Tucker Carlson apologizes for false voter fraud claim: 'We're always going to correct when we're wrong'

Fox News host Tucker Carlson apologized to viewers after falsely reporting on voter fraud in Georgia. (Photo: Rich Polk/Getty Images for Politicon )
Fox News host Tucker Carlson apologized to viewers after falsely reporting on voter fraud in Georgia. (Rich Polk/Getty Images for Politicon )

Fox News host Tucker Carlson is apologizing to viewers for mistakenly reporting that a dead person in Georgia had voted in the Nov. 3 presidential election.

“We got some good news tonight — and an apology,” Carlson said on his Friday edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight. “One of the people who voted in last week’s election isn’t dead. James Blalock is still dead; we told you about him. But it was his wife who voted. She voted as Mrs. James Blalock. It's old-fashioned and we missed it."

He continued, “A whole bunch of dead people did vote — we showed you their names, we proved it — but James Blalock was not among them. So apologies for that. Of course, we’re always going to correct when we’re wrong. And we were.”

This week, the Trump campaign tweeted that 81-year-old Blalock, a World War II veteran who died in 2006, had voted in the election. “Sadly, Mr. Blalock is a victim of voter fraud,” read the tweet with a screenshot of a newspaper obituary. Former Vice President Joe Biden won the presidential election with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, but the president has refused to accept the results, instead filing unsuccessful lawsuits in states where he alleges voter fraud took place.

“No one quite embodies that story like James Blalock of Covington, Georgia,” Carlson said on Thursday. “Mr. Blalock was a mailman for 33 years until he passed away in 2006. Fourteen years later, according to state records, he was still mailing things. James Blalock cast a ballot in last week’s election.”

However, officials in Newton County said media reports were “inaccurate.”

“James E. Blalock Jr. passed away in 2006 and was purged from the Secretary of State database that year,” read a press release. “His widow, Mrs. James E. Blalock Jr., has always voted under that name and continued to do so through this year’s election. The Secretary of State’s database does not pick up the pre-fix of Mrs., and a check in her profile shows she is a female. Her signature on the records reflects that her voter registration was signed as Mrs. James E. Blalock Jr. and that is exactly how she signed her name when she voted in the Nov. 3 General Election.”

Local news 11Alive's chief investigator Brendan Keefe also paid a visit to the home of “sweet as pie” Agnes Blalock, who confirmed, “He didn’t vote. It was me.”

“The president of the United States was accusing you of voter fraud essentially,” said Keefe.

“Well, I know it,” said Agnes, adding that she voted for President-elect Biden. 11Alive also reported that the Jackson County Board of Elections in Georgia confirmed that a deceased Nicholson woman named Linda Kesler did not vote on Nov. 3, contrary to a tweet from the Trump campaign.

Although Biden was the first Democrat to win Georgia in 28 years, the state is conducting a post-election audit, to be completed by Nov. 18, according to the New York Times. The decision was made by Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia after President Trump requested a ballot recount.

On Thursday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that the 2020 presidential election was “the most secure” in U.S. history.

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