Chumps are made, not born. Take CNN’s Nathan McDermott, who is not just a reporter but a member of the network’s KFILE, which they bill as “the leading investigation team for the social, mobile generation.” Facts first and all that.
CNN has been working hard these last few months to convince its viewers that all is well with mail-in balloting and to ignore Donald Trump’s crusade against the practice. They have shared helpful articles such as this one on how to track your mail-in ballot. Or this one that seeks to explode “Trump’s misleading distinction between ‘absentee’ and ‘mail-in’ ballots.” Just in case you doubt the accuracy of the information, the word experts appears in the title, and the article is filed under “Facts First.”
But back to Nathan McDermott. Last week the KFILE member, who judging from his picture looks to be a month or two shy of his bar mitzvah, tweeted:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
I just got my New York mail-in ballot today and the security envelope I’m supposed to put it in and sign has some other guy’s name and address on it.
Gothamist is already reporting other cases, so this is looking to be a widespread problem.https://t.co/lSF3abIXTB pic.twitter.com/4uWmNOwwRW
— Nathan McDermott (@natemcdermott) September 29, 2020
Looking to be a widespread problem? McDermott should probably have run the tweet past his bosses at CNN, who would have explained that he sounds like one of the nuts at OAN or Fox News Channel.
Meantime, how widespread is the problem? The Gothamist story McDermott links to reports that “multiple voters in Brooklyn told Gothamist / WNYC that they have received a mislabeled ‘official absentee ballot envelope.'” But multiple isn’t a number. 28.3 million — that’s a number! More specifically it’s the number of mail-in ballots that went missing in the last four elections. There are other numbers that further illustrate the widespreadedness of the problem. For example, in Virginia, 1,000 voters who applied for absentee ballots received multiple ballots. But then, offsetting that, is the issue of “naked ballots” — mail ballots that arrive without inner “secrecy envelopes” which invalidates them.
As for young McDermott, I can only hope CNN goes easy on him for his breach of “the code.”
