Fake News: Van Full Of Illegals NOT Caught Voting At Multiple Alabama Polling Locations

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

The ironically named fake news website nofakenews.online is up to its usual tricks with a story (archived here) titled "UPDATE: Van Full Of Illegals Caught Voting At Multiple Alabama Polling Locations" which opened:

The Democrat Party is up to their usual dirty tricks as Republican senate candidate Roy Moore fights against their cheating ways in an effort to become Alabama's next senator.

According to the Birmingham Press, polling officials caught what appears to be a "van full of illegals" who traveled to at least 7 polling locations with fake identification to vote for Moore's opponent Doug Jones.

"Law enforcement stopped the vehicle at Santa Recto Middle School in Wilmington as 13 Hispanic men were seen piling into a van after voting," the Santa Recto Observer reported Tuesday afternoon. "The same men were also seen in Smithfield, Birmingham, La Croix, and Mobile and were reported as suspicious by voting officials."

There is no "Santa Recto Middle School" and at least two thirds of the supposed countries the immigrants supposedly came from (Mexico, San Salmos, and Puerta Gorda) don't even exist. The entire story is false and appears to be a reworked copy of earlier stories about a van full of illegals voting (in different elections) on Reagan Was Right and The Last Line of Defense (now defunct, link goes to cached version).

fakeagain.jpg

In addition to that the site nofakenews.online carries a satire disclaimer at the bottom of the page which reads:

sat·ire ~ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, OR ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
If you disagree with the definition of satire or have decided it is synonymous with "comedy," you should really just move along.

The owner and main writer of the site is self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has made it his full time job to troll gullible conservatives and Trump supporters into liking and sharing his articles. He runs several other websites such as asamericanasapplepie.org, ourlandofthefree.com and freedumjunkshun.com. Sometimes he is also known under his nickname "Busta Troll". He has at least one accomplice who writes under the pen names "Freedom", "Captain Jellypants", "Butch Mannington" or "Captain Buck Atlantis".

Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who often omit the satire disclaimer and any other hints the stories are fake. Blair has tried to get these sites shut down in the past but new ones keep cropping up.

If you see one of his stories on a site that does not contain a satire disclaimer, assume it is fake news. If you do see the satire disclaimer it is of course also fake news.

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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