The Wall Street Journal’s cowardly liar and “voter fraud” fraudster John Fund appears to be running out of fresh “voter fraud” lies to feed to Fox “News” viewers. According to Media Matters today, in advance of tomorrow’s gubernatorial election in New Jersey, expected to be a very close race, Fund appeared on Fox’s Glenn Beck show and related an anecdote of supposed fraud now going on in the Hispanic community in Camden.
“People are going door to door in parts of Camden with Hispanics that don’t have very much knowledge of English, and they’re saying, ‘We have a new way for you to vote, la nueva forma de votar; just fill out these papers.'”
Trouble is, the incident that Fund claims is going on right now actually happened in Philadelphia 16 years ago, as even Fund himself admitted in his own WSJ column published just hours before his appearance on Fox today…
The rest of his column, as usual, goes on to offer various anecdotal reports of various forms of fraud, sometimes real, sometimes imagined, from throughout the years, and raises the specter of “Groups associated with Acorn in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York [who] appear to have moved into the state.” The usual John Fund/wingnut/Fox “News” fare we now hear predictably every time there is an expected close race in any state.
To be clear, “voter fraud” does exist, usually via absentee ballot fraud, though fraud at the polling place — the type Republicans claim is rampant in order to further their push for disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restrictions that adversely affect the right to vote of millions of largely-Democratic leaning minorities, elderly, and students — is extremely rare. The far more menacing threat to elections is the ability for a single insider to tamper electronically with results on election tabulators, and/or old-school voter disenfranchisement by selectively keeping as many voters from the polls as possible, and tossing out as many absentee ballots as possible on usually rather flimsy grounds.
Even out-and-out voting machine failure, particularly in New Jersey, can result in massive disenfranchisement, as in 2008 when Gov. John Corzine himself — up for re-election tomorrow — was kept from voting for 45 minutes as the wholly unverifiable touch-screen voting machines used in the state, made by Sequoia Voting Systems, failed to boot up at all at the start of polling on Super Tuesday in Hoboken.
At this point, however, it’s become de rigueur for the wingnuts — and Fund is usually their point man on this — to seed the airwaves with all sorts of muddied doubt and shadowy ACORN straw-men nonsense in advance of close elections, to be used, as needed, to rile up the easily confused Fox “News” tea bag crowd after the election, should the race be close and their favored candidate comes up short.
I’d expect nothing less of them, and Fund will no doubt be making the rounds on Fox tomorrow to pitch the same bag of bullshit all day.
For the record, when Fund’s feet are actually held to the fire by anybody who knows his game, his allegations — almost always of Democratic “voter fraud” — fail to hold up.
In the month prior to the 2008 Presidential election he was a guest, along with me, on Peter B. Collins’ syndicated live radio show. After both PBC and myself offered tough questions to Fund, some 15 minutes into the hour-long show, he simply hung up rather than answering them, as I reported at the time.
The audio of that 10/3/08 broadcast, (40 minutes with commercials removed, though Fund is gone in the first 15) may be downloaded here [MP3], or you can listen to it below…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/PeterBCollins_Brad_JohnFund_100308.mp3]
Two weeks later, both Fund and I were guests on Fox “News” wherein I was delighted to offer a “Fox News Alert” concerning the arrest of the head of the CA GOP’s voter registration firm on charges of fraud and perjury (earlier this summer Young Political Major’s Mark Anthony Jacoby pleaded guilty), amidst all the phony sturm and drang that Fox and Fund had been on about in regard to ACORN. Fund did not hold up particularly well. Here’s that video once again…
Isn’t it odd how the Democrats always win the recounts? From Gore to Gregoire to Franken to, I’m quite confidant, Corzine, the dims was somehow manage to determing the will of the voters from some mystery count.
But that’s OK, it’s for the children and the agenda.
“Isn’t it odd how the Democrats always win the recounts?”
What you should be asking is, isn’t it odd how the NEP poll has been dead on right for years but now with E-voting like what happened in Ohio in 2004, they got it so wrong?
Kerry was winning the NEP exit poll, but then out of no where, Bush won the Election, go figure
“Isn’t it odd how the Democrats always win the recounts? From Gore to…”
Yeah, I remember when Gore won that recount. Huh???
And, oh yes, let’s not forget when those Dems won the recount in Buchanan v. Jennings, Busby v. Bilbray … shall I go on? Or are you satisfied that John Fund is giving you the actual story on this stuff, rather just the stuff he wants you to hear?
Yeesh…Don’t be a sucker, “Indy”.
Thanks for the reminder, Shortbus. Yeah, I remember when that Democrat Kerry won the recount in Ohio, too! Yeesh, again.
There’s too much money to be made punking the American public and none to be made telling the truth, but I’ll still take the truth any day.
John Fund is a clod with money, but he’s happy with that.
Both Utah senators are happy clods too, more then willing to trump up false “voter fraud.” Orrin even had me fooled. My wishful thinking got the best of me after I received a letter from his orifice, saying he was concerned about fraud before I realized “voter fraud” wasn’t election fraud.
These guys are good when they have the entire media behind them, but hard justice is in the wings.
So, if the Dems have been using the tactic for the last 16 years with success, why would it still be news now? Isn’t that your objection – that it is old news? How else to get move ballots cast that there are eligible voters?
“How else to get move [sic] ballots cast that [sic] there are eligible voters?”
How else? By telling you that’s what happened, and you being enough of a dope to believe it, and then pass it on on a blog as if it had any relationship to reality.
And no, my objection is that John Fund lied. Made something up as if it was happening now, when it wasn’t. Period.
As to the actual, documented election fraud over the years, are you sure you want to make that a Dem/Rep pissing contest? If so, you won’t care for the facts in that contest either.