Opinion

Get Ready For A Plethora Of Election Deniers (And This Time, The Media Will Be Cohorts)

   DailyWire.com
US President Joe Biden boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on October 21, 2022, in Washington, DC. - Biden is travelling to Delaware.
OLIVER CONTRERAS/AFP via Getty Images

Democrats and their media minions have been busy planting the seed that the 2022 midterm elections could be rife with hacking and interference from extremists, which might make the outcomes “illegitimate.”

Sound familiar? That’s what some Republicans said last go ’round, when Donald Trump lost his re-election bid.

As we know now, nothing was ever proven to have been amiss in the 2020 presidential election. Were there oddities and unexplained phenomena that sure looked like fraud or ballot tampering? Absolutely. But that’s why we have courts of law, to sort through those things (and before you claim all the courts in the land are prejudiced against the former president, please step back from that precipice).

This time around, Politico, a left-wing website founded by two Washington Post reporters, dropped a bomb on Election Day eve.

“6 election security threats to watch for on Election Day,” the headline screamed.

“The midterms face a bevy of digital threats, from stolen Twitter accounts to hacked election websites, that could spark chaos, confusion and unrest that last long after the polls close,” the site wrote.

Wait, wasn’t that last time, too? Well, no, the Politico liberals say.

“The 2020 presidential election was rife with allegations of voting machine hacks that were later debunked. Yet there are real risks that hackers could tunnel into voting equipment and other election infrastructure to try to undermine Tuesday’s vote,” reporter Eric Geller wrote.

The article goes on to outline the half dozen “security threats,” including “campaign social media account hijacking.”

“Hackers could take over candidates’ or campaigns’ social media accounts on Election Day and make inflammatory comments designed to alienate voters or spread false information about how or when to vote. These impersonation schemes could fuel distrust of the election process and knock campaigns off balance in the home stretch of the contest,” the piece said.

Well, hang on a sec. Let’s put a bit of responsibility here on the voter: No.1, maybe find out where you’re supposed to vote and what the poll hours are. No. 2 (and this is an easy one that applies to all of life): Don’t believe everything you read or hear.

The journalists at ABC News piled on with this breathless tweet on Monday: “HIGH ALERT AT THE POLLS: Intelligence officials warn of ‘heightened threat’ from domestic extremists on election day. @pierretabc has more details.”

“Intelligence officials say extremists could target election related infrastructure, personnel or even voting sites,” a talking head said on “Good Morning America.”

But chief justice correspondent Pierre Thomas said, “there’s good news. … I recently spoke to the homeland security secretary and he said there’s no evidence of hacking in any state or anything significant that should affect people’s ability to go out and cast a vote.”

Yet he threw in some conspiracy stuff without one ounce of corroboration. “The amount of online chatter in the dark corners of social media does have them concerned, what’s driving the anger, the hot-button issues that divide us and the potential of violence from radicals who embrace that lie, that there’s widespread election fraud.”

There are election deniers at NBC News, too, who warn about “misinformation” on social media.

“Social media platforms including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Google’s YouTube are readying themselves for another heated midterm Election Day,” CNBC reported Monday. “The platforms have various policies about whether they allow political ads and have all created plans to prevent users from being misled about voting and the election.”

The timing of the reports — all the day before Election Day — exposed one clear intent: to muddy up the waters. Democrats are going to lose the House in a landslide (some estimates run 50 seats or higher) and most likely will lose the Senate, with some pollsters saying they could lose as many as five seats. But this way, the deniers have at least stoked some doubt about the results.

Axios, founded by one of the founders of Politico, jumped in with this old narrative about Russia: “A suspected Russian disinformation campaign is targeting far-right U.S. audiences to undermine support for Democratic candidates ahead of Tuesday’s elections.”

Huh. Just Democrats. Might that have happened last time with Republicans? Pshaw!

CNN ramped up the rhetoric in an October 28 piece: “Federal officials on Friday warned that domestic violent extremists pose a heightened threat to the 2022 midterm elections, in a joint intelligence assessment sent to state and local officials and obtained by CNN.”

“Law enforcement across the country is on the lookout for threats to election officials, such as, intimidating behavior directed at voters, vandalism of ballot boxes and the potential of people visiting polling sites and questioning the legitimacy of voters, according to Cohen, who continues to work with state and local law enforcement,” the piece said.

And USA Today offered this doozy: “Disinformation is a midterm elections threat that could keep millions of voters at home, analysts say.” For the record, the article never again mentions the “millions of voters,” let alone offers any evidence of the claim.

Meanwhile, the White House has also floated another canard to explain away the drubbing in the event of horrific Democratic losses on Election Day.

Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre last week said “voter suppression” and “high turnout” can take place at the same time when asked about election participation in Georgia. When the state enacted new voting laws, President Joe Biden said they amounted to “Jim Crow 2.0” — but Georgia is experiencing record early voting turnout.

“And speaking generally of course, more broadly, of course, high turnout and voter suppression can take place at the same time,” Biden’s mouthpiece said. “They don’t have to be, one doesn’t have to happen on its own. They could be happening at the same time.”

Jean-Pierre was asked if the White House is “observing instances of voter suppression in Georgia and other states that adopted some of these laws over the last two years.”

“Look, we have seen ourselves, I just laid out — we’ve seen ourselves, from what legislation, state legislation we have seen across the country that is suppressing the right to vote, and look, we believe that people should have the fundamental access to voting,” she said.

Just so you know, it’s OK for election deniers to squawk this time around — because it’ll be the Democrats who lose big.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.

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The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  Get Ready For A Plethora Of Election Deniers (And This Time, The Media Will Be Cohorts)