WorldNetDaily columnists did a lot of bogus fearmongering about voting fraud before the November election, and that spilled over to its “news” side as well. Bob Unruh brayed in an Oct. 22 article:
Early voting for the 2024 presidential race already has started in multiple states, and that means reports of voting machines flipping votes from Donald Trump to Kamala Harris already have begun arriving.
It’s a complaint that has surfaced in multiple elections already, voters choosing on screen the Republican candidate, but the machine recording it as a vote for the Democrat, a scenario that often is difficult to document because of the inability to take screen shots of a voting machine and more.
Voting-machine makers continue to stand by the functioning of their devices.
But multiple reports already have been documented in this election.
[…]Similar election fraud was being suggested in Georgia.
“According to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a constituent in Whitfield County noticed that their printed ballot did not reflect the selections they made on the voting machine, particularly changing their vote away from candidates they had chosen,” the report confirmed.
She, too, warned, “Georgia voters make sure you double check your printed ballot to make sure the candidates you voted for are listed before you turn in your ballot!!!”
But Greene was spreading falsehoods, and Unruh was all too eager to help her spread this bogus right-wing narrative. Meanwhile, Georgia Secretary of State official Gabriel Sterling said that there is “zero evidence” that machines are flipping votes in the state. Nevertheless, WND devoted its Oct. 23 “WND LIve” podcast to advancing the bogus narrative.
Unruh howled in an Oct. 25 article under the alarmist headline “Election fraud confirmed in 2024 race!”:
In a confirmation that election fraud actually is a factor, and there actually are those who are trying illegally to influence the 2024 presidential election to the detriment of voters, authorities have confirmed there have been fraudulent documents appearing already in at least two states, one of them a key swing state.
The Daily Mail reports authorities in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, have identified 2,500 suspected fraudulent voter registration applications that had been dropped off at an elections office.
They said a criminal investigation has been launched.
In other words, it’s not election fraud — it’s voter registration fraud. Not the same thing. Unruh came back with a totally bogus claim in an Oct. 29 article:
A Democrat operative is on video, and explains the process for influencing the results of an election.
“So think about it like this: if we’re going to steal an election – Let’s say Georgia is the perfect example. If you’re going to steal an election here, you’re not going to go to the outside of a Democratic Party, right? They’re not going to go outside of Atlanta or outside of Metro Atlanta and change the numbers in Republican counties. Right? Because that s*** would just be too obvious. Change the numbers in your own county. You gonna fluctuate these numbers because it will just look the same.”
The video has just been released by Steve Crowder, and features the comments of Joel Caldwell, director of operations for The Coalition For The People’s Agenda in Georgia.
Crowder noted the comments, “caught on tape,” including statements about “potentially illegal ballot harvesting schemes used to rig American elections.”
But as PolitiFact reported, the person claiming to be Caldwell — of whom there is no evidence he is a “Democrat operative” — was simply repeated discredited claims of election fraud from the 2020 election.
Unruh rehashed old, bogus grievances with voting machines in an Oct. 31 article:
Amidst the avalanche of charges of election fraud and vote-manipulation that erupted, claims often made by President Trump and his advocates, after the 2020 presidential election, Dominion was one of the voting machine companies often mentioned.
Officials defending their company so vigorously, claiming their results literally were untouchable, that they sued multiple organizations for statements made concerning suspicious developments in various vote totals.
Dominion settled with Fox News for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Actually, while there undoubtedly were malfunctions during the election, it always has remained a question whether any manipulation could have changed even the few thousands of ballots that would have been needed to overturn the results of one of the swing states.
However, the FBI did interfere, by falsely claiming that the Biden family scandals detailed in Hunter Biden’s laptop were disinformation, when it was true, and Mark Zuckerberg handed out $400 million plus to mostly leftist election officials who used their cash windfall to recruit voters in Democrat districts.
But now Dominion is back in the news, and it’s not a good way. In fact, the leftist secretary of state from Michigan, Jocelyn Benson, has confirmed that the Dominion machines are faulty, and it’s “a nationwide issue.”
Benson confirmed, “This is a nationwide issue with Dominion voter access terminals in uh in the counties that use them. The voter access terminals, of course not all all the machines just the ones that are accessible, have an issue with the uh straight party voting and a programming issue that’s affected the machines nationwide.”
As an actual news outlet reported, it’s not that big of a deal — it involves only machines for use by disabled voters, and the issue is an error message when voters try to deviate from the straight party ticket voting they indicated they would engage in at the beginning of the process. Note that Unruh repeated once again his longstanding lie that Zuckerberg foundation money went to “mostly leftist election officials” who used it to “recruit voters in Democrat districts.”
Andrew Powell made his contribution to the bogus narrative in another Oct. 31 article:
Pennsylvania voters casting their early votes are saying buses full of non-English speaking “citizens” wearing Harris/Walz stickers were being given preferential treatment and were allowed to cut into lines ahead of locals who were waiting for hours.
Eyewitnesses stated the people were brought in on buses, and were assisted through the voting process by onsite translators. Some witnesses accused election workers of changing names on ballots if they were not in the system.
As PolitiFact reported, there is no evidence these people were not eligible voters, and these people had arrived to apply for mail-in ballots.
Unruh and the other writers made no apparent attempt to verify or otherwise fact-check these claims — they had a narrative to promote after all. But with so many of these claims being so easily discredited — meaning that WND is still willing to lie to its readers and has learned nothing from its years of financial crisis caused by previous lies.
UPDATE: Unruh pushed even more fearmongering in an Oct. 24 article:
This year, there’s another threat, according to experts: the manipulation of overseas votes.
The controversy is covered in an interview Gateway Pundit Editor Jim Hoft and his investigative journalist, Patty McMurray, had with Heather Honey, a professional investigator and expert regarding the Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting ACT.
The issue arose “when Democrats began telegraphing that overseas voters could be the key in 2024 to winning and perhaps even overturning the election results one week or more AFTER the election,” said a report at the Gateway Pundit.
“As reported earlier by Patty McMurray, the DNC’s stated goal of winning the votes of approximately 9 million Americans through its Democrats Abroad website seems impossible, given that according to a recent report by the federal government FVAP website, only 4.4 million US citizens reside overseas, and only 2.8 million of those are of voting age,” the report explained.
[…]However, the report noted, “The Gateway Pundit found out during our investigations on UOCAVA voters this year just how easy it is for anyone to obtain a UOCAVA ballot to vote in the US Election.” And, it said that program allows a vote “without verification of identity or citizenship status.”
The requirements are the last four digits of a Social Security number or a driver’s license or state ID, but that even can be bypassed, the report charged, simply by checking a box claiming you have neither.
The program, in fact, “opens the door to unlimited foreign voter voting.” the report warns.
Note that Unruh is once again relying on the highly discredited Gateway Pundit. But as FactCheck.org reported:
In fact, it is perfectly legal for U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. to vote in federal elections, and there is no evidence that Democrats are trying to appeal to anyone other than legal voters. Also, while Democrats have been more active this year trying to encourage more citizens living abroad to vote, Republicans have made efforts to mobilize overseas voters as well.
[…]Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president and CEO of the U.S. Vote Foundation and Overseas Vote, told us in a phone interview from Germany that the rules would make it “nearly impossible” to pull off widespread fraud through overseas voting. Votes are cast in thousands of voting jurisdictions, she said, and so you’d have to track down not only the identity of people living overseas, but also the jurisdiction of a state where they are eligible to vote.
“The ballots are highly scrutinized by election officials,” she said. “And any sudden increase [in a voting jurisdiction] would be a huge red flag.
At WND, fearmongering comes before the truth.