PolitiFact
Kevin Rinke’s latest campaign ad is nothing if not eye-catching.
The ad, designed to bolster the Michigan car dealer’s campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, features Rinke standing next to an actor made up to look like a zombie wearing a Biden-Harris T-shirt and multiple “I voted” stickers.
“Why is it that dead people always vote Democrat(ic)?” Rinke says, motioning to the zombie with bugged-out eyes and a wide-open mouth. Rinke goes on to accuse Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of failing to crack down on voter fraud, saying that if he wins the governorship, he’ll make sure that voters are “registered, identified and alive.”
Katie Martin, a spokesperson for the Rinke campaign, said that a “quick Google search will show multiple news articles on deceased voters voting in elections.”
Ballots are sometimes cast on behalf of dead people, though it’s a tiny fraction of all votes. However, a Google search like the one the Rinke campaign requested actually shows that its assertion that dead people “always” vote Democratic is itself a zombie claim — and no less mythical than an actual zombie.
“This ad is so incorrect it gave me a headache,” said Thessalia Merivaki, a political scientist at Mississippi State University who studies voter fraud. She said there is “zero evidence” that ballots cast by dead people account for more than a tiny fraction of all votes recorded, and there’s also “zero evidence” that...
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