One article showing up this weekend in the Associated Press seems fairly typical of election-year legacy media coverage at first glance. The title makes a generic accusation against “anonymous right-wing users” on social media who are spreading “false information.” Well, we certainly don’t need more of that floating around, so I suppose we’d better look into it. Unfortunately, not many details are offered beyond the identity of a pseudonymous Twitter account that posted some data from the Social Security Administration showing a spike in voter registration in several states where vast numbers of illegal migrants have taken up residence. Many of these registrations were apparently entered using only the last four digits of a social security number with no photo ID or proof of citizenship. But what the AP then fails to do over the course of more than two dozen paragraphs is establish how or why the information is “false.”
The reposts and expressions of shock from public figures followed quickly after a user on the social platform X who uses a pseudonym claimed that a government website had revealed “skyrocketing” rates of voters registering without a photo ID in three states this year — two of them crucial to the presidential contest.
“Extremely concerning,” X owner Elon Musk replied twice to the post this past week.
“Are migrants registering to vote using SSN?” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of former President Donald Trump, asked on Instagram, using the acronym for Social Security number.
Rather than dealing with the underlying issue of non-citizens registering to vote, the AP goes on at length about the number of people on social media platforms, primarily Twitter (or “X” if you insist) who use pseudonyms rather than their real names. They heavily imply that this is largely a right-wing phenomenon, despite the fact that there are plenty of anonymous lefties out there posting as well. Whether you consider that a “problem” or not is left to the judgment of the observer, but accounts such as Catturd and Libs of TicToc have gained fame and provided many observations that have turned out to be accurate.
But what about all of the new voter registrations? Was that simply “false information?” When the AP finally gets around to addressing the subject, the answer to that question seems to be a definitive “maybe” or at least suggests something that was partially inaccurate. They never come out and claim that people haven’t been registering to vote using the last four digits of a Social Security number. That is allowed in some places for reasons that aren’t clear.
States regularly send requests to the SSA asking to verify the identity of the aspiring voter and the SSA logs all of those requests. And there has been a surge in those requests. It’s also true that many non-citizen migrants are issued ad hoc Social Security numbers so they can register for a work permit. So what was the “false information?” According to the AP, there are regular instances when multiple requests are made by one or more states for identity information related to the same Social Security number. This leads them to the conclusion that “they do not necessarily correspond one-to-one with people registering to vote.”
So the Associated Press isn’t saying that non-citizens aren’t being given Social Security numbers. They aren’t saying that those numbers can be and in some cases are being used on voter registration requests. All they’re really accusing the “anonymous right-wing user” of is potentially citing an inaccurate number if some of the SSNs were checked more than once. Oh, the horror. They’ve really uncovered a simmering vat of right-wing disinformation here, haven’t they?
Keep your eyes open for more of this. It’s part of a much larger pattern. After endlessly accusing Donald Trump and his supporters of trying to steal the 2020 election, the leftist legacy media is laying the groundwork for muddying the waters of the 2024 election in the event that the polls prove to be accurate and Joe Biden manages to lose. The closer we get to November, the more of this you are likely to see. And if a large number of non-citizen migrants wind up being caught voting, you can rest assured that the Democrats will point to articles like this one in an attempt to claim that it didn’t happen.