December 4, 2018

Republicans Finally Uncover Some Election Fraud

This is not North Carolina. It's not even 2018. It's a rally against election fraud in Brooklyn in 2017. But it was the best I could do.Sachelle Babbar/ZUMA

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Here’s a super-short North Carolina explainer: A Republican candidate for Congress hired a guy who then hired another bunch of guys¹ to walk neighborhoods asking people for their absentee ballots. They were “picking up ballots,” they said. When they got them, they turned the ballots over to their guy, who presumably kept the ones that voted Republican and tossed out the ones that voted for the Democrat.

This is probably the most blatant case of election fraud we’ve seen in a long time, and it’s possible that it flipped the race. Note, however, that it is absentee vote fraud, the kind that Democrats keep warning about. It is not in-person vote fraud, the kind that Republicans keep saying we need voter ID laws to stop. I’m sure you are all shocked.

Here’s the longer version if you want to torture yourself:

¹Or whatever the gender-neutral version of “guys” is.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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