Fact Check: No, Half of the Voters Taylor Swift Urged To Register Were Not Deemed 'Ineligible or Fake'
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Claim:
More than half of the voters who Taylor Swift urged to register were deemed "ineligible or fake."
Rating:
On Dec. 13, 2023, the Dunning-Kruger Times website published an article positing that more than half of the tens of thousands of voters that pop singer Taylor Swift had urged to register to vote months earlier ended up being deemed "ineligible or fake":
More Than Half of the Voters Taylor Swift Registered are Ineligible or Fake
Remember how the Left had a lovefest with Taylor Swift because of all the people she registered to vote? Well as it turns out, more than half of them are either fake or ineligible to vote.
The background of this story was that, in September 2023, an Instagram post from Swift was believed to have driven more than 35,000 new voter registrations, according to NPR, which reported on the story at the time.
As for the article claiming that more than half of the registrants were ruled "ineligible or fake," the Dunning-Kruger Times website is under the umbrella of America's Last Line of Defense, a network of content that is self-described as containing "parody, satire and tomfoolery."
Had readers kept reading the article until the end, they would have found plenty of hints that the story was not genuine (or serious), such as in this fifth paragraph that poked fun at users who didn't read the entire story:
“Even if it was only half of the 15 million people she signed up,” said Jason Eisner, “Donald Trump is going to prison.” We’re not really sure who he is or why he felt the need to interject, but the message is important enough to disseminate after the fourth paragraph when taters have already lost their train of thought and moved on to a shiny ad based on their Google search criteria.
The word "taters" is one that's used by fans of the America's Last Line of Defense network of websites to poke fun at conservative-minded readers, according to the website's about us page, which contains more information about the term.
For background, here is why we sometimes write about satire/humor.
Sources:
Mikkelson, David. "Why We Include Humor and Satire in Snopes.com." Snopes, 15 Aug. 2019, https://www.snopes.com/notes/why-we-include-humor-and-satire-in-snopes-com/.
Sullivan, Becky. "A Taylor Swift Instagram Post Helped Drive a Surge in Voter Registration." NPR, 22 Sept. 2023. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1201183160/taylor-swift-instagram-voter-registration.
