KISS frontman Paul Stanley has dismissed misinformation about voting by mail, some prompted by the president, including false claims it will lead to widespread fraud — despite evidence showing such fraud is extremely rare. Experts say mail voting has proven remarkably secure.
Earlier today, Stanley tweeted a link to The Hill article headlined “Let’s put the vote-by-mail ‘fraud’ myth to rest”, and he included the following message: “THIS is the reality…”
Even though people have been voting by mail in the United States for nearly a hundred years, many states are expanding mail-in voting due to safety concerns about in-person voting during the pandemic. According to NPR, all states allow at least a portion of their voting population to vote by mail. Some states allow all registered voters to receive a mail ballot (also known as an absentee ballot), and some states require an excuse or reason.
Trump has repeatedly attacked state efforts to expand voting by mail, calling mail-in ballots “dangerous,” “unconstitutional,” “a scam” or rife with “fraud.” This despite the fact that numerous independent studies and government reviews have found voter fraud extremely rare in all forms, including mail-in voting, according to The New York Times.
This is not the first time Stanley has spoken out on political issues. Back in August, he blasted Trump for claiming his opponents may steal November’s election. A month earlier, he encouraged his social media followers to vote in November, saying that “we have a responsibility to our past and to our future.” In April, Stanley blamed a shifting media environment for sharpening partisan divides, saying that Fox News and CNN viewers and live in “different realities.”
“Any conversation I’ve had with somebody who feels contrary to [a particular point of view], they stick to their guns because their reality is based on information that they’re getting from a source that has their own agenda,” Stanley said during an appearance on Richard Marx‘s “Social Distancing” talk show. “I’m not saying that CNN is guiltless. It’s really become the network of the Democrats versus the network of the Republicans, and your reality and what you see as the truth, not coincidentally, is based upon which network you watch. And that’s terrible. We’re living in separate universes. If you go from one channel to the other, you think you’re in a different time.
“If I were to watch whatever network I watch that’s called ‘The News,’ it’s going to feed me what I believe to be reality,” he added. “That’s the basic truth of it. And, unfortunately, there seems to be different realities, alternate realities… There’s gotta be a truth.”
