The organization ‘True the Vote’ has been at the heart of the booming election denial movement that emerged in the wake of the 2020 election. The group rolled out IV3 initially in 2022, but the information used to challenge the registration of hundreds of thousands of people was based on unreliable data. The number of challenges made by election denial groups is expected to increase dramatically ahead of the upcoming deadline on August 7 that prohibits states from systematically removing voters within 90 days of a federal election.
But even before this deadline passes, these groups are already rolling out plans for the next phase of their efforts to disrupt the election. Groups across the US are recruiting tens of thousands of people to physically monitor polling stations, holding media training sessions, and launching an app designed to provide a real-time feed of alleged voting irregularities across the country.
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The use of new technology tools to supercharge these voter challenges is also being pushed by the Election Integrity Network (EIN), which is run by Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump adviser who was present on the January 2021 phone call when Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Georgia in his favor.
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EIN advises its network of state-level groups to conduct voter roll challenges using EagleAI, a tool designed to automatically create lists of ineligible voters. Activists in EIN’s network across the country take these lists and manually review them, and, at times, conduct door-to-door canvasses to back up their challenges—a practice that has been condemned for intimidating voters. Experts have also already pointed out flaws with EagleAI’s system: Tiny errors in name spellings, such as missing commas, can lead to names being removed from voter rolls incorrectly. The software is also reportedly facing numerous technical issues. Despite this, one county in Georgia has already signed a contract with the company to use the tool as part of its voter roll maintenance.
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One of the funders of EagleAI is Ziklag, a ultrasecretive group of wealthy individuals dedicated to pushing an overtly Christian nationalist agenda […] Ziklag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” and one of the group’s goals is to “remove up to one million ineligible registrations and around 280,000 ineligible voters” in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin.
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[There is also] VoteRef, which has obtained and published voter rolls for more than 161 million voters in 31 states. The group is run by Gina Swoboda, a former Trump campaign official and current chair of the Republican Party in Arizona. State election officials have said that VoteRef’s claims of discrepancies in voter rolls are “fundamentally incorrect,” and highlighted significant privacy concerns about the data that VoteRef is making publicly available.
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Challenges which seek to remove voters on the basis of unverified information or a timeline inconsistent with federal law will lead to disenfranchisement, unnecessary litigation, and a harassing diversion of already-stretched county resources,” says Matt Heckel [press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of State.]
The extra workload created by these mass voter challenges, in addition to potentially disenfranchising voters, also means that overworked election officials are spending valuable time on processing these claims before the federal deadline of August 7.
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Election denial groups at national and local levels are now beginning to turn their focus to the next part of their plan to lay the foundations to undermine the 2024 vote. True the Vote and EIN are already seeking to sign up volunteers to monitor drop boxes and polling locations.
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Another […] plan is the rollout of a new app called VoteAlert designed to get on the ground activists to post any irregularities they see on the ground. “This app will support real time online reporting of election incidents and a bilingual toll free call line,” [a newsletter by True the Vote reads].
Similar initiatives are occurring locally as well. Nevada’s Pig Pen Project, run by former executive directors of the Nevada GOP Dan Burdish and Chuck Muth, files voter roll challenges by using its own software as well as EagleAI. Now, they’re conducting door-to-door canvasses in collaboration with landlords in a bid to verify the lists of residents they believe are illegally registered on voter rolls. On its website, the group features multiple endorsements, including one from white supremacist Paul Nehlen.
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“Staffing poll observers, both during early voting and on election day, in addition to mass voter challenges, in addition to conducting citizen research about election conspiracy theories—these are all priorities for them,” [one observer says].
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In addition to the barriers to voting, experts worry about the impact these efforts will have on trust in the election process. And that lack of trust […] also appears to be at least part of the point.
Goddamn, the republicans really just love utelizing organisations like battalions on warmaps. It’s all about defying democracy and centralising power in favour of the Republicans.
