Dear Editor,

I read most of the letters in the Oakdale Leader, and I pay the most attention to those I disagree with. The September 16th letter was one of them. Its theme was that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election because of voter fraud, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is “spreading misinformation.”

The letter’s only source was the Department of Justice website, so I checked it. Misinformation can be a deliberate lie or unintentional. The unintentional kind often happens when a person accepts a source as true without verifying it. The DOJ list doesn’t always say whether a “voter fraud” charge involved a crime or an error, such as an unsigned ballot or late postmark, or whether the person was convicted or only accused. In my opinion, the current DOJ answers to Trump rather than the Constitution, so I will verify anything it says with other sources.

Other sources show significant voter fraud is rare. KCRA reported on September 17th, on a study of presidential and midterm elections from 2016 to the present, covering 685 million votes, that found 513 proven crimes of voter fraud (0.00007%). On December 17, 2021, PBS News cited an Associated Press report of 475 potential instances among 25 million votes in the 2020 presidential election ( 0.000091% of total votes cast).

Before calling something misinformation, we should check more than one source.

Sincerely,

Larry Podolsky