{"id":139307,"date":"2021-05-13T17:17:36","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T01:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=139307"},"modified":"2026-04-01T12:13:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T20:13:57","slug":"i-talk-to-joseph-cotto-about-voter-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=139307","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Mail-in Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe id=\"lbry-iframe\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/odysee.com\/$\/embed\/2021-05-13-14-36-16\/d7235aa9f4be5668b2795bb1a097d1644bc27723?r=C1izuVAJDz1uFJ8rcM7wU77wdJaqcCbm\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>On tonight&#8217;s show, Joseph Cotto read large excerpts from <A HREF=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/08\/29\/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots\/\">this August 29, 2020 New York Post article<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots<\/p>\n<p>A top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he\u2019s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades.<\/p>\n<p>Mail-in ballots have become the latest flashpoint in the 2020 elections. While President Trump and the GOP warn of widespread manipulation of the absentee vote that will swell with COVID polling restrictions, many Democrats and their media allies have dismissed such concerns as unfounded.<\/p>\n<p>But the political insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears prosecution, said fraud is more the rule than the exception. His dirty work has taken him through the weeds of municipal and federal elections in Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson County and his fingerprints can be found in local legislative, mayoral and congressional races across the Garden State. Some of the biggest names and highest office holders in New Jersey have benefited from his tricks, according to campaign records The Post reviewed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAn election that is swayed by 500 votes, 1,000 votes \u2014 it can make a difference,\u201d the tipster said. \u201cIt could be enough to flip states.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The whisteblower \u2014 whose identity, rap sheet and long history working as a consultant to various campaigns were confirmed by The Post \u2014 says he not only changed ballots himself over the years, but led teams of fraudsters and mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania \u2014 a critical 2020 swing state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I did not find the article convincing because it offered no supporting evidence. An anonymous source claiming to have committed crimes over decades, with no named corroboration, no documentary evidence presented in the article, and no verifiable specifics beyond what the Post says it confirmed internally, is not evidence of a systemic problem. It is a single anecdote from an unverifiable source with obvious motives to exaggerate his own importance and influence. The New York Post has a clear editorial interest in the story landing in a particular direction. That does not make the source fabricated, but it means the evidentiary standard requires much more than the article provides.<\/p>\n<p>The article also conflates local machine politics in New Jersey, which has a genuine and well-documented history of municipal corruption including some ballot fraud, with a national systemic problem. New Jersey municipal elections are a specific and unusual context. Extrapolating from Paterson city council races to presidential swing states is a large inferential leap the article does not earn.<\/p>\n<p>Also, if voter fraud was a large problem, a person such as myself wanting to become rich and famous would find the evidence and publicize it and became rich and famous and beloved by the right, presumably. Given that the incentives are so massive for exposing voter fraud, and nobody has done this, that indicates to me that large voter fraud does not exist. <\/p>\n<p>On April 1, 2026, Claude says: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Your incentive argument is the strongest one and it is underused in these debates. It is genuinely decisive. Voter fraud at the scale claimed would be the most important investigative journalism story in American political history. It would produce a Pulitzer, a book deal, speaking fees, congressional testimony, and permanent fame for whoever documented it rigorously. Dozens of well-funded organizations with strong political incentives spent years looking. The Heritage Foundation built a database specifically to find it. Republican secretaries of state in swing states investigated their own results. None of them found the systemic fraud the claims require. The dog that did not bark is the most important fact in the room.<br \/>\nThe correct characterization of the article is that it documents what appears to be real local machine fraud in a specific corrupt context, which is worth knowing about and prosecuting, while implying without evidence that this represents a national pattern. That implication is doing political work the evidence cannot support.<br \/>\nIf the source was genuine and the claims were verifiable, reporter Jon Levine had the story of his career sitting in front of him. A documented network of operatives who manipulated elections across multiple states for decades, with named beneficiaries visible in campaign records the Post claims to have reviewed, is not a one-day story. It is a book, a series, a federal investigation, congressional testimony, and a Pulitzer. The follow-up writes itself. You find the named politicians who benefited, you identify the specific races that were flipped, you track down the twenty operatives the source claims to have trained, you get the documentary evidence the source presumably possesses if his claims are true.<br \/>\nNone of that happened. Levine moved on. The Post moved on. The story disappeared into the ambient noise of the 2020 election cycle rather than becoming the foundational document of a sustained investigation into systemic fraud.<br \/>\nThis is precisely the pattern the <A HREF=\"https:\/\/www.everythingisbullshit.blog\/p\/incentives-are-everything\">incentive argument predicts<\/a>. When a story is explosive and verifiable, journalists and institutions follow it because the rewards are enormous. When a story produces one dramatic anonymous-source article and then nothing, the most parsimonious explanation is that the follow-up investigation did not support the original claims. Reporters do not walk away from verified blockbusters. They walk away from stories that fall apart when you pull on the threads.<br \/>\nThe absence of follow-up is not proof the source lied. But in a functioning media ecosystem with strong incentives pointing toward exposure, it is close to it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>After the show, I found that <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Benkler-etal-Mail-in-Voter-Fraud-Anatomy-of-a-Disinformation-Campaign.pdf\">Harvard released a 49-page analysis of these type of allegations<\/a> called: &#8220;Mail-in Voter Fraud: Anatomy of a Disinformation Campaign&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For the NY Post, it is Jon Levine\u2019s reporting on an alleged Democratic operative who anonymously and without corroborating evidence confessed to running a network of operatives across three states for many years and committing practically every one of the acts that President Trump alleged about how voter fraud works. The story was pumped by the President\u2019s sons and his campaign staff, and occupied Fox and Friends and Tucker Carlson for three nights&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The report by Jon Levine of the New York Post opened with the words: \u201cA top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he\u2019s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades.\u201d Levine quoted the single anonymous source as asserting that \u201cfraud is more the rule than the exception,\u201d and that he had \u201cled teams of fraudsters and mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania \u2014 a critical 2020 swing state.\u201d The source remained anonymous for fear of prosecution. The story read as list of \u201cgreatest hits\u201d from Trump\u2019s allegations over the preceding six months, hitting all the high points of the months-long propaganda campaign. It wove in a specific reference to New Jersey, where the Paterson case was a central exhibit in the Trump campaign\u2019s vote fraud claim, and asserted that \u201cThere is no race in New Jersey \u2014 from city council to United States Senate \u2014 that we haven\u2019t worked on,\u201d. It then asserted the ease of fraud associated with mailed ballots: \u201cI just put [the ballot] through the copy machine and it comes out the same way,\u201d the insider said. The story then wove in the continuous complaints about ballot harvesting, stating that: \u201cHe would have his operatives fan out, going house to house, convincing voters to let them mail completed ballots on their behalf as a public service. The fraudster and his minions would then take the sealed envelopes home and hold them over boiling water. \u2018You have to steam it to loosen the glue,\u2019 said the insider. He then would remove the real ballot, place the counterfeit ballot inside the signed certificate, and reseal the envelope.\u201d The \u201cwhistleblower\u201d then conveniently confirmed the line that postal employees were going to, as Trump had said, \u201cgrab bunches\u201d of ballots: \u201cThe tipster said sometimes postal employees are in on the scam. \u2018You have a postman who is a rabid anti-Trump guy and he\u2019s working in Bedminster or some Republican stronghold \u2026 He can take those [filled-out] ballots, and knowing 95% are going to a Republican, he can just throw those in the garbage.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>In some cases, mail carriers were members of his \u2018work crew,\u2019 and would sift ballots from the mail and hand them over to the operative.\u201d To complete the tapestry, the story harps on the fears of older voters: \u201cHitting up assisted-living facilities and \u2018helping\u2019 the elderly fill out their absentee ballots was a gold mine of votes, the insider said. \u2018There are nursing homes where the nurse is actually a paid operative. And they go room by room by room to these old people who still want to feel like they\u2019re relevant,\u2019 said the whistleblower. \u2018[They] literally fill it out for them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The story immediately exploded across the right-wing media ecosystem, with attention directed to it energetically by the Trump family and campaign. The president\u2019s sons Donald Jr. and Eric Trump tweeted it out, as did Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtugh and deputy communications director Zach Parkinson, alongside various Fox contributors and veteran conspiracist Jack Posobiec. The story alleged a widespread, systematic fraud operation, operating across multiple states for decades and involving \u201cat least 20 operatives.\u201d Yet it relied on a sole anonymous source. While Media Matters published a criticism of the article\u2019s method and its reporter, no mainstream media outlet was willing or able to pick up the mantle and seek to confirm or refute these remarkable accusations. The story remains unconfirmed except for repetition on Fox News online, on Fox and Friends on both Sunday August 30 and Monday August 31, on Tucker Carlson on Tuesday, September 1, and on online media like the Washington Examiner and the Daily Caller (itself reporting on the Tucker Carlson report). On Facebook, the Breitbart repetition of this story gained more engagement than versions elsewhere in the right wing media ecosystem. Given the momentous allegations, it is hard to imagine that no reporter in a traditional media outlet looked into this. One has to assume that no one found corroboration despite the supposed widespread conspiracy that this practice would require, but also that no one was able to specifically refute it, given that the source was anonymous. Levine too did not add followup reporting with more evidence or details. It is hard to credit the story as true based on a single report in a Murdoch-owned tabloid, alleging a widespread, many-participant, years-long criminal conspiracy carried out over several states, itself based on a single anonymous source and offering no supporting documentation. If the story is untrue, it is also impossible to tell whether Levine is the perpetrator or a willing victim of someone else\u2019s information operation, and if so, whose. What is clear is that in the propaganda feedback loop that has increasingly characterized the right-wing media ecosystem for the past three decades, and for a Trump campaign that has long been pushing every element of this narrative, this was a story too good to be checked&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>When President Trump concluded his performance in the first presidential debate on September 29, 2020, he reiterated the false claim that mail-in ballots were subject to mass election fraud, and cited this concern to justify his refusal to commit to accepting the results of the election should he be defeated. This assertion capped a six months long disinformation campaign waged by the president and his party against expansion of mail-in voting during the pandemic of 2020. There is no disinformation campaign more likely to affect voter participation in the 2020 U.S. election and perceptions of the election\u2019s legitimacy than the repeated false assertion that mail-in voting is fraught with the risk of voter fraud. This was not a social media campaign. Our study here, combining quantitative and qualitative analysis of online stories, tweets, and Facebook pages over six months, establishes that the disinformation campaign was elite-driven, and waged primarily through mass media responding to false assertions from President Trump, his campaign, and the RNC.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I also found a September 1, 2020 analysis by the left-wing <A HREF=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/voter-fraud-and-suppression\/fox-pushing-ny-post-story-alleging-widespread-mail-ballot-fraud\">Media Matters<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Fox News personalities and right-wing conservatives are pushing a <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/08\/29\/political-insider-explains-voter-fraud-with-mail-in-ballots\/\">New York Post story<\/a> published over the weekend alleging widespread mail-in ballot fraud by an anonymous whistleblower and \u201ctop Democractic operative.\u201d The Post claims the whistleblower \u201csays voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he\u2019s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The article claims the publication vetted the whistleblower\u2019s purported longtime career working as a consultant, rigging various municipal and federal elections throughout New Jersey, and as a mentor to \u201cat least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.\u201d However, the story fails to provide corroboration or a second source for any of the numerous accusations of mail-in ballot fraud that follow.<\/p>\n<p>Among the accusations are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>Nursing home employees are paid political operatives who fraudulently fill out residents\u2019 ballots for them.<\/li>\n<li>Operatives impersonate voters in states with no voter ID laws, such as New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.<\/li>\n<li>Operatives bribe homeless voters to vote during elections in New Jersey in a scheme that \u201cresembled Mafia organizations\u201d and left the actual candidate in the dark to maintain \u201cplausible deniability.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Democratic election board members took part in fraud by checking ballots to see if they have bent corners \u2014 bent by operatives engaged in fraud \u2014 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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.investigative-manual.org\/en\/chapters\/making-a-plan\/1-how-to-plan-an-investigation\/1-2-sources\/\">main principle<\/a> of investigative journalism is to <a href=\"https:\/\/archives.cjr.org\/behind_the_news\/eight_simple_rules_for_doing_a.php\">never rely on a single source<\/a> 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/new-york-post\/ny-post-settles-lawsuit-over-infamous-boston-bombing-bag-men-cover\">erroneously reported<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s been at the New York Post, Levine has:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/fox-news\/rep-ocasio-cortez-says-fox-news-and-trumps-obsessions-her-have-led-white-supremacist\">Published<\/a> what he dubbed the \u201cAOC Tapes,\u201d reporting mundane aspects of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s (D-NY) day to claim she was a hypocrite.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LevineJonathan\/status\/1251636643695603712\">Defended<\/a> right-wing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/fox-news\/media-presented-far-right-grifter-andy-ngo-credible-journalist-reporting-left-wing\">grifter<\/a> Andy Ngo and decried the \u201cunfair smearing\u201d of him.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LevineJonathan\/status\/1212476706113630208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1212476706113630208%7Ctwgr%5E&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eater.com%2F2020%2F1%2F2%2F21046579%2Fnew-york-post-homeless-man-whole-foods-backlash\">Defended<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eater.com\/2020\/1\/2\/21046579\/new-york-post-homeless-man-whole-foods-backlash\">articles<\/a> by the Post that <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2019\/12\/30\/homeless-man-turns-manhattan-whole-foods-into-his-personal-hot-bar\/\">demonize<\/a> homeless <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/01\/01\/homeless-have-turned-manhattan-underpass-into-shantytown\/\">people<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Pushed immigration fraud <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LevineJonathan\/status\/1142834901152149504\">stories<\/a> about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).<\/li>\n<li>Criticized Harvard when the university <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LevineJonathan\/status\/1140625044411957248\">rescinded<\/a> student Kyle Kashuv\u2019s acceptance based on Kashuv repeatedly saying the N-word.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/LevineJonathan\/status\/1137004258149195778\">Criticized<\/a> Carlos Maza (a former Media Matters staffer), who was being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2019\/6\/4\/18653088\/youtube-steven-crowder-carlos-maza-harassment-bullying-enforcement-verdict\">harassed<\/a> 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\u2019s 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/03\/07\/youtube-socialist-carlos-maza-slams-the-wealthy-but-lives-in-luxury\/\">reported<\/a> an in-depth profile on Maza\u2019s mother, claiming it\u2019s hypocritical for him to be a socialist if he comes from a rich family. Levine was subsequently <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/levinejonathan\/status\/1236739360910979080?lang=en\">locked out<\/a> of his Twitter account after the article included personal and identifying information about Maza and his mother.<\/li>\n<li>Pushed <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/08\/08\/nyc-councilman-credits-hydroxychloroquine-for-covid-19-recovery\/\">hydroxychloroquine <\/a>as a coronavirus treatment. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fda.gov\/drugs\/drug-safety-and-availability\/fda-cautions-against-use-hydroxychloroquine-or-chloroquine-covid-19-outside-hospital-setting-or\">Food and Drug Administration has cautioned<\/a> against the use of hydroxychloroquine outside of a hospital or clinical trial due to risk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>After the story was published on Saturday, Fox News and other right-wing personalities amplified it throughout the weekend.<\/h2>\n<p><em>Fox &amp; Friends Weekend<\/em> highlighted the mail-in voting parts of the article.<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/media\/3893631\/embed\/embed\" class=\"\" height=\"360\" width=\"480\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/media\/3893861\/embed\/embed\" class=\"\" height=\"360\" width=\"480\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/media\/3894231\/embed\/embed\" class=\"\" height=\"360\" width=\"480\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/media\/3894226\/embed\/embed\" class=\"\" height=\"360\" width=\"480\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nMail-in voter fraud has become a top-line narrative for Donald Trump and right-wing media ahead of the 2020 election. They have repeatedly sought to undermine mail-in voting in the months leading up to November, when the pandemic is likely to impact in-person voting. From Media Matters\u2019 archives:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Fox &amp; Friends<\/em> host says mail-in voting is bad: \u201cMaybe there\u2019s all types of pressure in your family dynamic\u201d [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/voter-fraud-and-suppression\/fox-friends-host-says-mail-voting-bad-maybe-theres-all-types-pressure\">7\/8\/20<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>\u201cA recipe for disaster\u201d: National and state right-wing radio hosts launch attacks on mail-in voting [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/voter-fraud-and-suppression\/recipe-disaster-national-and-state-right-wing-radio-hosts-launch\">8\/6\/20<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Tucker Carlson mocks concern for USPS and says vote by mail \u201cmakes voter fraud easier\u201d [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/tucker-carlson\/tucker-carlson-mocks-concern-usps-and-says-vote-mail-makes-voter-fraud-easier\">8\/17\/20<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Here are the facts on mail-in voting [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/voter-fraud-and-suppression\/here-are-facts-mail-voting\">8\/21\/20<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Right-wing media and the GOP have a years-long history of pushing the myth of voting fraud to undermine voting. From Media Matters\u2019 archives:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>John Fund&#8217;s book on voter fraud is a fraud [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/national-review\/john-funds-book-voter-fraud-fraud\">10\/31\/04<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>48 Years Later, Conservatives Are Making The Same Arguments Against The Voting Rights Act [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/rush-limbaugh\/48-years-later-conservatives-are-making-same-arguments-against-voting-rights-act\">8\/6\/13<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Experts: Trump&#8217;s New Voter Fraud Commission Could Be Used To Suppress Legal Votes [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/donald-trump\/experts-trumps-new-voter-fraud-commission-could-be-used-suppress-legal-votes\">5\/13\/17<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Pro-Trump media are pushing a new voter fraud conspiracy theory [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/sean-hannity\/pro-trump-media-are-pushing-new-voter-fraud-conspiracy-theory\">7\/19\/19<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Right-wing media&#8217;s new voter fraud \u201cproof\u201d is even more asinine than usual [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/breitbart-news\/right-wing-medias-new-voter-fraud-proof-even-more-asinine-usual\">9\/8\/17<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>How Tom Fitton and conservative media spread debunked \u201cvoter fraud\u201d disinformation about the Iowa caucuses [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/tom-fitton\/how-tom-fitton-and-conservative-media-spread-debunked-voter-fraud-disinformation-about\">2\/4\/20<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Fox News lets Tomi Lahren recklessly fearmonger about supposed \u201cvoter fraud\u201d amid primary elections [Media Matters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediamatters.org\/tomi-lahren\/fox-news-lets-tomi-lahren-recklessly-fearmonger-about-supposed-voter-fraud-amid-primary\">3\/17\/20<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Despite these claims, voter fraud remains a relatively insignificant issue in elections. A comprehensive <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brennancenter.org\/our-work\/analysis-opinion\/false-narrative-vote-mail-fraud?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=socialmedia\">report by the Brennan Center for Justice<\/a>, a nonpartisan law and public policy institute at New York University Law School, published in April identified only 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud from 2000-2012 \u2013\u2013 491 in literally billions of votes cast. The Brennan Center has published <a href=\"https:\/\/www.brennancenter.org\/issues\/ensure-every-american-can-vote\/vote-suppression\/myth-voter-fraud\">extensive research<\/a> debunking the large-scale accusations of voter fraud. Furthermore, Trump\u2019s own voting commissions found <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d\/Report:-Trump-commission-did-not-find-widespread-voter-fraud\">no evidence<\/a> of widespread voter fraud in 2018.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On tonight&#8217;s show, Joseph Cotto read large excerpts from this August 29, 2020 New York Post article: Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots A top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=139307\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42874],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-voter-fraud"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139307"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179638,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139307\/revisions\/179638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}