Newsmax is in the tank for Republican Norm Coleman in the Minnesota Senate post-election battle against Democrat Al Franken, and as we’ve noted, it’s been peddling baseless accusations of voter fraud against Franken.
One claim peddled was that, as stated in a Nov. 9 article by Phil Brennan, “one election judge who recalled that because of a communications snafu, the vote tallies could not be transmitted to the state electronically and that the top official in his voting district, a Democrat, simply took the results and carried them to the state in her car — with no one to keep an eye on her.”
A Nov. 12 article by Jim Meyers, summarizing a Wall Street Journal editorial, repeated the claim: “In one case, Minnesota’s director of elections announced on Friday, three days after the election, that she had forgotten to count 32 absentee ballots in her car.”
Just one problem: The story isn’t true. As Media Matters details, real media outlets have told the full story: The ballots were kept in a secure location and were never left in anyone’s car. Further, even a lawyer for Coleman, Fritz Knaak, has said of the claim that “we’ve heard enough from the city attorney to let go of this. It does not appear that there was any ballot-tampering, and that was our concern.”
It appears the only people who believe there was vote-tampering in this case are those in the right-wing media — like Newsmax.