Voter Fraud: Myth and Reality Blend Together and, Unfortunately, the Myth Matters More
American Eclectic posts articles twice a month, on the 1st and 15th. This is the second year of publication; previously published articles can be found on my site.
March 15, 2024
In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, starring Lee Marvin, James Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles) by the time the movie reaches its conclusion and Ransom Stoddard (Stewart) has told his story to a reporter that he did not kill Liberty Valance (Marvin), the legendary gun fighter of the Old West in a shootout, but Tom Doniphon (Wayne) did, an exchange takes place between Stoddard and the reporter:
Stoddard: You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?
Scott: This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
A biographer of John Ford, the well-known director of this and many other movies (137 in all) wrote of him, “Ford used filmmaking as his refuge from reality, a way to create a safe, privileged, mythical world that functioned according to his own private rules.” Ford’s movies weave through the conflicts between what is true and what is legend and what is tradition and what is modernity.
Ford recalled meeting Wyatt Earp, the well-known lawman when he was young. Earl died in 1929. Ford was impressed that he got an insight into how to look at the image of the West versus reality from meeting Earp. Earp’s wife said of her husband and that he came to recognize that whatever he said about the West needed to be embellished since “tall tales” were heard, not reality:
[E]xperience with Hollywood was like his experience with newspapermen. After he discovered that they paid no attention to what he told them, Wyatt’s sly sense of humor was directed toward the movie people. He pulled their legs, telling them the sort improbable things found in Western fiction stories. To his amazement, they swallowed these tall tales, hook, line and sinker, but always skeptical of the truth.
John Wayne once discussed the oddity of watching a scene in a Western where Indians attacked a stagecoach but never killed the horses to stop the stagecoach. The myth was more entertaining and believable.
Legend lives on.
Regarding how Americans perceive and understand the American Civil War, much of it comes from movies. One scholar wrote:
David O. Selznick almost certainly never issued these instructions to an underling: “Find me a good piece of material laying out the Lost Cause interpretation of the Confederacy experience. The dramatic potential is important but will be secondary to our getting the interpretation right.” Neither would anyone in Hollywood insist that a historical drama, above all, reflect the insights of the best recent scholarship-at least not anyone who hopes to attract and satisfying paying customers. The complexity of scholarly investigation translates poorly to cinematic treatments in which images and sound often take precedence over dialogue.
Selznick was a well-known Hollywood film producer whose best-known work was Gone With The Wind.
The Battle of the Bulge (1965, starring Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw, Robert Ryan, Charles Bronson) is an entertaining movie about a pivotal battle in the Second World War and is still available on cable-access television. I found it interesting that in the case of Gone With The Wind, there is now an introduction added addressing the problems with the movie and how it depicted slavery. In the case of the Battle of the Bulge, there is no similar introduction added that the movie is nowhere close to accurate. Dwight Eisenhower, former President and, more importantly, from the point of view of this movie, the former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the Second World War, felt the need to publicly criticize the inaccuracy of the movie. Very unusual, a former President publicly criticizing a movie. In a June 1945 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, issued soon after the war ended, the Battle of the Bulge was pointed to as one of the six decisive turning points in the war in Europe, with Eisenhower playing a crucial role in all six, including the Battle of the Bulge. The producers of the movie responded to Eisenhower’s criticism that they wanted to reach a younger audience and were appealing to them, accuracy mattered little. Oddly, the technical advisor on the film was Colonel Meinrad von Lauchert, who commanded German Panzer tanks at the Battle of the Bulge.
One study on examining what younger Americans know about the Vietnam War stated, “the single most important source of knowledge about the Vietnam War is the film ‘Forrest Gump.’”
There is a relevancy to these movies, the way we understand America’s past, and what has developed about the issue of voter fraud and the 2020 Presidential election. There may be a private feeling by some cross-section of normal Republicans that they want to get beyond the Donald Trump presence in the Republican Party and in American politics, but the issue of voter fraud is taking on a life of its own, much as legend mattered to a newspaper reporter in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. Unfortunately, a Trump legacy will live on as a belief that widespread voter fraud is real, regardless of whether it is a Presidential election or any other election in America.
True the Vote, a conservative organization that has pushed the issue of voter fraud for years, was in a Georgia court in February and admitted it had no evidence of illegal ballots being stuffed in boxes during the 2020 general election. In 2021, they filed a complaint with the Georgia Secretary of State that they had “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta.” Well, no evidence existed but what they said in a 2021 complaint was heard by more people and believed than what they recently said in court.
True the Vote was founded in 2009. The organization was an outgrowth of the King Street Patriots and they believed there was an issue of voter fraud associated with Harris County, Texas. Harris County had the second largest voter turnout in the state and, that year, Barack Obama won 50.4 percent of the vote to John McCain getting 48.8 percent. The King Street Patriots saw a problem with a shortage of poll workers and felt that created the potential for voter fraud. No evidence of voter fraud was uncovered but Catherine Engelbrecht who was with the King Street Patriots and then founded True the Vote had her star rising in conservative circles because of her focus on voter fraud. Well before Trump, voter fraud was rummaging around in conservative circles.
Truth the Vote got its reputation associated with exposing that some 23,000 voter registration forms that were turned in by ACORN, a community activist group, were questionable. Voter registration fraud is different than voter fraud. Whether that distinction mattered, or still matters, is lost to the continuous drumbeat that voter fraud exists. In the 2008 Presidential election, the McCain campaign ran an ad stating there was “massive voter fraud” associated with ACORN. The issue of ACORN reached the level of being investigated by the FBI and by the state of Connecticut. In 2011, the Election Enforcement Commission in Connecticut issued a report which, in part, stated:
The evidence does not provide a sufficient basis to determine that Connecticut ACORN had an institutional or systematic role in designing and implementing a scheme or strategy to fraudulently register or enroll electors ... prior to the November 2, 2008 election.
The 2008 election fueled speculation about voter fraud. Fox News pushed the issue of voter fraud in Ohio. Greta Van Susteren, then a Fox News host stated in one segment about two weeks before the election, “This is a bombshell. The United States Supreme Court has reversed a lower court's ruling that Ohio must adopt stricter issues to prevent voter fraud.” Susteren in her piece cited that a federal judge, prior to the Supreme Court ruling referred in his ruling that questionable activity by ACORN played a role in his decision.
The issue of voter fraud did not disappear with the 2008 election. In fact, an Ohio newspaper noted a year after the election that, “It's been a year since Barack Obama won the presidency, but one controversy from the 2008 election in Ohio still hasn't been fully resolved: allegations of illegal voting.”
On election night in 2008, when Fox News called Ohio for Obama, Megyn Kelly, then an anchor for the station felt the need to walk and find the station’s pollsters who called the state for Obama and confront them. She had trouble believing that Ohio went for Obama. Remembering that Trump was furious with Fox News because it called Arizona for Biden in the 2020 election has a similar feel.
In the 2012 Presidential election, Fox News, again, raised the issue of voter fraud. In 2012, Obama ran for re-election against his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. A Fox News headline more than a year after the election stated, “Non-citizens caught voting in 2012 presidential election in key swing state.” The Ohio Secretary of State’s Office found 17 non-citizens cast ballots in the 2021 election.
Furthermore, a Hamilton County poll worker, a Democrat, boasted that she voted twice, once for herself and again for her sister. She was sentenced to a five-year prison term but was released early. She subsequently appeared on stage at a get-out-the-vote rally and was embraced by the Reverend Al Sharpton. Sharpton does not seem like he always makes the best decisions.
The Fox News article on non-citizens voting stated, “The alleged crime would be a notable case of voter fraud in a key swing state.” Obama’s winning vote margin over Romney was 103,481 votes in Ohio—17 votes would have mattered little. Even if Romney won Ohio, instead of 332 to 206 Electoral College votes, Obama would have won by 313 to 224.
Mike Lindell, known for his MyPillow commercials, has to pay $5 million to a software engineer. Lindell claimed he had proof that China interfered in the 2020 Presidential election. Lindell offered the $5 million to anyone who could prove his claim wrong. When he was proven wrong, he decided not to pay, hence there was the need for court action. Lindell will probably appeal the ruling. The computer forensics analyst who won the challenged stated he voted for Trump on both 2016 and 2020. He added, about finding Lindell wrong and winning in court, “Getting the truth out is the most important thing.” Probably not.
Dan Patrick, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, did something like Lindell, he offered up to $1 million to anyone as he put it, “to incentivize, encourage and reward people to come forward and report voter fraud.” Patrick was motivated to find fraud associated with the 2020 election. About a year after he posted this challenge, a poll worker in Pennsylvania collected $25,000 for proving that a Republican who voted subsequently tried to vote for his son.
Will True the Vote admitting in court that they had no evidence of voter fraud matter to people that want to believe it. True the Vote is the source of the information for the film 2000 Mules by Dinesh D’Souza-a questionable documentary on voter fraud. While 2000 Mules will not rise to the level of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, its impact is what will matter. OK, D‘Souza’s film is supposed to be a documentary not classic movie making, but as film,
it carries an impact that reports, studies, even questionable ones, will not have. Do not be surprised if 2000 Mules is suddenly referred to by someone claiming evidence of voter fraud. One article referred to the film as “something of a sacred text in the discredited ‘Stop the steal’ conspiracy theory narrative.” The reach of 2000 Mules cannot be discounted—regardless of the fact it has been challenged as lacking credibility from the moment it was released. In less than two weeks after it was released, by early May 2022, it grossed $10 million in revenue. A conservative news site stated at the time, “[The film] has already become the most successful political documentary in a decade. Already, 1 million people (about the population of Delaware) have seen the movie, with more views coming.” Soon after the film was release, D’Souza stated:
The movie is a success financially for sure, but also it is successful in its political and cultural influence. It’s the most talked about movie out there right now, making headlines in multiple publications, and is trending extremely high on social media.
He has a point. There is the court action with True the Vote admitting they have no information of voter fraud, again the basis of D’Souza’s film, but that may not matter. Legend matters more and this film’s impact on people that saw it or even heard about it and want to believe it is what counts.
True the Vote by raising issues of voter fraud beginning with the 2008 election and Fox News raising similar issues in 2008 and 2012, both in some ways were built on rumors and hearsay that go back decades. Richard Nixon wondered about voter fraud associated with his close election loss to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential election. Kennedy beat Nixon by 112,000 votes but the 9,000 votes in Illinois and the 46,000 in Texas were the focus of attention. Kennedy’s slim margin of victory in those two states had Republicans urging Nixon to contest the election and challenge the results in Illinois and Texas. Nixon conceded to Kennedy and told Earl Mazo, a journalist, “our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis.” Not exactly the stuff of believing he lost the election honestly. In fact, years later Nixon wrote that there was voter fraud in the 1960 election. In 1966, in a letter to Mazo Nixon wrote:
[S]ome enterprising reporter will, at some time in the future, write a story on the vote frauds of 1960 which might have a great national impact. I suppose, of course, that additional time must expire so that such a work would not appear to cast a reflection on the Kennedy memory....
Myth comes from somewhere and can be built until one big event and one significant person can raise it to a level it never had before. Can the genie be put back in the bottle? Probably not. This is Trump’s legacy, the stain he has placed on American elections—all elections not just the Presidential election. Embers can be found that turn a ridiculously small fire into a blaze. The Ohio woman embraced by Sharpton, a Texas Lieutenant Governor issuing a challenge and then paying, ACORN and voter registration, finding non-citizens who voted, that may matter because they can have an outsized and disproportionate impact on what many believe, just as Wyatt Earp’s wife noted that her husband came to realize myth mattered more than whatever was real that he said about the West. A pillow guy having his claim of a foreign government interfering in an election found wrong and True the Vote being found to lack evidence of voter fraud, will be drowned out by passionate true believers. We are where the legend becomes fact which is unfortunate.
Notes
Scott Bomboy, “The drama behind President Kennedy’s 1960 election win,” National Constitution Center (November 7, 2017): https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-drama-behind-president-kennedys-1960-election-win
Russ Bynum, “Conservative group tells judge it has no evidence to back its claims of Georgia ballot stuffing,” AP (February 14, 2024): https:// apnews.com/article/georgia-elections-true-vote-ballot-stuffing-199113b47bc2df79c63fdf007cd23115
Sharon Coolidge, “Both parties jeer embrace of fraudulent voter,” Cincinnati.com The Enquirer (March 21, 2014): https:// www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2014/03/21/democrats-convicted-poll-worker-hero/6712981/
Margaret Crocco & William Gaudell, “Media Literacy and the Fog of War,” EducationWeek (August 25, 2009): https:// www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-media-literacy-and-the-fog-of-war/2009/08
“Eisenhower’s Great Decisions: The Battle of the Bulge,” The Saturday Evening Post, History, Post Perspective, World War II (June 22, 2021): https:// www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2021/06/eisenhowers-great-decisions-the-battle-of-the-bulge/
Gary Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2008)
Matthew Gaskill, “Eisenhower Came Out of Retirement to Denounce the Movie “Battle of the Bulge” War History Online (July 29, 2018): https:// www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/battle-of-the-bulge-film.html
Brian Lockhart, “Two years later, ACORN cleared of voter-fraud charges,” ctpost (February 2, 2011): https:// www.ctpost.com/local/article/two-years-later-acorn-cleared-of-voter-fraud-993123.php
Joseph McBride, John Ford: A Life (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2001)
“MyPillow founder Mike Lindell is ordered to pay $5M in election fraud challenge,” npr (April 21, 2023): https://www.npr.org/2023/04/21/1171193932/mypillow-founder-mike-lindell-is-ordered-to-pay-5m-in-election-fraud-challenge
“Ohio Voter Fraud Controversy Not Over?” Fox News (October 19, 2008): https:// www.foxnews.com/story/ohio-voter-fraud-controversy-not-over
“Richard Nixon: Important 1966 Letter Alleging Voter Fraud in the 1960 Election,” WorthPoint: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/richard-nixon-important-1966-letter-1877074964
Blake Stilwell, “This ’65 war movie was so bad that Eisenhower came out of retirement to publicly slam it, “ We Are The Mighty (June 22, 2023): https:// www.wearethemighty.com/popular/this-65-war-movie-was-so-bad-that-eisenhower-came-out-of-retirement-to-publically-slam-it/
Eric Shawn, “Non-citizens caught voting in 2012 presidential election in key swing state,” Fox News (December 18, 2013): https:// www.foxnews.com/politics/non-citizens-caught-voting-in-2012-presidential-election-in-key-swing-state
David Smith, “Trump’s ‘big lie’ hits cinemas: the film claiming to investigate voter fraud,” The Guardian (May 29, 2022): https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/29/donald-trump-big-lie-film-2000-mules-dinesh-dsouza
Praveena Somasundaram, “ Mike Lindel must pay man $5M in ‘Prove Mike Wrong’ challenge, judge says,” Washington Post (February 22, 2024): https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/02/22/mike-lindell-election-dispute-decision/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3cd537b%2F65d77def1782475ec0cacd46%2F5e710a4dade4e21f59e9d891%2F18%2F54%2F65d77def1782475ec0cacd46
“Vote-fraud cases linger from 2008,” The Columbus Dispatch (November 15, 2009): https:// www.dispatch.com/story/news/2009/11/16/vote-fraud-cases-linger-from/24231697007/
Paul Whitefield, “Fox News ‘catches’ voter fraud in Ohio: Throw this red herring back,” Los Angeles Times (December 18, 2013): https:// www.latimes.com/opinion/la-xpm-2013-dec-18-la-ol-ohio-voter-fraud-fox-news-20131218-story.html
2000 Mules Becomes the Most Successful Political Documentary in a Decade, Seen by 1 Million,” businesswire (May 12, 2022): https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220511006114/en/2000-Mules-Becomes-the-Most-Successful-Political-Documentary-in-a-Decade-Seen-by-1-Million