have large megaphones and unscrupulous enablers.

I am referring primarily to the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, whose post-election allegations of massive voter fraud made the Times’ investigation necessary.

Trump, clearly irked by his historically large popular-vote deficit, tweeted on Nov. 27 that he would have won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” from the tally.

As multiple fact-checkers pointed out at the time, there was no credible evidence for Trump’s claim of widespread voter fraud.

The Times’ investigation shows that Trump was, in fact, wrong.

But let’s take a look at what happened in the three weeks between Trump’s tweet and the publication of the Times story.

Immediately after Trump made the false claim, conservative media outlets started crafting bad-faith defenses of his allegation, leaning on thin reeds of distorted and cherry-picked evidence to give the president-elect cover for his lie.

Trump supporters closed their ears to the mainstream press and turned to disreputable news sources as proof that their preferred candidate was right.

And a dishonest bit of pre-election conspiracy theorizing by a credibility-deficient right-wing cable news host was presented as conclusive evidence that Trump had told the truth.

At the same time as all that disinformation was bubbling up from the internet, high-ranking officials close to the president-elect used their positions to lend credibility to Trump’s lie.

Reince Priebus, Trump’s incoming White House chief of staff, said it was “possible” that millions of undocumented immigrants had voted, adding:
“I don’t know if that’s not true.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan pointedly declined to say anything about the veracity of Trump’s allegation, saying “I’m not really focused on these things.”

Kris Kobach, Kansas’ Republican secretary of state, stated flat-out that Trump was telling the truth: “I think the president-elect is absolutely correct when he says the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the popular vote margin between him and Hillary Clinton at this point.”