It’s ghosts, goblins and yahoos season
Like Lewis Carroll’s oysters, election conspiracy theories are coming “thick and fast,” and “more, and more, and more.”
A voter engagement group yet unnamed by Pennsylvania law enforcement submitted batches of voter registration applications suspected of being fraudulent both in York and Lancaster counties. Or about 60 percent of those examined in Lancaster.
“It is not uncommon, especially in presidential election years, for paid workers of such groups to turn in fabricated applications,” explains Katie Bernard of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
It won’t matter who is paying the group. Donald Trump will use the episode to declare the election invalid when he loses Pennsylvania next week.
Bernard deconstructs Trump’s claims about what elections officials discovered:
Lancaster County was not “caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person,” as former President Donald Trump claimed on Truth Social Monday night.
Trump, who has a long history of spreading false information about Pennsylvania elections, took aim at Lancaster and York Counties, both of which have reported encountering voter registration applications that showed signs of fraud.
But Trump’s post drastically overcounted the affected documents, and went beyond reality to falsely claim that Lancaster County had encountered “Fake Ballots.”
“No actual ballots have been deemed fraudulent,” reports WGAL Harrisburg. Nevertheless, Trump is priming his base for Insurrection 2.0.
Federal officials are on alert for election conspiracy-inspired violence between now and the presidential inauguration, reports NBC’s Brandy Zadrozny:
U.S. intelligence agencies have identified domestic extremists with grievances rooted in election-related conspiracy theories, including beliefs in widespread voter fraud and animosity toward perceived political opponents, as the most likely threat of violence in the coming election.
In a Joint Intelligence Bulletin that was not distributed publicly but was reviewed by NBC News, agents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warn state and local law enforcement agencies that domestic violent extremists seeking to terrorize and disrupt the vote are a threat to the election and throughout Inauguration Day.
The report identified the potential targets as candidates, elected officials, election workers, members of the media and judges involved in election cases. The potential threats include physical attacks and violence at polling places, ballot drop boxes, voter registration locations and rallies and campaign events.
The documents obtained by Property of the People, a nonprofit government transparency group, “are unmistakably a product of a radically heightened threat environment,” said Ryan Shapiro, executive director.
FKA Twitter under Elon Musk has become a constant vector for spreading “super-nova viral lies” and disinformation about elections and stolen votes, Chris Hayes said Tuesday in introducing Zadrozny’s reporting.
The reports follow others released in recent weeks that warn of an increase in online chatter about an impending civil war, as well as several incidents of violence or thwarted attacks before the election. Agents wrote that some extremists were “reacting to the 2024 election season and prominent policy issues by engaging in illegal preparatory or violent activity that they link to the narrative of an impending civil war.”
A separate October bulletin from Colorado’s state threat assessment center highlighted threats posed by people who dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election results. The report underscored the problem of “insider threats,” in which people with authorized access to the election process might attempt to derail it. It also noted a “continued dialogue amongst individuals on extremist discussion groups and forums that the results of the 2020 elections were inaccurate.”
Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peters was sentenced on Oct. 3 to nine years in jail for distributing screenshots of election software in 2020. The Colorado bulletin suggests other potential conspirators are not deterred by her conviction.
Hayes asked how seriously we should take these warnings.
“Incredibly seriously,” Zadrozny replied. On Jan. 5, 2021, people wrote about chatter that reactionaries were headed to the Capitol, bringing guns, and “all hell’s going to break loose,” she said. Yet there wasn’t any joint intelligence bulletin released to local law enforcement. There was instead concern over trampling free speech protections. Yet this bulletin mentioned “two thwarted attempts and three actual attacks” based on election lies. Elections offices have invested in increased security for 2024.
“Maricopa County looks like a war zone, with snipers on the roof and panic buttons,” Zadrozny said.
Trump is running to stay out of jail over federal prosecutions and, like a cornered animal, will do anything to escape the trap. He’s devious, but not clever. He’s planning to run the same election schemes that failed him in 2020 in 2024, including capitalizing again on the “Red Mirage” to allege election theft and preemptively declare vistory.
Robert Reich explains how the “Red Mirage” and “Blue Shift” feed into conspiracists’ stolen election narrative (and potential 2024 election violence). “But if you know what they are, you won’t be fooled by them,” Reich naively advises.
But MAGA is a movement that luxuriates in spreading misinformation in pursuit of dominating the majority of us by hook or by crook, which, in MAGAstan is all that matters. They know it’s wrong and they don’t care.