Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson delivered a breathless report he promised his viewers was the unvarnished truth about voter fraud, claiming he had undeniable evidence that people were fraudulently posing as dead voters to cast ballots in Georgia.
“What we’re about to tell you is accurate,” Carlson confidently declared last Wednesday. “It’s not a theory. It happened, and we can prove it. Other news organizations could prove it, too. They’ve simply chosen not to.”
Unfortunately for the Fox News star, other news organizations did look into his claims. Of the four examples he cited, three of those people are actually alive.
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After the Trump campaign put out a news release claiming several deceased Georgia residents voted in this month’s election—citing the examples as evidence of widespread voter fraud and a reason Trump lost Georgia—Carlson opened up last Wednesday’s program by echoing Team Trump’s allegations.
Following Carlson’s segment, a local Georgia news outlet aptly named 11AliveNews discovered that two of the allegedly dead voters accused by Trump and Carlson of fraudulently voting were alive and legally registered to vote.
Carlson profiled the late James Blalock of Newton County, Georgia, noting that he passed away in 2006 yet was shown as voting in the 2020 election. As revealed by 11AliveNews, it was Blalock’s widow Agnes who voted, using the name Mrs. James Blalock.
The Georgia news channel also found that Linda Kesler, whom Carlson claimed had died in 2003 and voted in 2020, was not the same person who actually cast a ballot.
“Linda Kesler of Nicholson was marked deceased in 2003 and did not vote. Lynda Kesler who has a different address, birthday, and zip who is entitled to vote—did vote,” 11AliveNews reported.
Two days after his supposedly explosive bombshell on dead voters, Carlson issued a correction and an apology—but only for one of his several mistakes.
“We’ve got some good news tonight, and an apology: One of the people who voted in last week’s election isn’t dead,” he said. “So apologies for that, and of course we’re always going to correct when we’re wrong. And we were.”
Carlson also remained defiant, claiming “a whole bunch of dead people did vote” and that he proved that because he “showed you their names,” even though two of those four names were known at that time to be erroneous.
Despite Carlson’s correction and apology, President Donald Trump decided on Tuesday night to share the conservative host’s report on Twitter, attaching the blaring caption “DEAD PEOPLE VOTED” while linking to a Fox News article on the segment.
By Wednesday morning, however, CNN had found that yet another one of Carlson’s wrongly accused “dead” fraudulent voters was alive and legally registered to vote.
“It’d be hard to find anyone who’s got a bad word to say about Deborah Jean Christiansen. She was well known in her community for years as a birdwatcher, an avid gardener, a committed fan of the Georgia Bulldogs,” Carlson said last week. “Those who knew her were sad when she died last May. And they might be surprised to learn that even after her death, Deborah Jean Christiansen still managed to register to vote and then cast a ballot, presumably for Joe Biden.”
Per CNN’s report, the Deborah Jean Christiansen who voted in this year’s election is a retired mental-health counselor who moved to Cobb County, Georgia from Nebraska in September. She answered the door to her home when CNN came knocking on Tuesday evening.
According to Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez, director of external affairs in Fulton County, the deceased Deborah Jean Christiansen—who passed away in 2019—last voted in 2018, and her voter registration was canceled the year she died.
“We regret any stress caused to Ms. Christiansen's family as a result of this misinformation. Unfortunately we are aware that there are individuals circulating misinformation intended to undermine trust in the elections system,” Corbitt-Dominguez said in a statement.
“As we reported last week, dead Americans voted in this election,” Carlson said Wednesday afternoon in a statement to The Daily Beast. “We shared a few examples. But on Friday, we began to learn some of the specific dead voters reported to us as deceased are in fact alive. We initially corrected this on Friday. We regret not catching it earlier. But the truth remains: dead people voted in the election.”
The Fox News host, however, did not identify any further examples of dead people voting in the election.
