One America News has been a major supporter of the so-called election “audit” in Arizona, focusing coverage on the process and providing sympathetic GOP legislators with free media to undermine the 2020 election. Several mainstream outlets have reported that OAN host and “audit” correspondent, Christina Bobb, is also raising money for the event on which she reports, and even provided documents to convince the Arizona Senate to support an “audit” in the first place. But the scale of Bobb’s on-air fundraising attempts is remarkable.
A Media Matters review found that from May 30 through June 28, Bobb promoted her 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Voices & Votes, 22 unique times on OAN. As the network repeats programming at all hours of the day, these 22 unique examples aired a total of 148 times during this period.
Voices & Votes was co-founded by Bobb, the CEO and president, who also said on-air that her fellow co-founder is OAN White House correspondent Chanel Rion. The group purports to raise money to “raise awareness and encourage community involvement to stand up for freedom of speech and election integrity.” In practice, Voices & Votes has been raising money for various expenses incurred by the Arizona “audit,” and attempts to spread a similar process to other states, including flying Republican state delegations to Arizona.
On OAN, Bobb repeatedly suggests that viewers donate to her (c)(4) to see the Arizona process “fully funded,” “to help get other states out to Arizona to replicate this audit,” and to “see audits performed in other states.” Bobb also calls for donations to “contribute to the effort” to pressure Republican legislatures, especially in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin, to issue subpoenas and begin an “audit” process. The group reportedly raised at least $150,000 specifically for the Arizona “audit,” and has raised an unknown amount since then.
OAN and Bobb have set up a wildly unethical perpetual “audit” machine. The network -- and Bobb in particular -- constantly tell viewers that the 2020 results are supposedly suspicious or rife with evidence of potential fraud; they point to election “audits” around the country as the only way to get to the bottom of it; Bobb then tells viewers that they can help by giving money to her non-profit, which will fund more “audits,” which the network will then cover incessantly.
Several of the 22 different fundraising appeals stood out:
- Three unique examples came in segments introduced by OAN anchors as a reporting update on the Arizona “audit,” but the roughly one-minute packages contained little or no news, only suggestive arguments for why the audience should donate to Bobb’s (c)(4) group.
- Only two examples -- one from June 4, and another from June 11 -- did not repeat on OAN, both involving direct appeals for the audience to contact Pennsylvania state senators and pressure them to “audit” the Pennsylvania vote.
- One example was led by Bobb’s criticism of Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey for allegedly becoming a “liberal Democrat” by vetoing a bill to ban so-called “critical race theory,” in addition to funding sports teams with “a blank check for Ducey’s friends to spend however they want.”
- Another example had Bobb castigating Republicans who will not enthusiastically pursue election conspiracy theories as “the biggest obstacles” for completing “audits” in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin. She again encouraged viewers to contact the representatives -- in addition to making her own fundraising appeal.
Methodology
Media Matters searched SnapHD recordings of One America News from May 30 through June 28, 2021, for uninterrupted speech from any OAN host, correspondent, anchor, contributor, or reporter using the term “voices and votes” and explaining how the viewer can donate to the 501(c)(4) group.
Owing to the repetitive nature of OAN programming, we included all repeat airings. We did not include mentions of “voices and votes” that were not accompanied by a fundraising appeal, and we did not include mentions spoken by people unaffiliated with OAN.
