Media Gaslighting Public on Voter Fraud

Since the election last week it has been a tumultuous week to say the least. What looked to be a slim victory for the incumbent president swung back in Joe Biden’s favour early Wednesday morning. As the week progressed Trump’s leads in Georgia and Pennsylvania shrunk before outright flipping in favour of Biden. 

Biden’s leads across these States widened as the week went on. All the while suggestions of his inevitable ascendancy to the presidency grew louder until finally, on Saturday, the Associated Press proclaimed the election over and Joe Biden the winner. Other outlets followed suit shortly thereafter and like that the 2020 election had come to a close. 

In fact the election was, and still is, not over. 

Declaring an outcome before all ballots have been counted or while legal proceedings play out is not always inappropriate. In 2016 Americans knew who their next president would be before they went to sleep on election night. Both of Obama’s terms as president were punctuated by decisive electoral college victories as well. It was appropriate to call these elections as early as they were, because of the margins they were won by and the lack of irregularities in close races. 

In 2020 the conditions to call an election over do not yet exist. While close races are nothing new, the number of reports of fraud and counting errors in this election cycle certainly are. In Fulton county, Georgia, a State where Biden leads Trump by only 10,000 votes, as many as 132,000 ballots may be ineligible due to change of address inconsistencies. In Wisconsin an error was discovered that would result in a 19,500 vote gain for Trump, pushing the fate of the State into toss-up territory. A similar situation also occurred in Pennsylvania where Trump lost 32,615 votes over the course of an hour as normal counting continued for Biden over the same period of time. This is a story that has played out across every single swing State. 

Legal battles are also raging across these States. Wayne County poll watchers recently filed a lawsuit against Detroit election officials, alleging that they were actively engaged in voter fraud. Pennsylvania has also been embroiled in legal battles over last minute changes made to rules regarding late ballots and deadlines for providing voter ID. Tens of thousands of ballots are potentially on the table, and judges have ruled that ballots whose accompanying ID arrived after November 12th be segregated. 

Does all this evidence point to Joe Biden losing the election? No. Am I suggesting that if he does win that it will be illegitimate? Not at all. Reports of errors and potential fraud need to be taken seriously and covered neutrally by the media. So far, this has not been the case. 

A quick Google search about voter fraud, ballots being thrown out or counting errors returns pages upon pages of results cooly dispelling these concerns. Even in a situation where 6,000 votes in Michigan were proven to have been incorrectly attributed to Biden, headlines instead shifted focus conservative reactions to the news. Articles detailing this story have one thing in common; they seek to cast the GOP as the story’s subject instead of the error.  

Outlets like CNN have set out to assure the American public that these claimed instances of voter fraud are without substance, since “voter fraud is exceedingly rare”– a direct quote from a CNN article seeking to bust “election myths”. Ongoing election fraud lawsuits and investigations have been outright ignored. After all, suggesting that any of these issues may have affected the outcomes of races pokes holes in the media narrative that this election was an out-and-out repudiation of Trump and a clear mandate for a Biden administration. 

Declaring Joe Biden the clear victor while ignoring ongoing investigations, legal actions and reports of errors are creating the conditions for political turmoil. If these outlets are forced to rescind their decision that Biden is the next president-elect many will take it as evidence that the system is being manipulated by Trump to claim victory. This aligns perfectly with prevailing narratives about Trump’s presidency being illegitimate and founded on political corruption.

For years the media has been asserting that Trump will refuse to accept a clear loss in an election, so regardless of any proof of wrongdoing or error, any attempt to challenge disputed results can be conveniently chalked up to Trump’s supposed authoritarian tendencies.

By declaring Joe Biden’s victory and ignoring irregularities the media is gaslighting voters, repeating over and over again that Biden is the president-elect before it has been made official, which no doubt will create a massive backlash if the official results upend the media’s story of the election.

The media is so hyper partisan these days they seem to think there is nothing wrong with pretending Biden is the next president of the United States, despite no official results coming in. 

The heads of these media companies would not have it any other way. If Trump does get reelected after all the recounts, audits, and litigation, they at least get the consolation prize of having caused large swaths of their audience to believe Trump stole the election just like how they caused so many to believe Trump stole the 2016 election with the help of Russia.

We can only expect more chaos in the future with a media that has so thoroughly stacked the deck against the truth.