First of all there is no report by VoteFraud.org. The link by InfoWars actually goes to the following 2 tweets by Gregg Phillips.
“We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens,” tweeted Phillips after reporting that the group had completed an analysis of a database of 180 million voter registrations.
“Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million. Consulting legal team,” he added.
Politifact contacted Philips and he besides claiming he wasn’t affiliated with VoteFraud.org — even that claim remains on his Twitter profile — and that he has not released the details of his “report” until it’s completed after he’s completed “analyzing the data”, yet he wouldn’t state where the data came from or what his methodology was.
And who is Phillips?
According to his page on LinkedIn, Phillips is a former finance director of the Alabama Republican Party. He also served as executive director of the Mississippi Republican Party and was managing director of a super PAC that supported Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign for president.
So we have no real answers yet, but Politifact soldiered on and did find a “report” on this but it was from 2014, not last years’s election.
While we have no idea how Phillips arrived at his claim that 3-million noncitizens voted, people who have made similar claims in the past have cited a 2014 report that claims 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010 midterm congressional elections.
That report was based on data from a Harvard survey of people. But the data was flawed, which created flaws in the subsequent report.
The authors of the survey say a small percentage of respondents, who are citizens, accidentally misidentified themselves as noncitizens on the survey. This is because the respondents didn’t read the question carefully and accidentally selected the wrong response to the question.
…
"When we took out people who changed their answer on the citizenship question and only look at people who answered consistently that they were noncitizens, we found no reported noncitizens who voted," Schaffner told PolitiFact
And there was another attempt to prove illegal voting in Florida during 2012.
In 2012, Florida Governor Rick Scott’s administration started an effort trying to crack down on noncitizens voting by comparing driver's license data against voter rolls.
Through this process the Florida Department of State created a list of 182,000 potential noncitizens that had voted. That number was whittled down to 2,700, then to about 200 before the purge was stopped amid criticism that the data was flawed given the number of false positives — including a Brooklyn-born World War II vet.
Ultimately, only 85 people were removed from the voting rolls. State officials began to pursue a second attempt at a purge in advance of the 2014 election but then abandoned that effort, too.
So the 2012 “proof” was bogus, the 2014 “proof was bogus and Phillips “proof” on wide-spread voter illegal voter fraud in the 2016 is permanently away without official leave.
Almost everyone even Lindsey Graham has dumped cold water on this idea, and then you have that shining light of reasonable rationality and alt-factiness, Steve King.
During an interview with King on MSNBC, host Hallie Jackson noted that Trump told congressional leaders on Monday that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally, causing him to lose the popular vote.
“Let’s be clear, that’s not true,” Jackson pointed out. “There’s no evidence that exists.”
“I hadn’t heard the 3 to 5 [million], I heard the 3 million,” King said. “There is data out there that is sample data from certain counties — two counties in Virginia, for example, and other counties scattered around the country. And I took that article when I first saw it come out a couple of three months ago and did an extrapolation calculation on how many illegals could have or could be voting in the United States.”
“The number I came up with off of that extrapolation was 2.4 million,” the congressman continued. “So, it’s plausible. The number of 3 million sounds like it’s a plausible number to me.”
Yeah, right Steve. Whatever.
And then there is this constant claim by the Trump camp that their “legitimacy” is being questioned in a broad widespread manner because of the allegations of improper influence by Russia and the FBI as we’ve seen by Kayleigh McEnany.
“Yes, we all know he talks about poll numbers and victories and that he will question the popular vote,” McEnany replied. “He does it, and the media goes into a tail spin, and meanwhile, the media and people watch–”
“Kayleigh, he is saying that fraud occurred on the most massive scale of an election in our history,” Bernstein said as he cut her off. “It’s not true, it’s false.”
“Well, you say it’s false but there is no way to disprove it,” McEnany shot back.
“It’s been disproven, there’s no proof whatsoever,” Bernstein replied.
“There is no evidence to the contrary,” McEnany told the frustrated Bernstein as she cited a “2008 peer-reviewed study” that had nothing to do with the 2016 election
“There is no evidence to the contrary?” Well there’s no evidence to the contrary that Russian Intelligence has sexual and financial compromising information on Trump and despite the increasing veracity of those reports when CNN simply reported that he had been briefed about such claims the Trumpsters went ballistic and when Rep. John Lewis said he didn’t feel this was a “legitimate” Presidency based on what he heard during a classified briefing on Russian interference Trump defamed and libeled him and his district.
This tendency is a not bug in this Presidency, it is a primary feature.
The main issue here isn’t the veracity of this particular Alternative Fact, it’s the repeated tendency for Trump to believe fully in self-aggrandizing conspiratorial bullshit. There is a clear problem in the manner in which he analyzes incoming information, prioritizing that which makes him feel better over that which is true. It's like confirmation bias on mescaline.
Confirmation bias occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When people would like a certain idea/concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to stop gathering information when the evidence gathered so far confirms the views (prejudices) one would like to be true.
Once we have formed a view, we embrace information that confirms that view while ignoring, or rejecting, information that casts doubt on it. Confirmation bias suggests that we don’t perceive circumstances objectively. We pick out those bits of data that make us feel good because they confirm our prejudices. Thus, we may become prisoners of our assumptions. For example, some people will have a very strong inclination to dismiss any claims that marijuana may cause harm as nothing more than old-fashioned reefer madness. Some social conservatists will downplay any evidence that marijuana causes harm.
Confirmation bias can also be found in anxious individuals, who view the world as dangerous. For example, a person with low self-esteem is highly sensitive to being ignored by other people, and they constantly monitor for signs that people might not like them. Thus, if you are worried that someone is annoyed with you, you are biased toward all the negative information about that person acts toward you. You interpret neutral behavior as indicative of something really negative.
This is not just an isolated issue, this is part of a long standing pattern with Trump from his birtherism to his false claims about “Mexican Rapists” and “Celebrating Muslims” and “China Trade” and just about every other policy issue he espouses including his belief in “American Carnage.”
How this becomes dangerous when Trump hold false beliefs such as the idea that “regulations” are what is holding because the magic engine of the economy.
He’s freezing grants and regulations that limit carbon emissions from power plants and autos which will have a direct impact on holding back air pollution and health as well as impacting the green house effect. He’s blocked the ability of the USDA, NIH and HHS to communicate with the public and also Congress.
Multiple federal agencies have told their employees to cease communications with members of Congress and the press, sources have told The Huffington Post.
The freeze has startled aides on the Hill and people at those agencies, who worry that it could abruptly upend current operations and stifle work and discussions that routinely take place between branches of government
This is very serious and quite possibly illegal, directly violating the mandates of these agencies which is to protect and inform the public with the consent and oversight of Congress.
Not only can’t we trust what comes out of the mouth of Sean Spicer, we won’t even be able to hear what the truth is about the current state of our environment, the quality of our food or our health care.
This is bad, really really bad.
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