Pro-Kremlin propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov dedicated yet another monologue in his Vesti Nedeli weekly news digest to the U.S. Democratic Party, opening his “expose” with the story of how one-hundred-year-old Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, had been brought to early voting in a wheelchair:
“They had to make sure Carter makes it. According to Carter's grandson, he really wanted to vote for the Democratic nominee. He made it.
However, in the U.S. even death cannot prevent one from voting for a Democratic Party candidate. After the 2020 election, the U.S. organization Judicial Watch examined the lists of registered voters and found 1.8 million ‘dead voters’ in 29 states. It is not hard to guess for whom the dead people voted four years ago. Those were the votes that created a big enough margin of victory for Biden.”
While it certainly takes a special tact to equate the centenarian ex-president with the dead, what is more important is that the allegations of using “dead voters” in the latest election were debunked long ago.
True, in October 2020, even before the election, the conservative activist group Judicial Watch released a report titled “New Judicial Watch Study Finds 353 U.S. Counties in 29 States with Voter Registration Rates Exceeding 100%.” In it, the Trump-friendly authors wrote:
“Judicial Watch announced today that a September 2020 study revealed that 353 U.S. counties had 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens. In other words, the registration rates of those counties exceeded 100% of eligible voters. The study found eight states showing state-wide registration rates exceeding 100%: Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The September 2020 study collected the most recent registration data posted online by the states themselves. This data was then compared to the Census Bureau’s most recent five-year population estimates, gathered by the American Community Survey (ACS) from 2014 through 2018. ACS surveys are sent to 3.5 million addresses each month, and its five-year estimates are considered to be the most reliable estimates outside of the decennial census.
Judicial Watch’s latest study is necessarily limited to 37 states that post regular updates to their registration data. Certain state voter registration lists may also be even larger than reported, because they may have excluded “inactive voters” from their data. Inactive voters, who may have moved elsewhere, are still registered voters and may show up and vote on election day and/or request mail-in ballots.
Judicial Watch relies on its voter registration studies to warn states that they are failing to comply with the requirements of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to make reasonable efforts to clean their voter rolls. Judicial Watch can and has sued to enforce compliance with federal law.”
In November, three days after the election, Snopes fact-checkers explained the role that the Judicial Watch report had played in the creation of the “ghost voters” myth that Russian propagandists continue to repeat. Their piece — “Do Hundreds of Counties Have 1.8 Million 'Ghost Voters' in the U.S.?” — explains:
“A study published by the activist legal group Judicial Watch used two different types of data to make a comparison…
Judicial Watch, a right-wing legal activist organization, claimed to have discovered in an October 2020 study that ‘353 U.S. counties had 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens.’
The study consisted of a spreadsheet comparing what it described as the most recent voter registration data for counties posted by state election officials, and the U.S. Census Bureau's most recently available data from the American Community Survey (ACS), from 2014 to 2018, specifically ‘citizen voting age population,’ or CVAP. It also included a column for counties' active voters and inactive voters, and a column for the percentage of total registered voters over CVAP.
Experts we consulted cautioned that the figures recorded by Judicial Watch, which they claimed showed that counties have ‘ghost voters,’ or more registered voters than the population of voting-eligible residents, were misleading. That underlying assumption, they said, was the result of making a ‘problematic’ comparison between two different types of datasets.
‘The American Community Survey is sample-based. It is not a census,’ statistician Philip Stark, associated dean of mathematical and physical sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, told us in an email. ‘Its population estimates between decennial censuses are approximate; the approximation will be worse at the level of counties than at the level of states. Using the ACS to determine the number of eligible voters is problematic.’
We will explain why. The intent of the ACS is to give public officials snapshots of communities in order to assess funding and services needed in those communities. Because the data is collected over a five-year period of time, comparing it to current voter registration amounts to an apples-to-oranges comparison, said D. Sunshine Hillygus, professor of political science at Duke University.
Examples of why ACS data may not be an accurate reflection of the true voting-eligible population at a given point in time are that ACS data wouldn't reflect population changes that have happened since the survey was taken — changes like people moving in or out of a community, or people who were minors when the survey was taken but have since come of age to vote. The data also may not reflect that some people are of voting age but ineligible for other reasons, like having a criminal record, Hillygus said.
‘The point is that the American Community Survey is useful as a snapshot of the population, but it’s not going to give you a precise population count on Election Day,’ Hillygus said.
Hillygus pointed to a Pew survey that indicated that millions of Americans have relocated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stark also pointed out that, ‘The study appears to use a 5-year average population (ending in 2018) but a current snapshot of voter registrations.’ The problem there is that if the population of a given area is growing, the result will be that both the five-year population average and the population in the area in 2018 will be lower numbers than the area's current population. …
Another issue with the comparison is that voter registration figures kept by state election officials are not always reflective of the exact number of registered voters in a given area, because the figures don't automatically update when a person has moved, Stark told us. Additionally, federal law and various sets of state laws govern when and under what circumstances a jurisdiction may list voters as inactive.
Generally speaking, Stark told us, if a voter hasn't voted in at least two previous general elections, jurisdictions may categorize them as ‘inactive voters.’ ... ‘In some states, the consequence of being an inactive voter is just that you don't automatically get a vote-by-mail ballot. In others, you are removed from the voter rolls — again, the consequence is that you can't vote (without updating your status), not that there are tons of ineligible voters who can nonetheless cast ballots.’”
Which brings us back to Kremlin propaganda. Interestingly, Kiselyov’s conclusion about who the mythical “dead souls” voted for failed to take into account that three of the eight states mentioned in the Judicial Watch statement — Alaska, Maryland, and Vermont — had Republican governors at the time of the 2020 election.
At the end of his monologue, Kiselyov talked about the devastating Hurricane Helene that hit the southeastern United States in late September. He quoted a statement from Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump:
“In the southern United States, you see these pictures of husbands, wives, and children who have lost everything. Everything is gone and will never be brought back. What does Kamala do? She comes out and offers $750. A TV in a person’s house is worth more than this. We have spent $200 billion sending money over to Ukraine and Russia to see young, innocent 21-year-old kids in dirty trenches pop around corners and shoot each other in the faces with AK-47s.”
As usual, Kiselyov’s coverage of American politics did not tell the full story. In reality, the $750 payment is part of a FEMA urgent relief measure designed to cover food costs and the most basic necessities for those who have been affected by the storm. Receiving it does not prevent disaster survivors from applying for other forms of assistance, such as temporary housing, compensation for damage to personal property, and funding for home repairs. (Moreover, it is unclear what Vice President Harris has to do with this payment, as distributing FEMA aid is not her mandate.)
To top things off, it appears that Eric Trump, the son of a purported billionaire, has no idea how much a typical TV set actually costs. While there are models on the market priced at thousands of dollars, Walmart, for example, sells a smart TV with an 85-inch screen (twice as large as the most common models) for just $698.