election integrity BS
somewhat belated generic node (see cleta pjt)
NOTE NEG TAG B/C EROSION OF TRUST CRED RELIABLE NORMS
no merri
SEE TRUMP COUP 2
SEE GOP STEAL ELECTION
SEE CLETA HEATHER HONEY DAVID H TEAM AMERICA INSIDE THE WIRE
SEE XO 7 25 3 26
see Big lie 5 SIX
see voter suppression 1-5
SEE EAGLEAI BOGUS
see voter fraud harvest mule
see poll watcher
see voter roll purge eagleAI
// GERRY TEXAS ABBOTT PAXTON MINORITY RULE PWR ANY MEANS DIRTY TRICKS
illeg voter gt replacement loss sov = commie
see georgia FULTON
===
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MMA 11 26
The election denial movement failed — but it will be back
Key players are disorganized and spent the run-up to the midterms chasing shadows and promising a deus ex machina from Trump that never came
Written by John Knefel
Published 11/05/26 12:55 PM EST
In the aftermath of the midterms, it is clear that the faltering but resilient election denial movement — made up of a strange amalgamation of MAGA media figures and their allies in government —- lost in every conceivable way.
Democrats won the House and Senate by historic margins, deflating all but a few deadenders who were still trying to claim voter fraud until the last minute. On election night, even former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, whose War Room podcast has been a hub of the denialist movement, looked for enemies to blame more than supposed fraud to undercover.
But any hopes that the election denial fever has permanently broken are premature. Rejecting Democratic Party wins remains a core, foundational element of the movement that Trump built and will likely continue to be one for the foreseeable future.
To MAGA media, bad polls were a “psyop”
By the final weeks of the campaign, MAGA media was staring down major losses with few counterattacks other than to criticize polling, an act of desperation that aged poorly.
The talking point solidified around late September, when Bannon called the midterm polling a “psyop,” a term his guest, Republican strategist Alex DeGrasse, agreed with. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts also said the data was a “psyop by so many of these polling firms in order to do what, to depress conservative turnout.” And right-wing media figure John Solomon suggested that public polling was potentially a “suppression tool,” citing his guest, Rep. Jimmy Patronis (R-FL).
MAGA media gadfly Wayne Allyn Root was pushing that line until the eve of the election, arguing that “anyone who believes polls in Texas showing that Talafreako is winning is a fool.”
Any hopes that the election denial fever has permanently broken are premature
These types of claims echo Fox News’ editorial approach to the 2020 election. In the final days before voters cast their ballots that year, Fox regularly used anecdotal evidence to suggest that the race was much closer than polls suggested, thereby helping to set the stage for the January 6 riot. The events of that day wouldn’t have been possible had right-wing media not fully embraced and amplified false narratives about insecure elections, underscoring how the so-called election integrity movement is fundamentally anti-democratic.
For years within MAGA media it has been taken as gospel that any discrepancies in polling — including phenomena like a “red mirage” that misleadingly shows Republicans with an early lead — is proof positive of voter fraud. Last minute attempts by right-wing media to seed that doubt again this cycle seem to have proven inadequate, given the losses Republicans faced across the country, but nonetheless were one tool in the toolbox.
The plots failed, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying from MAGA media
The denialist movement’s recent strategies and tactics coalesced at times, but the coalition was deeply disorganized by the time the polls opened.
Over the summer, MAGA media figures like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root, concocted a conspiracy in plain sight that aimed to push Trump to declare a national emergency or issue an executive order seizing control of election systems. That didn’t happen.
Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters, a hero in the election denial movement, and her lawyer, Peter Ticktin, who claims to be a childhood friend of Trump’s, allegedly met with the president in the White House on at least two occasions since June. Peters has said that she called on Trump to issue an executive order banning machines or mail-in ballots. That didn’t happen either.
Right-wing media spent months urging Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would’ve mandated federal voter ID laws and would’ve forced people to prove their citizenship at the time of registration. The act has been stalled for months, and has no path to becoming law at this point.
Bannon spent over a year calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to stalk polling sites. That didn’t happen. Neither did the Trump administration heed the call from right-wing media figure Jerome Corsi, who reportedly circulated a draft national emergency order, to deploy the military or National Guard to administer or otherwise oversee elections.
As of right now, there is no indication that Trump has the appetite to declare martial law after the election but before certification, as Ticktin has repeatedly called for. Nor are there signs that his administration will attempt to seize voting machines or ballots.
For as much as these figures were desperate to spread confusion in the run-up to voting and sow doubt afterwards, they have largely failed.
Election denial remains at the core of MAGA
After a political movement attempts an insurrection like we saw on January 6, 2021, it is a mistake not to take their threats seriously. The coalition that made that day possible was composed of longtime conservative movement lawyers like Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman, former advisers like Bannon, and right-wing media figures like Alex Jones and the late Charlie Kirk, all of whom came together in an action designed to prevent the certification of a federal election.
Similarly, the plot to subvert the midterms before they happened included then-Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte and his chief of staff, as well as media figures like Peters, Ticktin, Root, and more. Under the second Trump term, the boundaries between top government official and bizarre curiosity on an obscure livestream are not clear, which makes it a challenge to evaluate whether the MAGA media kooks and cranks that make up so much of his social life really have their hands of the levers of power or if they are simply gassing themselves up to impress their audiences.
In this case, many of the most bombastic and anti-democratic proposals ultimately went nowhere or failed — but, like a zombie, the election denial movement is brainless but not dead. Root, for his part, responded to the results by arguing that the election was stolen but also that Republicans deserved to lose. Mitchell wrote on social media that the “work of securing our elections is FAR from completed,” while failing to articulate any concrete next steps. True the Vote, a key organization in this space, sent out a fundraising request the morning after the midterms. Trump-aligned think tank the America First Policy Institute is seeking information about the administration of elections in Minnesota. And MAGA “prophet” Julie Green said: “There was a red wave last night. It was stolen.”
Bannon recently said in a CBS News interview that “the core belief of the MAGA movement is we won the 2020 election.” That load-bearing myth will likely continue to be central to whatever political formation arrives after Trump shuffles off the stage.
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mma
Election denial activists promote dubious database to catch supposed voter fraud
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 11/02/26
A group of election denial activists — Peter Ticktin, Jerome Corsi, Wayne Allyn Root, and John W. “Rick” Richards Jr. — have been using right-wing podcast appearances ahead of the upcoming midterms to promote ELLY, a tool Richards created that they claim helps expose voter fraud. They have also claimed to have passed on supposed data from ELLY to the Trump administration, even as experts have criticized the tool for potential “high false positive rates,” privacy concerns, “and unvalidated accuracy claims that threaten eligible voters’ rights.”
What is ELLY?
ELLY, a tool that supposedly analyzes voter rolls, was developed by election denial activists and is reportedly “being marketed to county officials” in Georgia, Missouri, and North Carolina ahead of the midterm elections. According to NBC News, ELLY is used to “aggregate public records like obituaries, U.S. Postal Service data, property tax information or maps from Google to help users cross-reference the data with voter registrations.”
ELLY is being pitched to officials as “an alternative to ERIC,” or the Electronic Registration Information Center, “the nonpartisan data-sharing network that’s considered the gold standard in helping states maintain accurate voter records.” ERIC became a target of misinformation from right-wing media in recent years, and multiple Republican-led states have since left the group.
NBC News noted that “America’s voter rolls are largely built for registration, not removal, and election officials do struggle to keep them up to date.” But the report explained that ELLY “will rely entirely on public records,” using data that “is less reliable than the personal, protected information government entities have and use … to maintain voter rolls, like Social Security and driver’s license numbers.”
David Becker, who helped build the Electronic Registration Information Center and now runs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, has “said ERIC didn’t use public data because it was clear the rate of false positives would be too high.” He told NBC that “even names and birthday[s] or birth date[s] result in huge numbers of false positives, far more false positives than true positives. And so in order to get quality data, you need to have the sensitive information.”
Who is behind ELLY?
ELLY comes from John W. “Rick” Richards Jr., a retired physician from Georgia, and his son, John W. Richards III. The two created a similar tool called “EagleAI NETwork” that they promoted in 2023 and which was reportedly used in Georgia “to file mass voter challenges in 2024.” Election experts told NBC News at the time that “the kind of public data that Richards plans to use may lead to a high rate of false positives,” adding that EagleAI “draws inaccurate conclusions and then presents them as if they are evidence of wrongdoing” and “might employ search techniques that could be discriminatory.”
“The results are going to vastly over-inflate potentially inaccurate voter registrations,” said Becker.
EagleAI was also promoted by fellow election denial activist Cleta Mitchell, who founded the Election Integrity Network and helped the effort to undermine ERIC. In February, Richards was photographed dining with Mitchell along with Heather Honey and Marci McCarthy, who are two election deniers Trump installed in his administration.
Kris Jurski, whom NBC News has described as “a Florida activist who has promoted election conspiracy theories and built his own voter roll review program,” claimed that he also “helped build ELLY.” NBC also reported that he “has been promoting it to activist groups and on social media.”
Who is promoting ELLY for the midterms?
Citation
From the October 20, 2026, edition of The Gateway Pundit's War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble
During media appearances in the weeks leading up to the 2026 midterm elections, several election denial activists have promoted ELLY, making claims about what it can find and encouraging audiences to use the tool.
Jerome Corsi, who has a history of spreading conspiracy theories, touted ELLY on the podcasts of David “Nino” Rodriguez and Wayne Allyn Root, saying that he wanted to “mak[e] sure you’re aware of it and others are aware of” the tool. Corsi has claimed that ELLY is “50 different databases coordinated” with all kinds of information regarding voters that will “monitor mail ballots coming and be able to determine which ones are valid and which ones are not valid” and thus “prove that crimes were committed.”
Video
Citation
From the October 16, 2026, edition of DO NOT TALK, streamed on YouTube
Peter Ticktin, an attorney and longtime friend of President Donald Trump, has said that ELLY includes information connecting “voter rolls together with the property appraisers of your county.” He has claimed that with the tool, “we’re going to catch these guys doing the crimes that they’re doing, and then we’re going to be able to make it transparent,” declaring: “This is our opportunity to get our country back.”
Wayne Allyn Root, a radio host with a history of spreading election denial and conspiracy theories, has repeatedly had Corsi, Ticktin, and Richards on his podcast to discuss ELLY. Root also urged his audience to email him to get them in touch with Corsi, Ticktin, and Richards about the database.
During Richards’ repeated appearances alongside Corsi and Ticktin on Root’s podcast, he has claimed that ELLY “democratized the entire U.S. voter roll.” Richards has also said that “we can forward the exact data to the politicians and the lawyers to prove what the outcome should have been.”
Who would even use the dubious ELLY tool?
The tool is apparently being pitched to other election denial activists, state and county election officials, and even the Trump administration. On October 30, election denial activist Peter Bernegger claimed that there are “big problems with mail-in ballots for midterms in Wisconsin,” citing ELLY and an absentee mail-in ballot list from the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
During podcasts, Ticktin, Corsi, and Root have clearly expressed that they are trying to get the database to Trump, his administration, or the GOP in hopes that they will use it in the 2026 elections. These three election denial activists all appear to have ties to the Trump administration, repeatedly claiming that they have interacted with the president and his staff. And some of these interactions appear to have led to policy outcomes: Root recently took credit for Trump announcing $1 million for anyone who reports voter fraud that leads to a conviction.
Root has also said that “the facts of the ELLY system” combined with the “synergy” of the $1 million offer could help Trump declare a national emergency “after the election,” something they all have pushed for since last year. Ticktin also seemed to suggest that the supposed data gives Trump “what he needs” for such a declaration.
Video
Citation
From the October 28, 2026, edition of The Gateway Pundit's War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble
Promoting ELLY on Root’s October 26 show, Corsi said that “average Americans can take advantage of” Trump’s offer by using “our database.” During another appearance, Corsi claimed that people could use his and Ticktin’s websites to document supposed tips about election fraud, explaining they’re going to create a “structured mechanism.” According to Corsi, they will use ELLY to check tips, go “through Peter Ticktin’s office [to] file it into the Department of Justice under this $1 million bounty,” and then “we’ll make sure they’re filed with the FBI, and we’ll make sure you get credit for the case that’s filed.“ Root said that he would put their form on his website as well.
Other claims from these election deniers include:
Ticktin claimed that he and Corsi had been “advising the president of the program that Rick Richards has developed,” which Trump was “pretty happy” about.
Corsi claimed that “these databases have been turned over to the Department of Justice and to Homeland Security,” which are “using the tool themselves to do their criminal investigations.”
Root asked Richards and Corsi to give him “bullet points” about the database “because I’d like to send it to President Trump and make sure he knows it exists out there, and I'd like to send it to some Republican candidates I know here in the state of Nevada to make sure they know it exists.”
Root also suggested that he would write a column regarding the database and would “text” and “call” Trump about it, promising to “send it to President Trump’s office — I’ve got good friends there who hand everything to President Trump.”
Corsi has expressed hope that candidates in the upcoming midterms “who lose or those who want to contest an election, perhaps even before it’s certified,” could use the database “to challenge an election result.” Corsi also said that he would “like to share this with candidates” in order to “show you in your race the ballots that ought to be challenged,” so “if candidates get in touch with us, we will get them the data” that could establish “a pretty good basis for saying this election was fraudulently conducted and should not be certified.”
Ticktin urged “every one of the candidates that loses” in the midterms to “contact me or Jerome Corsi or Rick Richards” to “help you get set up with this program,” adding, “If you qualify for turn[ing] people into the DOJ, we’ll give you the information you need to be able to do that.”
Video
Citation
From the October 27, 2026, edition of The Gateway Pundit's War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble
The effort to tout ELLY comes as election denial activists have pushed other measures to try to undermine the midterms. Corsi and Ticktin were reportedly involved with a proposed executive order declaring a “national emergency” over elections that circulated within the Trump administration. Root also proposed his own version of a national emergency, saying he messaged and spoke with Trump about it. He subsequently pushed it to Trump during an interview
//
Key election denial activists in the right-wing media ecosystem
10/01/26 10:00 AM EDT
06/30/26 10:00 AM EDT
07/30/26
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PP3
“God Made Me Do This”
Obtained by ProPublica
In January 2024, Mitchell met with a small group of Republican lawyers and election-integrity leaders to discuss how best to prevent fraud in the November presidential election.
Those gathered in the Arizona hotel room were especially worried about noncitizen voting, though numerous audits, studies and analyses — even those by Republican groups and states — show it is vanishingly rare.
Arizona had passed a law compelling residents to provide proof of citizenship when they registered, rather than just swearing they were citizens under penalty of perjury, as is typical in most states.
Mitchell suddenly had an inspiration, she later recounted in a private speech to Virginia’s EIN chapter: She’d lead a push for a similar federal law. “I didn’t think of this,” she told those at the event. “God made me do this.”
When Mitchell returned from Arizona, she was, indeed, a woman on a mission. She convened her closest congressional allies, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. Their staffers met with her to help draft the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.
The bill set a high bar for proving citizenship, demanding that would-be voters produce documents like certified birth certificates and passports that many Americans don’t have. It also required states to use the DHS’ databases to purge noncitizens from their voter rolls.
The ideas in the measure would presage some of the second Trump administration’s most norm-breaking actions. “When we look back to the original SAVE Act in 2024 to the administration’s actions today, the through line is clear,” said Michael McNulty, a director for the watchdog nonprofit Issue One.
Mitchell knew the initial version of the act wouldn’t pass. When it was introduced in May 2024, Democrats controlled the Senate and the White House.
Rather, people in the election-integrity world said, she saw the measure as a strategic opportunity — both to cement her position atop the movement and to reignite the fervor for voting restrictions among the Trump faithful. For years, she’d fought behind the scenes for Trump’s ear on election issues, vying with more moderate Republican election experts as well as fringe activists.
To make sure her rivals had no choice but to support the SAVE Act, she brought on a backer too powerful to ignore: Stephen Miller, senior adviser to Trump in his first term and architect of his immigration policy. (Miller didn’t respond to questions about his relationship to Mitchell or the SAVE Act.)
Mitchell denied Miller had a hand in the measure. “Stephen is someone I greatly admire but we never worked together on the SAVE Act,” she wrote to ProPublica.
Stephen Miller, center, senior adviser to Trump in his first term and architect of his immigration policy, attends the May 2024 news conference for the SAVE Act.
But Roy, the bill’s House sponsor, said in a podcast interview that Miller helped draft it. Mitchell sought to dovetail her election agenda with Miller’s immigration agenda, those who’ve worked with them said. They stood side by side at an event at the Capitol to launch the bill, warning that Democrats were letting people into the country illegally in part to swing elections.
In a coup for Mitchell — anointed the Mother of the SAVE Act — pretty much every significant player in the election-integrity space joined the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, a group she launched to back the bill.
Mitchell directed more than $6 million to groups that bought ads, put out research and took other actions supporting SAVE, tax filings show. Some $800,000 went to the nonprofit arm of the conservative media organization The Federalist, which provided glowing coverage of the legislation.
Sean Davis, The Federalist’s CEO, didn’t answer questions about whether the donation affected coverage. “Cleta Mitchell is a saint,” he said in an email.
The measure sailed through the House in July 2024, then predictably died in the Senate. The bill had drawn fire from voting advocacy groups, which said the measure could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, particularly women, the poor and minorities, all critical Democratic voting blocs.
Mitchell hardly missed a beat. That same month, she led a panel at an American Legislative Exchange Council conference that approved model legislation similar to the SAVE Act for conservative lawmakers to introduce in states across the country. Twelve states have since passed laws that strongly resembled SAVE and 23 have changed their voting procedures to reflect aspects of it.
That November, Trump won back the presidency and Republicans secured majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Mitchell saw the chance not only to pass an even tougher federal version of SAVE — a “SAVE Act on steroids” as she called it in a November organizing call — but to make even more far-reaching changes to American elections.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” she told attendees on the call. “I don’t want us to miss this.”
President Donald Trump in March 2025. When Trump won back the presidency and Republicans secured majorities in both chambers of Congress, Mitchell saw the chance to make even more far-reaching changes to American elections. Win McNamee/Getty Images
“If Plan A Doesn’t Work, I Have a Plan B”
Obtained by ProPublica
Two months after Trump took the oath of office, America got its first glimpse of how he planned to overhaul the nation’s election system.
His March 25, 2025, executive order — titled Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections — looked a lot like the SAVE Act. It required voters to prove their citizenship when they registered, mirroring the types of identification listed in the bill.
It also expanded on the notion of using DHS data to verify voters’ eligibility, saying that all of the federal government’s relevant troves of sensitive information should be made available for this use. Further, it directed the Justice Department to prioritize the prosecution of election crimes and noncitizen voting.
Mitchell was close to a pair of White House lawyers involved in drafting the order and was among a small group of outside attorneys who provided suggestions for it, according to several people who helped write it.
The order was the first in a string of behind-the-scenes victories that have not only allowed Mitchell to shape the Trump administration’s election blueprint, but have given her substantial influence over who’s been chosen to carry it out.
At least 25 administration appointees have close ties to Mitchell, ProPublica’s reporting shows, with several holding key posts directly related to elections.
“She’s had a lot to do with even White House hires in this regard,” Bannon said. (The White House denied Mitchell had swayed its hiring decisions.)
Heather Honey, a senior counselor to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, has a portfolio that touches on almost everything the administration does on elections. She’s figured centrally in the government’s efforts to find and prosecute noncitizen voters.
Before joining DHS, Honey was a Mitchell protege and led EIN’s Pennsylvania chapter. A high-ranking federal official knowledgeable about the hiring process told ProPublica that the agency hired Honey over more experienced candidates. Her “sole qualification was who she worked with,” the former official said. “She worked with Cleta.”
A DHS spokesperson called this “false,” saying Honey had been recommended by senior government leaders for her election expertise.
Mitchell also has had a hand in shaping the administration’s reinvestigation of fraud allegations involving the 2020 election, beginning with the FBI’s seizure of election records from Fulton County, Georgia.
As ProPublica has reported, the affidavit justifying the raid included material compiled by an EIN-affiliated researcher and cited network participants as witnesses.
When the case bogged down as the prosecutor overseeing it began to doubt its strength, Mitchell was among those who recommended a replacement: Dan Bishop, a former North Carolina congressman whom she’s praised on social media and supported with campaign donations.
At a May meeting, a Georgia EIN leader said Bishop was tapped “thanks in large part to Cleta Mitchell,” an account echoed by an administration official familiar with the matter.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the agency “has no knowledge of any role Cleta Mitchell played” in Bishop’s appointment.
Mitchell told ProPublica she didn’t believe she’d affected this decision. “I was very worried about the direction of the case earlier this year and made known my displeasure quite strongly,” she said. “The decision to appoint Dan was made by the President and I applaud it, but I cannot claim credit for that brilliant idea.”
Soon after stepping in, Bishop tried to subpoena personal information for thousands of Fulton County poll workers, a move the county and election experts denounced as politically motivated intimidation. A court quashed the subpoena. Bishop has appealed.
As she’d envisioned in her call with EIN members just after the 2024 election, Mitchell has gotten the president to sink enormous political capital into passing even tougher versions of the bill, now known as the SAVE America Act.
The 2026 measure would require voters nationwide to present photo ID to vote and compel states to turn over their voter rolls to DHS, which would scour them for noncitizens. Trump has repeatedly called the measure his top legislative priority, threatening not to sign other bills until it passes.
Lee, the Utah senator who sponsored the bill, said Mitchell was central to the updated version, especially the strict voter ID provisions. Trump, he added, gave it the new name.
Former officials and people in the election-integrity movement told ProPublica that Mitchell has had to overcome naysayers within the administration, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
On an EIN call in early 2025, Mitchell complained that Wiles had responded frostily to plans she offered for the incoming administration, “saying, ‘Thank you, I’ll take a look as soon as I come up for air.’”
At the time, Mitchell said she’d wanted to reply that wouldn’t happen for four years. When ProPublica followed up about the incident, she wrote: “Susie is remarkable and a great chief of staff. She doesn’t have time to read all the things that people like me send her.”
Mitchell has surmounted these obstacles, in part, by continuing to build out her array of alliances.
By the middle of this year, when the White House brought on Solomon — a longtime Mitchell supporter who vetted material for Trump’s prime-time elections address — it was clear she had found another way in. (A White House spokesperson said that Solomon, who also runs a conservative news site, interacted with Mitchell as a journalist would speak to a subject-matter expert.)
A former administration official who said he’d tried to stymie Mitchell acknowledged she’d won out. “The White House listens to her,” he said.
Mitchell had told her EIN disciples not to worry after Wiles’ brush off. She had more cards to play, she assured them.
“I always know if plan A doesn’t work, I have a plan B,” she said. “If plan B doesn’t work, I have a plan C. And so forth.”
Mitchell in January 2026. “Even if she fails, she always finds another point of attack,” said Max Flugrath, a director at the voting advocacy group Fair Fight. “She’s relentless.” Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
“Today”
Steve Bannon’s “War Room” Podcast
By the time the first mail-in ballots of the midterms were cast in September, Mitchell had shaped and staffed the Trump administration’s election efforts to an astonishing extent. And yet, the knockout blow had eluded her.
Courts had blocked large parts of Trump’s executive orders. The hunt for noncitizen voters and the reinvestigation of 2020 voting irregularities had produced little of consequence, despite the considerable resources poured into them.
Mitchell’s critics and even her allies, including some in the election-integrity movement, say frustration has prompted her to push for more drastic steps.
During the summer, she mounted an escalating pressure campaign to save the SAVE America Act, mobilizing EIN members to badger recalcitrant senators, according to recordings of EIN meetings. She also worked with the bill’s Senate sponsor and Trump to kill the filibuster, a pathway known as the nuclear option, to get the bill over the line, but was blocked by a handful of moderate Republicans.
Mitchell has taken a similarly all-or-nothing approach in pressing states to pass laws modeled on the SAVE America Act, sometimes with similarly self-defeating results.
Earlier this year, she waded into a battle over an Ohio bill despite being warned that the governor would veto the tougher version she preferred. The final bill contained the provision Mitchell sought. The governor promptly vetoed it.
Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, an election-integrity movement leader who’s worked with Mitchell for decades, said Mitchell sometimes runs the risk of making elections less secure by torpedoing practical solutions.
“It was her way or the highway,” he said. “We need to focus on getting concrete wins.”
(Mitchell didn’t respond to Blackwell’s broader criticism but called the more moderate election measure he’s backed in Ohio “not nearly as good as it should be.”)
As the midterms near, she has become increasingly vocal — in media appearances, online and with her network members — in calling for the president to exert unprecedented powers to sway the vote.
“Even if she fails, she always finds another point of attack,” said Max Flugrath, a director at the voting advocacy group Fair Fight. “She’s relentless.”
On the Oct. 6 episode of “War Room,” Mitchell angrily pounded home that several agencies, particularly the Commerce Department, could intervene “today” to shore up purported vulnerabilities in voting machines. She repeated the word “today” seven times during the appearance, like a drumbeat.
Some of those who’ve known Mitchell the longest say her urgency has crescendoed as, at 76, she’s confronted the possibility that this administration is her last chance to realize her goals.
“In her mind, in her timeline, it’s existential,” the former network leader said. “She’s got to do it all, and she’s got to do it now. … The election integrity movement, c’est moi.”
Corrections
Jen Fifield and Reese Dunklin contributed reporting. Misty Harris contributed research.
Contributors
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- I welcome tips about how politicians, activists, and others are trying to transform American elections for partisan advantage. I am also interested in tips about North Carolina’s legislature, court system, and state government
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Election denial movement sets stage for chaos on Election Day and its aftermath
So-called election integrity activists are calling for Trump to declare martial law, mandate hand-counting of ballots, seize voting machines, and refuse to certify elections at a whim
Written by John Knefel & Sophie Lawton
Published 10/20/26 2:17 PM EDT
Updated 10/20/26 4:58 PM EDT
The election denial movement has spent months trying and largely failing to subvert the midterms, and now some of its major figures are articulating their plans to attempt to disrupt the vote on Election Day and sow chaos in the weeks and months that follow.
Their proposals include calling for President Donald Trump to declare martial law, sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the military to polling places, forcing officials to count ballots by hand, demanding the federal government seize voting machines, and working to stop the certification of some elections.
The main figures pushing at least one or more of the above measures include former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters, her lawyer Peter Ticktin, and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, among other election denial and right-wing media figures.
These developments follow months of activity from right-wing media operatives who have pushed for the implementation of various anti-voting rights measures, many of which have been thwarted, have stalled, or never came to fruition. A MAGA media effort to convince Trump to declare a national emergency seems to be dead in the water.
Even as many of these pre-Election Day efforts have faltered, new conspiracy theories continue to emerge. Mitchell, who aided Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has claimed without evidence that left-wing organizations are illegally harvesting ballots from nursing homes, for example.
But as the election draws near, some figures have set their sights on the day itself and what comes after.
Pushing for chaos on Election Day
Noncitizen voting is a vanishingly rare occurrence
Right-wing media figures in the election denial movement are pushing to make Election Day confusing and chaotic on the pretext of preventing noncitizen voting — a vanishingly rare occurrence.
Forcing hand-counts
Tina Peters, a hero to election deniers, and her lawyer Peter Ticktin, a personal friend of Trump’s, have been pressing Trump to attempt to force officials to hand-count ballots, sometimes instead of machines and sometimes in addition to them.
In July, Peters released a “100-Day Risk Mitigation Election Plan” that would require officials to “apply the ‘Bank-Teller Method’: independently hand-count every ballot for federal contests before certification and reconcile that count with the tabulator result.”
Then in August, Peters claimed the administration already had the “authority” to “issue immediate cybersecurity guidance and assistance to transition all counties to hand mark paper ballots,” and that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had the duty to interfere in how states use voting machines.
Peters has also allegedly met with Trump on at least two occasions since her release from prison on election-related charges — once on June 30 and again on October 5.
Ticktin, meanwhile, has taken a slightly different approach recently, acknowledging that eliminating machines at this point is not feasible. On September 29, Ticktin said, “We could still have an order that requires — not hand-counting and get rid of the machines, because there’s no time for that — but let the machines do the count, but before the count — but then let us commandeer and get the ballots. If we have the ballots, we can count them ourselves.” He added that “it would be done after the election, but before certification."
Video
Citation
From the September 29, 2026, edition of Alex Jones Live's The Alex Jones Show
Ed Martin is another proponent of this unnecessary and counterproductive measure. On Bannon’s War Room episode on October 6, Martin claimed that any election officials who want to “switch out your state and stop using the Chinese compromised machines, you can do it, and you can just ask [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne] Mullin for the money and he can help you pay for more people, pay for hand-marked paper ballots and counters and everything else.” He also noted that “Tina Peters met with Trump” recently.
Cleta Mitchell has long been on crusade to limit the use of voting machines, and, like Peters, has demanded that Lutnick interfere in state election processes based on an incorrect interpretation of an obscure federal regulation. Mitchell said that Lutnick should order “mandatory, pre-certification manual confirmation hand counts of ballots in 5% of the precincts and central count for each jurisdiction in the country.”
Stationing ICE and other federal officers or the military at polling places
Calls for ICE or other federal officers at polling places aren’t new — Steve Bannon has been making the demand since at least August 2025 and has continued to do so throughout the midterm election cycle — but they have become more widespread. As recently as August, Bannon said: “I think ICE agents belong at polling places."
Mike Davis, a frequent guest of Bannon’s, said on September 1: “I would have ICE agents and other federal law enforcement at every polling place across America. And that should only scare away noncitizens.”
YouTube streamer Tim Pool said in July that “at the bare minimum, we expect something like we will have federal law enforcement agency at polling locations in states that do not cooperate” with the Department of Homeland Security.
Jerome Corsi, former employee of Alex Jones, took an even more extreme line in calling for Trump to send the military to polling sites under the guise of a national emergency. “Donald Trump can take control of the elections,” Corsi said on September 12. “He can have the military or National Guard go in and make sure the elections are done legitimately.” Corsi claims to have been involved in drafting a proposed “national emergency” order.
Several other right-wing pundits have endorsed the idea of having ICE at polling places over the course of the year as well, including The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, MAGA influencer Benny Johnson, Fox News’ Jesse Watters.
The right-wing media figures plotting to sow doubt and contest results after the midterms
Declaring martial law and involving the military in recounts
Ticktin is the most vocal election denial activist to suggest that Trump invoke martial law after the midterms.
On September 19, Ticktin said during an appearance on Real America’s Voice, “Either we’re going to fix this thing before this election or we’re probably going to see martial law after this election.”
Then during an appearance on The Alex Jones Show on September 29, Ticktin said that if the election is “stolen from us because of their machines,” then Trump will “have to declare martial law.”
“I didn’t say declare martial law for the elections,” he added, “I’m saying in the event that the elections are stolen, what other options are there?”
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From the September 29, 2026, edition of Alex Jones Live's The Alex Jones Show
A few other prominent figures in the election denial movement have also called for Trump to declare martial law. These voices include MAGA “prophet” Julie Green and Douglas Frank, one of Ticktin’s fellow travellers.
On September 15, Green claimed that an impending declaration of martial law would lead to the mass arrests of politicians, judges, and lawyers. “It’s not just an election. There has to be a political reset,” Green said, “During the martial law it will not just be politicians tried for treason. So will judges, AGs, lawyer, prosecutors, who are against this nation."
On August 22, Frank said of Trump, “I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he declares martial law and we have the National Guard come out and we have to redo the election.”
MAGA fantasies about involving the military after the election extend beyond these calls for martial law as well. Where Corsi wanted the military to take over election systems, others in the movement have called on the military to intervene in the counting or recounting of votes.
Seizing machines or ballots
Beyond suggesting the president declare martial law, Ticktin has concocted a plan for the government to seize ballots or election machines in order to “count them ourselves” and prevent supposed fraud. Ticktin predicted on Alex Jones’ show that Trump would “seize the machines” in order to protect himself from prosecution by the Democrats if they win the House and Senate.
QAnon influencer and election denier Juan O. Savin said in an interview streamed on Rumble that any election machines with foreign components could “be seized as evidence and investigated and canceled.” Savin pushed for Trump to delay the election, but argued, “If you need the public to turn their brains on and become engaged, don't pause it then. Let it run the distance and then go seize those machines” after the election is over.
Right-wing media figures have previously supported the seizing of election materials, such as when the FBI raided election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, and when Sheriff Chad Bianco seized 650,000 ballots in Riverside County, California. Real America's Voice host Wayne Allyn Root said of Bianco’s efforts, “I guarantee you he was going to find that all or most of them are filled with fraud and filled with illegal aliens,” and called the court’s order to return the ballots “a disgrace."
Trump himself has reportedly said that he “regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his loss in the 2020 election,” according to The New York Times.
Pushing for Trump to delay the election
Juan O. Savin is not the only figure who has suggested Trump delay the elections in order to investigate voting machines or other election infrastructure. In an interview with David Nino Rodriguez on Rumble, former Overstock.com CEO turned election conspiracy theorist Patrick Byrne called on Trump to “delay things."
Byrne's plan includes Trump putting former U.S. Agency for International Development employee Tim Meisburger in charge of elections countrywide and making it a one-day affair in which “you have to show an ID” and “there's no technology used.” He further suggested Trump “delays them and then puts this guy in charge of the election. And he could do a national security order, do something like that, and we could have an election like they run it in Burma.”
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From an October 15, 2026, stream by David Nino Rodriguez uploaded to Insights 21 channel on Rumble
Demanding Trump or other officials not certify elections
In an early October interview, Juan O. Savin claimed Trump has indicated “that we're going to fight hard to not allow them to certify the election after the election for reasons that we raise between now and Election Day,” citing voting machines with foreign-made parts as the “reason."
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From an October 6, 2026, stream on YouTube by Michael Jaco
Later in the interview Savin referenced Byrne's conspiracy theories on election machines (Byrne suggested Trump seize the machines following the 2020 election) and asked, “How can you certify a vote that was done with uncertifiable — uncertified machines?” Savin then reiterated, “So what's Trump going to do? He can't certify the election. He lets it go forward, and let's have the food fight after the fact."
What comes next when “the core belief of the MAGA movement is we won the 2020 election.”
The election denial movement has not accomplished many of the key goals it’s set for itself. The SAVE America Act has no apparent path to become law. Trump has yet to issue a national emergency declaration or an executive order to take control of state election systems. The administration’s many efforts to uncover supposedly widespread noncitizen voting haven’t produced any tangible evidence of its existence.
These are real losses, but Trump and his media allies remain dedicated to subverting elections in the United States. As Bannon recently said to CBS News, “The core belief of the MAGA movement is we won the 2020 election." That load-bearing lie continues to animate Trump’s movement, and there is no reason to believe that it will be any different on Election Day or in the days after.
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'My cyber guys looked at it': Mike Lindell won't quit conspiracy theory after Trump boost
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Jack Posobiec, who helped spread a conspiracy theory about Democrats running a satanic child abuse ring, was invited by the Republican National Committee this month to speak to a group of volunteers about how to monitor elections in Michigan.Credit...Rebecca Noble for The New York Times
By Alexandra Berzon
Sept. 26, 2024
A few years ago, Jack Posobiec was a fringe figure and a right-wing agitator best known for helping spread “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory about Democrats running a satanic child abuse ring underneath a Washington pizza parlor.
This month, he was invited by the Republican National Committee to speak to a group of volunteers about how to monitor elections in Michigan.
The invitation was one sign of how the party uses figures and fictions that were once considered out of bounds to energize its activists. The counsel that Mr. Posobiec delivered was another.
He blasted elections in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, for example, joking that officials in Venezuela learned how to conduct their elections, widely seen as corrupt, by visiting the city and studying how it is done, according to a recording of the Sept. 4 meeting obtained by The New York Times.
The key to elections, he said, is that “it doesn’t matter who votes. It matters who counts the votes.”
Both Republican and Democratic groups have long dispatched such monitors to polling places, typically with instructions to report problems with equipment, long lines or any other issues. Democrats generally emphasize issues related to restrictions on voting and Republicans look out for voter fraud....
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June 30, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): SAVE America Act — a lot of people are saying, hey, do we have time to implement it? Are we going to have lawsuits? But President Trump is driving forward. We're a huge proponent of that.
We also know that Bill Pulte is at DNI, and that John Solomon of Real America's Voice is leading a task force on declassification. And yesterday, Pulte hired, from the RNC, as his chief of staff, one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC to be his chief of staff. So he's telling you where he's — signaling where he's going on this.
My understanding — I don't have any access to this classified information — but my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election.-
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[### Pulte picks RNC's former election integrity director for his ...
Democracy Docket
https://www.democracydocket.com › News](https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/pulte-picks-rncs-former-election-integrity-director-for-his-national-intelligence-agencys-chief-of-staff/)
4 days ago — Acting national intelligence director Bill Pulte picked Christina Norton, known for running the GOP's 2024 poll watcher program, as his ...
Acting national intelligence director Bill Pulte has picked Christina Norton, a GOP lawyer known for running the GOP’s controversial 2024 poll watcher operation, as his chief of staff, reports The New York Times. Norton also was Pulte’s chief of staff at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which he still leads.
When the Republican National Committee (RNC) called for an army of 100,000 poll watchers in 2024 – in alignment with the Trump campaign’s prejudicial declarations of voter fraud – Norton was tapped to serve as its election integrity director. In that role, she oversaw the planning for the RNC’s massive poll watcher program, which drew on a slew of election conspiracists and deniers of the 2020 election results to train volunteers.
Pulte’s hiring of Norton fuels voting rights advocates’ concerns that he’ll be using the national intelligence office to fulfill President Donald Trump’s agenda to subvert this year’s midterms, by amplifying and prioritizing wild goose chases for voter fraud.
One clear example of how Norton approached her role as the RNC’s chief poll watcher and voter fraud investigator can be found in an April 2024 meeting among rightwing activists she attended, where she laid out plans for monitoring voters in that year’s elections.
The RNC’s poll watcher activities had previously been curtailed from 1982 to 2018 due to its intimidation tactics against Black and Latino voters in the early 80s. Under a consent decree, the RNC was only able to carry out “ballot security” programs under court approval and supervision during that time period. But when the decree was lifted, the RNC went all out in revamping its poll watcher missions in 2020 and 2024, much of it in cahoots with the Trump campaign.
For Norton in 2024, that meant working with scores of grassroots far-right and MAGA activists, many of whom were still peddling the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Some of those activists were at the April 2024 meeting with Norton, and continued these “stolen election” narratives as incentivization for that year’s poll watching strategies.
Among the speakers at that meeting:
Steve Stern and Raj Doraisamy, the meeting’s organizers, both rightwing activists who have close ties to the “Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell, who’s since had to shell out millions of dollars from lawsuits for falsely claiming that voting machines were hacked and fraudulent votes were cast in the 2020 election.
Seth Keshel, a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer who claimed that he counted 150,000 fraudulent votes in the 2020 election from North Carolina, and made similar allegations of “big-time” fraud in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Arizona.
Linda Szynkowicz, founder of the conspiratorial FightVoterFraud.org site, who’s claimed without evidence that she’s spotted thousands of felony-grade election crimes.
Jay Valentine, an amateur cybersecurity activist who worked with Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell to overturn 2020’s election results.
Marly Hornik, founder of New York Citizens Audit, whose claim to fame was saying he discovered millions of fraudulent voter registrations in New York, but was ultimately served a cease and desist letter from the attorney general for confronting “voters across the state at their homes” after falsely claiming to represent the Board of Elections.
As the Nebraska Examiner reported, Norton neither disputed nor objected to the claims made at the meeting.
“If reports are true that Bill Pulte, whose installation as acting D.N.I. already raises serious legal questions, is bringing a former senior R.N.C. official who cavorted with election deniers and conspiracy theories into O.D.N.I. as his chief of staff, Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intel Committee, in a statement to the Times.
Perhaps the most notorious recruit to the RNC’s 2024 poll watching apparatus was Jack Posobiec, the person responsible for the “Pizzagate” conspiracy that Democrats were behind a diabolical pedophilia ring run out of a D.C. pizza shop.
The RNC invited Posobiec to train a group of poll watcher volunteers in Michigan in September 2024. There, he shared voter fraud myths and told the trainees, “it doesn’t matter who votes. It matters who counts the votes.”
It was an escalation of a similar statement that Trump made in 2024 when he announced his own campaign’s robust poll watcher operation: “Having the right people to count the ballots is just as important as turning out voters on Election Day.”
[### Bill Pulte Picks G.O.P. Election Operative for Spy Agency Job
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com › U.S. › Politics](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/us/politics/pulte-spy-agency-christina-norton.html)
5 days ago — Christina Norton is the new chief of staff at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, former officials said.
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Cleta Mitchell reacts to the Supreme Court late-arriving mail-in ballots ruling by saying it's time to challenge early voting
Mitchell to Steve Bannon: “There's a lot in that opinion that would suggest that we ought to be challenging early voting. We ought to be challenging unfettered absentee voting.”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 06/30/26
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From the June 29, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): You know, I think that - I don't know, but Amy Coney Barrett writes for the majority, and this is what is shocking, is that there are five justices of the Supreme Court who believe and who wrote in this opinion that there is a difference between casting the ballot, that is when the voters make their choice, and when the ballot is received. That makes no sense.
Frankly, according to their opinion, I actually think that this gives us good grounds to challenge early voting and to say that voting is — there's a lot in that opinion that would suggest that we ought to be challenging early voting. We ought to be challenging unfettered absentee voting because they also point out, which Marc Elias conveniently forgets to discuss, that — repeatedly they referred to the fact that the ballots had to be postmarked on or before election day.
Well, California doesn't require a postmark. I think we ought to challenge that. I think that what we have to do on our side is that we have to do what the left has done. And I know that that when Stephen Miller started America First Legal Foundation after — in 2021, the idea was to build a judicial attack mob that's similar to what the left has. And we haven't really done that.
I mean, they — there are — we've done a lot better. But these guys, the left challenges everything. And we are getting these terrible decisions from these awful left-wing trial court judges all over the country. And then this decision — to me, the worst part of this decision is it emboldens these left-wing crazy judges that are inhabiting our courts all over the country. That's the constitutional crisis we face, is all of these judges.
But I will tell you that I think that there is a roadmap in this. Unfortunately, it requires congressional action and we see how terrible Congress, the US Senate is. So I mean it's, we have a crisis because the judges are not letting the president do his job and they're trying to do Congress's job.
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June 30, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): SAVE America Act — a lot of people are saying, hey, do we have time to implement it? Are we going to have lawsuits? But President Trump is driving forward. We're a huge proponent of that.
We also know that Bill Pulte is at DNI, and that John Solomon of Real America's Voice is leading a task force on declassification. And yesterday, Pulte hired, from the RNC, as his chief of staff, one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC to be his chief of staff. So he's telling you where he's — signaling where he's going on this.
My understanding — I don't have any access to this classified information — but my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election.-
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mma
Election deniers reach a fever pitch calling for a “national emergency” declaration so Trump can give himself “king-like powers” over the midterms
Tina Peters: “I believe Trump could sign an executive order to get rid of the machines and say ... that a vendor cannot have that much influence over our elections”
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 06/30/26
After President Donald Trump issued an executive order at the end of March aimed at stopping supposed fraud with mail-in ballots, election deniers have urged Trump to declare a national emergency to allow a federal takeover of election processes. On June 24, Trump echoed those calls and suggested that passing a bill to supposedly combat election fraud is a “national emergency.”
Media figures who have pushed claims of widespread election fraud — some of whom say they have been involved with drafting such an order that is “sitting on his [Trump’s] desk” — have urged Trump to give himself “king-like powers” by implementing the proposal, as it would supposedly empower Trump to “be able to make the rules” and use the National Guard to oversee midterm elections. Others claim that they have asked Trump directly to invoke the proposed order, saying it would be “very easy” for the president to “issue an executive order through a national emergency and have the National Guard count those ballots by hand.”
Election deniers drafted executive order declaring a national emergency to implement election policies and Trump issued an executive order on mail-in ballots
Since at least April 2025, a group of right-wing figures and Trump allies have called for Trump to issue a national emergency declaration “to make sure that the elections in 2026 are secure,” even proposing and circulating among Trump administration officials a draft executive order that would “declare a national emergency” and “empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference.” Those involved include attorney Peter Ticktin, former Infowars staffer Jerome Corsi, and QAnon influencer Wayne Willot, known online as Juan O. Savin.
During his second term, Trump has issued two executive orders related to elections. As explained by The New York Times, a March 2025 order instructs the Election Assistance Commission “to require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and directs state or local officials to record and verify the information,” and it “seeks to require states to count ballots by Election Day.” Multiple federal judges have since blocked that executive order.
On March 31, Trump issued an executive order that directs the Department of Homeland Security to “compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State,” and instructs the U.S. Postal Service to “transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List.” NPR reported that “election experts said the order was unconstitutional.” After Trump signed the executive order, election deniers hailed it as a “win” that will leave Democrats “toast.” On June 25, a federal judge blocked parts of the order.
While Trump reportedly “shrugged off reports that he could consider declaring a national emergency around the midterm elections,” he has repeatedly advocated for the SAVE America Act, which would put restrictions on voting but has struggled to pass in Congress. On June 24, Trump canceled plans to sign bipartisan housing legislation “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”
## Since Trump issued the executive order in March, election deniers have repeatedly urged Trump to also declare a national emergency ahead of the midterms
Savin, who wasinvolvedwith the proposed national emergency executive order,claimedthat Trump “is going to have to declare a national election emergency that gives him essentially king-like powers within the area of elections.”He added that the proposal is “sitting on his [Trump’s] desk, the 17-page order which my team put together within the coalition.” He’s also claimed that Trump “wants to sign it and [is] having the legal people review it to make sure that we got everything right,” may try to issue the order in “bite-sized pieces,” and that Trump has “tried to break up” the proposed order and it will “ultimately … get sealed in one summary executive order at some point in time, but they’ve taken a couple of pieces out and done them individually.”
Ticktin, also supposedlyinvolvedwith the proposed order,saida national “election emergency” would allow Trump to “be able to make the rules.” He also said that it would give Trump “additional forces of some sort” like the National Guard to have “camera observation” of ballots and make “sure the counting is done and done correctly.”
Corsi, another figure supposedlyinvolvedwith the proposed order, said that hebelievedTrump is “very strategically laying out his plans” with multiple executive orders related to elections and “saving his powder for that one last executive order, which will come much closer to the election.” He also claimed that the “nightmare” of Trump’s impeachment and removal by a Democratic-controlled Congress “can be avoided by that kind of an executive order” and Trump’s authority under the national emergency could “extend to utilizing the National Guard to intervene in states that didn’t cooperate.” During another appearance in which he discussed the order, Corsi claimed that “politically, Donald Trump cannot afford to let the 2026 midterm election occur under the current rules because he will most certainly lose. And that’s not going to happen.”
Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peterssaidduring a stream following her release from prison that she had spoken with the president and she believes “Trump could sign an executive order to get rid of the machines and say that they are — that a vendor cannot have that much influence over our elections.”She also said on a separate podcast that “we need to get rid of the machines” and “mail-in ballots,” and Trump “needs to sign an executive order ... saying it’s unconstitutional that these things are allowed to be done.” Corsi has also claimed that Peters will “play a major role in one of the key factors in Trump ultimately declaring the need for the elections to be supervised by the federal government.”
Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock CEO who has been aprominent fundraiserfor election denial efforts andplayed a rolein trying to overturn the 2020 election,saidTrump should announce a national emergency to “run our election this year ... and teach them how to run them in Iraq.”He later added that he hoped the president would declare an emergency “this summer.” Byrne is supposedly involved with the proposed order.
Savin’s supposed “chief of staff,”Matt Meck,saidthe proposed national emergency order is “what we think needs to be done.”Meck — a board member of Fight Voter Fraud Inc., an organization which “has been criticized in the past for repeatedly advancing unfounded claims based on its misinterpretation of voter registration information and other data” — is supposedly involved with the proposed order.
Mark Cook, described byColorado Newslineas one “of the most influential election deniers in Colorado,”said, “How much more of an emergency do we need to establish here? It's right in our faces, and we have to do something immediately.” Cook is also supposedly involved with the proposed order.
Laura Scharr, thefounderof South Carolina Safe Elections,saidthat “it can’t just be an executive order — they’ve blown off the other two executive orders [related to elections] that Trump put out.”She added, “The only way is through a national emergency.” Scharr, who is supposedly involved with the proposed order, concluded that “it must be a national emergency. It has to happen as soon as possible.”
Wayne Allyn Root — a radio host who hasclaimedthat mail-in ballots were used to “rig and steal the 2020 election” and who the Nevada Currentreportedis “known for subscribing to conspiracy theories”— has authoredmultiple columnsfor The Gateway Pundit advocating for the proposed national emergency. On his show, Root claimed to have texted the president about a national emergency and he said that he would urge Trump to “sign Jerome Corsi’s executive order on election integrity, Mr. President, and do it now.”
John Goodman, who ispart ofthe “Florida Election Integrity Committee,”saidonStern American's “election integrity call” that “if you like the SAVE Act, you should love the national security emergency even more because it's like the SAVE Act on steroids,“ and that such a declaration “will be the trick, unobstructed.” He has also claimed that the call for “a national security emergency on elections” based on his ideas has been “very well received by Trump's legal team.” Root has said that “John Goodman, my election expert, has been telling me” that a national emergency is “the way to go,” and he claimed that Goodman “sent me all the reasons … as to what I could pass on to President Trump to push the urgency of a executive order to deal with election fraud and election integrity.” Corsi has also claimed to “have been working with” Goodman.
Linda Szynkowicz, thefounderof Fight Voter Fraud Inc.,claimedon her podcast that the Constitution “gives the president the power in a state of emergency from foreign intervention in the elections,” for which “we have more than enough proof.” She made this claim in response to Goodman’s call for a “national security emergency.”
David Clements, a podcaster“criss-crossed the country to who hasevangelize about purported election fraud,”saidat a local Republican event in Oregon that it would be “very easy” for Trump to “issue an executive order through a national emergency and have the National Guard count those ballots by hand.”During a podcast appearance with Corsi, Clements also claimed that he did not see “any scenario where we can run a clean election without the aid of the National Guard.”
Douglas Franksaidin an appearance alongside Ticktin on theTake Your Power Back Showthat “we have people all over the country ready to support the president in case he needs to make some kind of emergency order.” The Los Angeles Times reported that Frank has given speeches across the country as “part of a multi-pronged effort by the election denial movement to make a significant impact on future elections.”
Tamara Favorito — who reportedlyhelps runthe “election integrity” organization VoterGA with her husband, Garland Favorito —saidon a stream that Trump “needs to hurry” to declare a national emergency “because November is not very far away.” After being asked if there was “enough time before the midterms for” Trump to declare “the national security emergency and executive orders that mandate the things that make elections safe,” Favorito responded that “if the election officials in the counties put their mind to it, I believe it can be done, but he [Trump] needs to hurry because November is not very far away.”
Gregory Stenstrom, a Pennsylvaniapoll watcherwhoclaimedwithout evidence that he saw votes for Biden being uploaded to voting machines in 2020,saidonStern American’s “election integrity call” that “Trump is required to take executive action.” Stenstrom said, “In the executive order that is being drafted by Peter Ticktin and Mr. Corsi, they can refer to multiple cases within the courts right now that show that President Trump is required to take executive action because certain secretaries of state and certain county officials in key counties are cheating and not complying with the law.” Stenstrom was also part of a lawsuit that reportedly alleged that there was “negligent and fraudulent misrepresentation related to the 2020 general election,” but which a local district attorney said there was “no merit found to the claims.”
## Why this sounds familiar and continues to matter
Trump and his right-wing media allies have been pushing claims of election fraud for years. During Trump's second term, election deniers known for promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election have been given access to the levers of power — feeding already debunked claims to the Department of Justice, taking roles in the administration, and contributing to federal investigations. Some, like Peters, Byrne, and Martin Rodil, claimed they have spoken directly with Trump and administration officials. (The Guardian reported Rodil became a source “for the Trump camp and ultimately for investigators and … promoted two major allegations about Venezuela.”)
As the 2026 midterms approach, right-wing media and the Trump administration appear to have ramped up their efforts to undermine the midterm elections — invoking repeatedly debunked conspiracy theoriesabout widespread election fraud in the U.S., relying on one-off incidents and hypotheticals that are often exaggerated or misleading, and pushing for Trump policy priorities like the SAVE America Act.
Election deniers have already claimed that primaries for the 2026 midterms have featured election fraud, and Savin himself has claimed that the primary elections have been “laying the groundwork” for Trump to declare a national emergency — language which the president has now repeated.
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// true the vote? FLYNN CONF MONTHS AGO?
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At election denial summit, media figures endorse ICE at the polls and suggest executing a “prominent traitor” from the deep state “to improve our elections”
Podcaster David Clements: “The one thing that we need to see is a prominent traitor brought before you ... and after that due process, they get to suffer the legally prescribed penalty, which may or may not include a firing squad”
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 06/25/26
Last week, multiple promoters of election denial conspiracy theories spoke at a summit co-led by a QAnon influencer, calling on attendees to monitor voting precincts and to use “a tribunal” and a “legally prescribed penalty” like “a firing squad” as a possible solution to “improve our elections.” Some speakers touted connections to the Trump administration.
The Fraud-Fighter Summit, which took place between June 15-17 in Las Vegas, aimed to “confront fraud in elections” and featured “powerful presentations and discussions on topics such as tabulator vulnerabilities and advanced methods for detecting manipulation in election processes.” The event seems to have been coordinated by two figures in the election denial movement, Wayne Willott and Matt Meck. Willott, known online as Juan O. Savin, helped organize a coalition of election denial candidates for the 2022 midterm elections and claimed to have been involved with a proposed “national emergency” executive order for President Donald Trump to control elections. Meck is a board member of Fight Voter Fraud — an organization which “has been criticized in the past for repeatedly advancing unfounded claims based on its misinterpretation of voter registration information and other data,” — and also apparently Savin’s “chief of staff.”
Speakers and presenters included Tina Peters, Steve Bannon, Jim Marchant, David Clements, Peter Ticktin, Martin Rodil, and Douglas Frank.
Notable moments from the summit include:
War Roomhost and former Trump official Steve Bannon appeared multiple times during the summit. During his appearances, Bannon told attendees that “we need to be at every precinct,” and said whether “you’re armed or not, that depends upon what your state laws are.” He also said “ICE has to be there and has to be there to back you up.”
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From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 16, 2026, streamed on Rumble
David Clements, a podcaster who Lawfarereportedhas “criss-crossed the country to evangelize about purported election fraud,” suggested at the summit “a tribunal” for “a prominent traitor” in the deep state could “improve our elections” as clerks will “start paying attention to executive orders.” While discussing Trump’s actions ahead of the midterm elections, Clements said, “When people ask me, ‘David, one thing, one thing to improve our elections,’ they’re thinking get rid of this machines, get rid of the e-poll book. And those are fair questions. The one thing that we need to see is a prominent traitor brought before you with due process, of course. And after that due process, they get to suffer the legally prescribed penalty, which may or may not include a firing squad. Then all of a sudden, all of a sudden your clerks are gonna start paying attention to executive orders.” He also suggested that Trump invoking the Defense Production Act for military stockpiles meant that somehow the president had “declared a national emergency” and was urging Washington to “restore elections.”
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From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 17, 2026, streamed on Rumble
Martin Rodil, a Venezuelan expatriate who haspromoted the conspiracy theorythat Venezuela was involved with election fraud in America, claimed that he “recently met with a U.S. government official who has been on top of investigating” the conspiracy theory and told Rodil that he only “found 5% of the problem.” While introducing Rodil, Meck said that Rodil had “been briefing” former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the White House, Trump administration official Kurt Olsen, and the Department of Justice.
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From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 17, 2026, streamed by UnAuthorized
Juan O. Savin spoke on a panel that also included Tina Peters and Peter Ticktin. Ticktin is an attorney for Peters who has also represented Donald Trump, and he was reportedly involved with the draft national emergency executive order related to elections. Peters is a former county clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, who was “convicted in 2024 for her role in a brazen plot to examine voting machines under her control after the 2020 election” before Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence. During the talk, Savin said the executive order proposal was a “coalition effort” that Ticktin “helped push … with the president,” and Ticktin appeared to agree with Savin that there needed to be a “pause” on the midterm elections to stop supposed election fraud.
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From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 17, 2026, streamed on the “Bannons War Room” Rumble channel
Petersappeared on stage withSavin, who hasclaimed to have advised herover the years, and said election fraud can “happen in every country around the world. And, of course, they’re trying to do it to our country.”
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From a video of the Fraud-Fighter Summit uploaded to Telegram on June 16, 2026
Jim Marchant — the currentRepublican nomineefor Nevada secretary of state who alsopartnered with Savinin 2022 to put together a coalition of election denial candidates — suggested that if elected, “I will get rid of the machines. We’re going to get rid of mail-in ballots.”He continued, “We’re going to vote on a precinct level basis, and we’re going to count the vote on a precinct level basis, and we’re finally going to have a fair election here in Nevada.” Savin, who was on stage with Marchant, urged attendees to support Marchant’s campaign.
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From the Fraud-Fighter Summit on June 16, 2026, streamed on Rumble
In addition to U.S. elections, the summit also featured substantial discussion of Brazil and South Korea, both of whichhave been a focusfor far-right American pundits in recent years. The first night of the summit was in part dedicated to a movie about former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. One speaker at the conference was Douglas Frank, who visited South Korea as part of a “Korea-US Election Fraud Joint Investigation Team.” Frank claimed the people of South Korea had “lost their country” after “corrupt elections.” During his appearance, Frank also spoke with former South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who claimed via translator that “the days of election fraud will be numbered.”
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### QAnon influencer says he impacted decisions of secretary of state candidates in Colorado
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When President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election, the institutional guardrails of American democracy held — but just barely.
If faced with the same tests today, those guardrails and the people who held the line would largely be missing, a ProPublica examination found.
At least 75 career officials who once held roles at federal agencies related to election integrity and safety are gone. Two dozen appointees — including many who either actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote or are associates of such people — have been hired to replace them. And once-fringe actors now have access to vast powers.
As the midterms approach, current and former government officials and election security experts expressed concerns that Trump appointees who’ve espoused debunked conspiracy theories about balloting are now in positions to control the narrative around the vote’s soundness.
It’s hard to debunk false claims “coming with the seal of the federal government,” said Derek Tisler, counsel and manager with the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program. “I certainly worry what damage that could do to voters’ confidence.”
Here are some of the key things you should know about the Trump administration’s efforts to, as the president said, “take over” the midterms. Read the full investigation here.
1. In 2020, institutional guardrails helped to prevent Trump from overturning the election.
Following his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump pushed for federal officials to uncover proof that he had, in fact, beaten Joe Biden at the polls. Election cybersecurity experts with the Department of Homeland Security relayed to Attorney General William Barr that the election fraud claims that they looked into were false. Barr then told the president what he didn’t want to hear: The election had not been hacked.
Barr was one of many federal officials — most of them Trump appointees — who refused to bend to the president’s demands, which only intensified in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. Despite the violent uprising at the Capitol on that day, the election results held firm.
2. Less than 18 months into his second term, Trump has dismantled many of those same guardrails.
Since the start of his second term, Trump and his appointees have made significant changes at federal agencies tasked with helping to safeguard elections. In all, at least 75 career officials who’d played important roles in elections work at DHS, the Department of Justice and other agencies have left, been fired or been reassigned, ProPublica found.
In their place are roughly two dozen people Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Ten of them actively worked to reverse the 2020 vote, and the rest are associates of those people. In some cases, ProPublica found, officials have been hired from activist groups that are pillars of the election-denial movement.
3. Among the first agencies Trump gutted after returning to office was one that had repeatedly disproved his stolen-election claims.
Officials at DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had provided research to the first Trump White House that disproved many theories claiming that the 2020 election had been hacked. CISA also played a crucial part in publicly countering these claims by producing a “Rumor Control” website to rebut them.
Then, only weeks into Trump’s second term, DHS leadership put employees focused on countering disinformation and helping safeguard elections on leave. They also froze CISA’s other election security work, which included assessing local election offices for physical and cybersecurity risks. Eventually, all CISA employees specializing in elections were fired or transferred.
A DHS spokesperson told ProPublica that the changes at CISA were in response to “a ballooning budget concealing a dangerous departure from its statutory mission,” which included “electioneering instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure.”
4. Trump and his appointees have gutted election-related teams at federal law enforcement agencies.
FBI Director Kash Patel dismantled the agency’s public corruption team, which had previously been deployed to help monitor possible criminal activity on Election Day. The Foreign Influence Task Force, which aimed to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics, was also disbanded.
(An FBI spokesperson said the bureau “remains committed to detecting and countering foreign influence efforts by adversarial nations.”)
The voting section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division had enforced federal laws that protect voting rights, particularly those that combat racial discrimination. But now, nearly all of the section’s roughly 30 career lawyers have resigned or been moved. Trump then filled the section with conservative lawyers, including at least four who participated in challenging the 2020 vote or have worked with people who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump has replaced ousted career specialists with “Team America.”
In the summer of 2025, after the Trump administration had forced out most of the career specialists, a small group of political appointees — which once called itself “Team America,” according to sources familiar with the matter — began convening at DHS headquarters, looking for federal levers it could pull to realize a March 2025 executive order, in which Trump tried to exert greater federal control over aspects of voting.
Among the core members of the group was David Harvilicz, a DHS assistant secretary tasked with overseeing the security of election infrastructure, including voting machines, and three of his top staffers. As ProPublica has reported, Harvilicz co-founded an AI company with an architect of Trump’s claims about election hacking in Michigan.
Heather Honey, who serves under Harvilicz in a newly created position focused on elections, is a source of the false claim that more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters in the 2020 presidential election — a claim Trump cited on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.
At least 11 administration appointees, including Honey, have ties to the Election Integrity Network, a conservative grassroots organization led by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Since moving into government, Honey has maintained close ties to Mitchell’s organization, and she and at least two other federal officials have given its members private briefings.
6. Team America members are using a powerful Homeland Security Investigations tool to try to identify noncitizen voters.
The DOJ has been demanding that states turn over confidential voter roll information, and it has sued around 30 states for this data.
Meanwhile, DHS has urged states to upload their voter rolls to its tool, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.
The goal in both efforts has been to find noncitizens on the voter rolls. But the SAVE tool has come up short, often identifying citizens as noncitizens, as ProPublica has reported, and officials have faced other roadblocks with its use.
More recently, according to two people familiar with the matter, Team America has worked to harness a more powerful tool used by another branch of DHS, Homeland Security Investigations, to increase its ability to search for noncitizen voters and bring criminal charges against them.
In response to questions sent to DHS, Harvilicz and Honey, a DHS spokesperson disputed that they were seeking to use the department’s powers to advantage Trump. In response to questions about their ties to the election denial movement, the spokesperson wrote, “To meet the diverse and evolving challenges the Department faces, we hire experts with diverse backgrounds who go through a rigorous vetting process.”
7. Trump’s head of election security is behind the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election ballots in Georgia.
Attorney Kurt Olsen once worked to try to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in court and was later sanctioned by judges for making baseless allegations about Arizona elections. He is now Trump’s director of election security and integrity and is the driving force behind the January raid of the election center in Fulton County, Georgia.
Toward the end of 2025, Olsen flew to Georgia to meet with Paul Brown, the head of the FBI’s Atlanta field office, according to people familiar with the matter. Olsen wanted the FBI to seize ballots from the Democratic stronghold, and he gave Brown a report he claimed would justify the extraordinary action. Brown’s team submitted an affidavit to superiors at the DOJ that did not make a strong enough case to move forward with what Olsen wanted. Afterward, Brown was given a choice: retire or be moved to a new office. Brown retired. The raid went forward under his replacement, based on an affidavit that cited information from the report Olsen provided to Brown.
Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.
An FBI spokesperson said that Brown “elected to retire” and that its “work in the election security space is entirely consistent with the law.”
8. The DOJ’s Public Integrity Section could have tried to block the administration’s Georgia voting investigation.
In the months following Trump’s return to office, the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which had been responsible for making sure the department’s inquiries weren’t improperly influenced by politics, was eviscerated. Resignations, firings and transfers reduced the 36-person section to two.
Multiple former lawyers for the section said they likely would have tried to block the Fulton County investigation because it lacked strong evidence, had a clear political slant and went against department directives that actions should not be taken “for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”
John Keller was principal deputy chief of the section from 2020 to 2025 and was acting chief when he resigned in early 2025. He worries that allegations of irregularities in the upcoming election will be handled on a partisan basis.
“Without that review and without apolitical, objective, honest brokers involved in the process, there is a much greater risk for intentional manipulation or inadvertent interference,” Keller said.
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Election deniers push conspiracy theories about primaries in GOP-run Texas
QAnon figure Juan O. Savin: “People were just floored by what was going on” in Texas with the “massive cheating”
Written by Alex Kaplan
:{Published 04/20/26
Election deniers have been targeting this year’s primary and special elections in Texas, claiming there has been “massive” fraud and cheating.
Attorney Peter Ticktin, activist Linda Szynkowicz, QAnon influencer Wayne Willott, and others who promoted false claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential contest are now claiming on social media and on podcasts that in Texas, votes “got switched,” people used “ghost voting IDs,” and they found “cloned voters.”
For years, right-wing media and politicians have been pushing conspiracy theories about supposed election fraud across the country, and recent claims seem to be part of an apparent effort to undermine the 2026 midterm elections.
Election deniers are now targeting elections in GOP-run Texas}:
On March 3, the Republican and Democratic parties in Texas held primary elections for various elected offices throughout the state. Among the notable primary wins were Republican Gov. Greg Abbott defeating challenger Pete “Doc” Chambers for the GOP gubernatorial nomination and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico besting U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. Texas also held a special election in January for what The Texas Tribune reported was a “solidly red Texas Senate seat,” with Democrat Taylor Rehmet winning the seat in a “stunning special election upset.”
Republicans have full control of the Texas government, and a Republican-appointed secretary of state serves as the state's chief election officer.
## Election deniers claimed “massive fraud” happened during the recent Texas primary and special elections
Multiple prominent election deniers have claimed that there was “massive fraud” and “massive cheating” that tainted the Texas primary and special elections and that they “should not be certified.” They pushed a variety of conspiracy theories, claiming votes “got switched,” that there were “ghost voting IDs,” and that they found “cloned voters”:
During several podcast appearances, Peter Ticktin, an attorney and commentator with a history of promoting election fraud claims, said that “we better start investigating what happened in the Texas primaries.” He invoked a longstanding conspiracy theory that Venezuela is connected to supposed election fraud, saying voting machines somehow controlled by Venezuela switch votes and “this is how they have control of the outcome of the elections.” He also alleged that 21st Congressional District candidate Weston Martinez found “modified duplicates” in the voter rolls after the first day of voting during this year’s GOP primary and later found that the duplicates in the rolls had been “changed to other names” or “they got rid of them because he was on to it.” Ticktin continued, “One way or the other, these machines are now in play picking the candidates … which we are going to be voting for come November.”
A show host asked if the Texas gubernatorial primary was “an Antrim County situation,” referring to a Michigan county where some falsely claimed that machines changed votes in 2020, and asked if votes for Chambers and Abbott “got switched.”
“Our election system is entirely compromised,” Ticktin replied. “The same voter base, the same voter rolls, the same machines can operate on any election in the United States.”
Fight Voter Fraud Inc. founder Linda Szynkowicz said on her streaming show that in Texas, “they were manipulating the votes as they were coming in the system.”
Kris Jurski, whom NBC describes as “a Florida activist who has promoted election conspiracy theories,” suggested on social media that his tool to supposedly detect election fraud also found “cloned voters … in Texas’s latest election.”
Wayne Willott, a QAnon influencer who goes by “Juan O. Savin,” said during a streaming conversation that “people were just floored by what was going on” in Texas with the “massive cheating.” Willott, who has tried to recruit election denial candidates for positions administering elections, suggested “a restart” for Texas’ primaries, pointing in a separate conversation to “massive fraud.”
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From the March 18, 2026, edition of Nino's Corner, streamed on YouTube
Harry Haury, whom the LA Times described as a “self-proclaimed cybersecurity expert” with “deep ties to the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement,” said during right-wing podcast Stern American’s“election integrity call” that Texas’ primaries were “a large mess,” with “hundreds of thousands of votes that are attributed to an individual, and then that individual is deleted from the record.”
He said the elections “appear[ed] to be tampered with,” and the state had “not produced an honest or transparent result,” and therefore it “should not be certified.”
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From the March 18, 2026, edition of Stern American, streamed on Rumble
On his podcast, election denier Joe Oltmann read a social media post from Chambers alleging fraud in his race and other races in the state, both Democratic and Republican, and Oltmann said that it was evidence of “election fraud” and that “everywhere you turn elections are being stolen.”
John Case — an attorney for former Mesa County, Colorado, Clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted for allowing unauthorized access to county voting equipment over election fraud claims — claimed during another Stern American “election integrity call” that “Bexar County in the Texas primary” featured “some kind of illegal interference in the list of people who voted.” Case, whom Colorado's The Daily Sentinel described as an “election conspiracy theorist,” has previously claimed that there was a supposed witness who claimed “the software used on Dominion Voting Systems in Colorado has the same basic structure as the Smartmatic software that was used to rig elections in Venezuela.” According to Case, this witness “was a government official in Venezuela whose job was to create the war rooms and situation rooms that were used to monitor the election results and then, when the time was ripe, to inject fake votes into the system so that the government candidate would always win.”
Additionally, John Eastman, a Claremont Institute senior fellow who crafted a plan for Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election results, claimed on Stern American that a January special election for a Texas state Senate seat featured “ghost voting IDs based on actual voter IDs.”
## Yes, this probably sounds very familiar
Right-wing figures and social media users have cried fraud about other recent elections as well. That includes the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, where Republican Kari Lake lost to now-Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs; the 2021 New Jersey gubernatorial election, where then-Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli; and the 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial election, where now-Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill defeated Ciattarelli.
## Why do they keep claiming fraud?
Some right-wing media figures are calling for new policies and efforts to prevent supposed election fraud ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The Trump administration has pushed the SAVE America Act, which would curtail voting access, and right-wing media claim Democrats oppose it because they are “cheating.”
Trump’s FBI also raided the Fulton County, Georgia, election center as part of a Justice Department probe of the 2020 election, and Trump released an executive order seeking to limit who is eligible for mail-in voting, drawing praise from election deniers. Some of these activists have also drafted and advocated for a “national emergency” executive order to allow a federal takeover of election processes.
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Donald Trump can never admit that he lost an election, anywhere, at any time, under any circumstance. And I’m not just talking about swing states like Georgia.
Take California, for instance. In the 2024 presidential election, Trump lost California by 20 points. No shame in that, right? California is one of the most liberal states in the country, and is also the home state of his opponent, Kamala Harris. Of course Trump lost it.
But according to Trump, he won California. Or rather, he lost California only because the election had been “rigged” against him. He not only won the state, he says he won it “by a lot.”
In one sense such talk is so ridiculous as to be almost funny. In another sense, it has real consequences, because Republicans being Republicans, they are forced to pretend to believe whatever Trump tells them to believe. And here in Georgia, based on no more evidence than he had to claim that he won California, Trump continues to tell them that he won the state in 2020.
So Georgia Republicans have to pretend that’s true, and try to do something about it.
Two years ago, Georgia’s GOP legislators pretended it was true by passing a new law requiring a whole new way of casting and counting ballots, touting the new system as necessary to prevent the fraud that didn’t happen in 2020. They set a deadline of this summer to have the new system in place and running in time for the upcoming midterm elections.
Then, to prove just how serious they were about election integrity, they neglected to authorize the funds needed to buy the new machines and train elections staff on the new system that they had mandated. Here we are, less than three months from the deadline that they themselves wrote into state law, and not a damn thing has been done.
Wait.
It gets worse.
State legislators gathered in Atlanta in January for the latest session of the General Assembly. They were here in January, February, March and into April, knowing full well that the deadline was looming and could never be met. All they needed to do was pass a bill delaying the deadline that they themselves had set, while authorizing money to pay for that new equipment and training.
They did neither.
To review:
They invented an election-fraud problem that didn’t exist, then they claimed to have fixed the election fraud problem that didn’t exist, then they failed to fund their solution to the problem that didn’t exist, thus creating an actual major, real-life problem, and then they refused to fix that problem of their own making.
And these people make fun of how Fulton County runs elections?
Legislators have now gone home, back to their districts. Leaders of the House and Senate, along with Gov. Brian Kemp, say they may try to call them back into special session before the July deadline to fix things.
Or, they say, maybe not.
“Maybe not” means they’ll dump the problem they created onto the laps of state and federal judges. “Maybe not” means they’ll be able to whine later about the unfairness of whatever solution those judges impose. “Maybe not” means even more election chaos, and even more public doubt about the credibility of the electoral process. They have to know how irresponsible they would be to do that.
Or maybe not.
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The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports a network of far-right actors are working with President Donald Trump to derail elections in Georgia and cast doubt on any vote that removes Republicans from power.
“The meeting and the call recounting it offer a glimpse at how activists, once on the fringe of the conservative movement, are now trying to overhaul elections in Georgia and across the country,” reports AJC. “Now several are in the Trump administration, and Fulton County is firmly in their sights ahead of the 2026 midterms.”
For years, the AJC reports a “network of activists has cast doubt on Georgia’s 2020 election, questioning the integrity of the state’s voting machines and the voter rolls that determine who can vote.”
Legitimate election officials dismissed their challenges and investigators debunked their fraud claims, said AJC. But now several are in the Trump administration, “and Fulton County is firmly in their sights ahead of the 2026 midterms.”
The AJC reports a recent Zoom call revealed conservative activists eagerly sharing tips and tricks for election engineering, which they learned at a February summit in Washington with several Trump administration officials, including Kurt Olsen, Trump’s director of election security and integrity, who played a key role in the FBI’s January raid on an election warehouse in Fulton County.
“Kurt is leading a team and leading a charge of great people that are working together,” said Holly Kesler, a Georgia conservative activist, during a recent “election integrity” meeting of the Georgia Constitution Party, audio of which was obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“It is a multiagency approach,” she said, reports AJC. “And there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes. I’ve been a part of some of that.”
“Others involved in the Election Integrity Summit included Brad Carver of the Georgia Republican Party; Marci McCarthy, a former DeKalb Republican official who now oversees public affairs at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; and Clay Parikh, a cybersecurity expert whose expertise was used by the U.S. Department of Justice to justify seizing troves of Fulton County’s 2020 election records,” said AJC.
The AJC adds that Carver currently leads the “Election Confidence Task Force” within the Georgia GOP and was one of the 16 Trump fake electors in 2020. More recently he called Georgia “the biggest topic” at the Washington summit and expressed frustration with people in the Trump administration who were not pursuing Trump’s attacks on elections with proper vigor.
“But some of those involved in efforts to overhaul elections have been careful about how much they reveal to the public,” reports AJC. “In the Zoom, Carver said meetings like the ones hosted by the Georgia Constitution Party and Signal group chats are helpful because they allow information to be shared without ending up ‘on the front page of liberal media.’”
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As allies of President Donald Trump are rumored to be urging him to issue an executive order seizing control of elections ahead of the midterm elections, Arizona’s top attorney and election administrator both say doing so would be blatantly unconstitutional and unlikely to happen.
“No president has the constitutional authority to ‘take control’ of elections,” Attorney General Kris Mayes told the Arizona Mirror in a statement. “Elections in this country are administered by states. It is a deliberate feature of our constitutional system designed to prevent the federal government from seizing power over how Americans choose their leaders.”
On Friday, the Washington Post reported that a proposed executive order, written and supported by conspiracy theorists, has been passed around the White House with the goal of Trump formally issuing it. It would declare an emergency over alleged Chinese interference in the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden, and use that as the basis to wrest control of elections from states and make sweeping changes to how Americans register to vote and cast their ballots, and how those votes are then counted.
Mayes said the entire exercise is based on fanciful claims of election fraud that are not backed by any evidence, many of which were rejected by the courts in 2020.
“Arizona’s 2020 election results were investigated, audited, litigated, and certified, even by members of the president’s own party,” Mayes added. “There is nothing to relitigate, and debunked conspiracy theories are not a legal basis for seizing control of American elections.”
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said in a statement to the Mirror that his main concern is focusing on elections in Arizona, not Trump’s actions.
“I don’t have time to be distracted by noise from Washington DC. IF a new (executive order) is forthcoming, and it purports to violate the Constitution like the last one, we will challenge it in Court,” Fontes said. “For now, local and state elections officials in Arizona will stay focused on the task at hand: continuing to provide high quality elections for our voters, as we’ve done for decades.”
The draft executive order that is being shopped to the Trump administration was published by Democracy Docket, a digital news site about elections, and is said to be written by Peter Ticktin, a Trump ally and Florida-based lawyer who represents former Mesa County clerk and election denier Tina Peters.
When asked about the order by reporters on Friday morning, Trump said he had “never heard of it.”
The proposed executive order, an earlier version of which was published in April 2025 by a group led by Trump ally and election denier Cleta Mitchell, includes a number of proposals that have been on the wishlists of election conspiracy theorists for years.
It would require every voter to re-register in 2026; eliminate the use of ballot tabulation machines and force every ballot to be counted by hand; allow anyone to challenge the eligibility of voters; require all races be counted by midnight on Election Day; and create a national voter registration database.
The proposal also would have each ballot require a unique identifier, and each voter would need a unique PIN, which some have noted would erase the secret ballot requirement by Arizona law.
“First Trump said he’d impose new voting rules ‘whether approved by Congress or not’ and now extremists are pushing him to use emergency powers to control our elections,” U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said on X. “That’s not how things work in our country, and a federal takeover of our elections violates our Constitution and the law. The American people will not stand by and let their voting rights be undermined.”
Trump and his allies have been pushing for the passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, more commonly known as the SAVE Act, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem making a stop in Arizona to stump for it and fueling more baseless election conspiracy theories along the way.
She called Arizona’s elections an “absolute disaster” and made the false claim that there is widespread voter fraud by illegal immigrants. But when pressed by reporters to provide examples, Noem could not provide even a single one.
The proposed executive order is based around many of those baseless conspiracy theories, alluding to interference by foreign actors in machines and claims of widespread noncitizen voting, both of which have been found to be baseless.
The SAVE Act has passed out of the U.S. House of Representatives but faces a roadblock in the U.S. Senate because the GOP majority doesn’t have enough support to get around the filibuster. Trump has said that if it does not pass, he would look for alternative ways to enact it.
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Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms.
According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting.
Election experts say that the meeting reflects an intensifying push to persuade Trump to take unprecedented actions to affect the vote in November. Courts have largely blocked his efforts to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that activists associated with those at the summit have been circulating a draft of an executive order that would ban mail-in ballots and get rid of voting machines as part of a federal takeover. Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who worked on the executive order and had a client at the summit, told ProPublica these actions were “all part of the same effort.”
The summit followed other meetings and discussions between administration officials and activists — many not previously reported — stretching back to at least last fall, according to emails and recordings obtained by ProPublica. The coordination between those inside and outside the government represents a breakdown of crucial guardrails, experts on U.S. elections said.
“The meeting shows that the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have only grown better organized and are now embedded in the machinery of government,” said Brendan Fischer, a director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization. “This creates substantial risk that the administration is laying the groundwork to improperly reshape elections ahead of the midterms or even go against the will of the voters.”
Five of six federal officials who attended the summit didn’t answer questions about the event from ProPublica.
A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said federal officials’ attendance at the gathering shouldn’t be construed as support for a national emergency declaration and that it was “common practice” for staffers to communicate with outside advocates who want to share policy ideas. The official pointed to comments Trump made to PBS News denying he was considering a national emergency or had read the draft executive order. “Any speculation about policies the administration may or may not undertake is just that — speculation,” the official said.
In the past, Trump has expressed an openness to a federal takeover as a way to stem projected Republican losses in November. This month, he said in an interview with conservative podcaster Dan Bongino that Republicans need “to take over” elections and “to nationalize the voting.”
Mitchell did not respond to questions from ProPublica about the summit. A spokesperson for Flynn responded to detailed questions from ProPublica by disparaging experts who expressed concerns, texting, “LOL ‘EXPERTS.’”
The 30-person roundtable discussion on Feb. 19, at an office building in downtown Washington, D.C., was sponsored by the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a conservative think tank. Afterward, activists and government officials dined together, photos reviewed by ProPublica showed.
Flynn, the institute’s chair, told a social media personality why he’d arranged the event.
“I wanted to bring this group together physically, because most of us have met online” while “fighting battles” in swing states from Arizona to Georgia, Flynn said to Tommy Robinson on the gathering’s sidelines. Robinson
of these
. “The overall theme of this event was to make sure that all of us aren’t operating in our own little bubbles.”
Flynn has repeatedly advocated for Trump to declare a national emergency and posted on social media after the event addressing Trump, “We The People want fair elections and we know there is only one office in the land that can make that happen given the current political environment in the United States.”
In addition to Olsen and Honey, four other federal officials from agencies that will shape the upcoming elections attended the event. At least four of the six attended the dinner.
One is Clay Parikh, a special government employee at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who’s helping Olsen with the 2020 inquiry. A spokesperson at ODNI said Parikh had attended the summit “in his personal capacity.”
Another, Mac Warner, handled election litigation at the Justice Department. A department spokesperson said that Warner had resigned the day after the event and had not received the required approval from agency ethics officials to participate.
The department “remains committed to upholding the integrity of our electoral system and will continue to prioritize efforts to ensure all elections remain free, fair, and transparent,” the spokesperson said in an email.
A third administration official who attended the summit, Marci McCarthy, directs communications for the nation’s cyber defense agency, which oversees the security of elections infrastructure like voting machines.
Kari Lake, whom Trump appointed as senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was a featured speaker. Lake worked with Olsen and Parikh in her unsuccessful bid to overturn her loss in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.
Lake said in an email that she “showed up to the event, spoke for about 20 minutes about the overall importance of election integrity, a non-partisan issue that matters to all citizens — both in the United States and abroad. I left without listening to any other speeches.”
“Elections should be free from fraud or any other malfeasance that subverts the will of the people,” she added.
At the meeting, activists presented on ways to transform American elections that would help conservatives, according to social media posts and interviews they gave on conservative media, such as LindellTV, a streaming platform created by the pillow mogul Mike Lindell. They said the group broke down into two camps: those who wanted to pursue a more incremental legal and legislative strategy and those who wanted Trump to declare a national emergency.
Multiple activists left the meeting convinced Trump should do the latter, a step they believe would allow the president to get around the Constitution’s directive that elections should be run by states.
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a prominent funder of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, told LindellTV that Trump has “played nice” so far in not seizing control of American elections. “But at some point,” Byrne said, “he’s got to do something, the muscular thing: declare a national emergency.”
Byrne responded to questions from ProPublica by sending a screenshot of a poll that he said suggested “2/3 of Americans correctly do not trust” voting machines, which the proposed national emergency declaration aims to do away with.
Will Huff, who has advocated for doing away with voting machines, told a conservative vlogger that Olsen, the White House lawyer, and other administration representatives would take the “consensus” from the gathering back to Trump. “It’s got to be a national emergency,” said Huff, the campaign manager for a Republican candidate for Arkansas secretary of state.
In response to questions from ProPublica, Huff said in an email that Olsen and Trump would use their judgment to decide whether to declare a national emergency.
“The President has been briefed on findings of shortcomings in election infrastructure,” Huff wrote. “I believe there are steady hands around the President wanting to ensure that any action taken is, first, constitutional and legal, but also backed by evidence.”
McCarthy, the cybersecurity official, expressed more general solidarity with fellow attendees in a post on social media about the summit. “Grateful for friendships forged through years of standing shoulder-to-shoulder, united by purpose and conviction,” she wrote. “The mission continues… and so does the fellowship.”
Last week’s gathering was the latest in a string of private interactions between conservative election activists and administration officials, according to emails, documents and recordings obtained by ProPublica. Many have involved Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. Before taking her government post, Honey was a leader in the Election Integrity Network, ProPublica has reported, as was McCarthy.
Previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica show that just weeks after Honey started at the Department of Homeland Security, she briefed election activists, a Republican secretary of state and another federal official on a conference call arranged by her former boss, Mitchell.
“We are excited to welcome her on our call this morning to hear about her work for election integrity inside DHS,” Mitchell wrote in an email introducing presenters on the call.
Honey didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about the call. Experts said Honey’s briefing gave her former employer access that likely would have violated ethics rules in place under previous administrations, including the first Trump administration — though not this one.
The prior “ethics guardrails would have prevented some of the revolving door issues we’re seeing between the election denial movement and the government officials,” said Fischer, the Campaign Legal Center director. Those prior rules “were supposed to prevent former employers and clients from receiving privileged access.”
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AN 10 25
Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett notified the president he is referring 42 “potential non-U.S. citizens” to the FBI for illegal votes.
Those potential illegal voters account for 0.0001% of all registered voters in Tennessee.
Responding to a letter from President Donald Trump congratulating him for using the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, Hargett thanked the president for improving the system to help Tennessee “protect our voter rolls.”
“The collaborative spirit and speed with which your administration worked to improve SAVE and make it available is unprecedented,” Hargett said in a letter posted on Facebook.
Hargett said his office is referring those who might not be U.S. citizens to the FBI for investigation.
The SAVE system is designed to help states verify citizenship and immigration status of people seeking government benefits. But states such as Tennessee use it to check people’s citizenship status for voting, even though some groups question its effectiveness.
The Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy institute that advocates for democracy and justice, reports that information from SAVE is sometimes incomplete or old, making the program useful but not fully reliable in determining a person’s citizenship.
The institute also said a move by the Department of Homeland Security to expand the amount of information accessible through SAVE increases the risk of states erroneously purging eligible voters from their rolls.
Tennessee had about 4.3 million registered voters as of June after purging some 276,000, according to the Secretary of State’s website.
Trump offered the program free of charge to states in March with an executive order to protect election integrity and make sure only U.S. citizens cast ballots.
“You were one of the first leaders to step up and protect the integrity of our elections by using the SAVE system — and I commend you for your decisive action,” Trump said in his letter to Hargett.
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MMA
Right-wing figures and Trump allies are calling for Trump to declare a “national emergency” to prevent supposed election fraud
Jerome Corsi has claimed he’s been involved in drafting an executive order “to be implemented for the 2026 elections”
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 10/28/25
The New York Times recently reported that a Department of Homeland Security official focused on “election integrity,” appointed by President Donald Trump, has proposed that Trump declare a “national emergency” to “justify dictating new rules to state and local governments” related to voting and elections.
The call for a “national emergency” declaration, which Department of Homeland Security official Heather Honey made a few months ahead of her appointment, has also recently been reiterated by right-wing figures and Trump allies known for pushing false claims of widespread election fraud. In interviews and on social media, some of these figures have suggested that Trump use “plenary authority” or claimed to be “encouraging” Trump to declare a national emergency “to make sure that the elections in 2026 are secure.” One of those figures has even claimed to be involved in efforts to craft a related executive order that would affect voting processes.
## Trump has issued and threatened executive orders to enact national election policies
In March, Trump issued an executive order of dubious legality to mandate prospective voters provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The executive order “calls for the Election Assistance Commission to require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and directs state or local officials to record and verify the information,” along with “requir[ing] states to count ballots by Election Day.” Legal experts have cast doubt on the executive order’s legality, and a federal judge in June blocked most of the key provisions of the order, writing in a decision that “the Constitution does not grant the president any specific powers over elections.” In August, Trump called for voter ID for “every single vote,” claiming, “I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!!” The New York Times, [3/25/25, 3/26/25, 6/13/25, 8/31/25]
## Trump official previously suggested Trump can declare a “national emergency” to implement the administration’s preferred election policies nationally
In March, Heather Honey, now DHS’ deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, reportedly “suggested that the new administration could declare a ‘national emergency’ and justify dictating new rules to state and local governments” related to voting and elections. The New York Times reported that during a “call with right-wing activists in March,” Honey suggested a national emergency “could be based on an ‘actual investigation’ of the 2020 election if it showed there had been a ‘manipulation’ of the vote.” “Therefore,” she argued, “we have some additional powers that don’t exist right now” and “can take these other steps without Congress and we can mandate that states do things and so on.” The New York Times, [10/22/25]
Honey is one of “multiple proponents” of Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims who The New York Times reports Trump elevated “into high-level administration jobs.” Prior to Honey's appointment to DHS in August, she was “a leader” in the “right-wing election activist movement that emerged” after Trump “falsely claimed that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud.” According to the Times, Honey “echo[ed] rhetoric that has infused” that movement during a call in September with state election officials. The New York Times, [10/22/25]
## Right-wing figures and Trump allies have called for Trump to issue a national emergency declaration to enforce his preferred election policies
At an event for right-wing website The Gateway Pundit, former Trump attorney Peter Ticktin said he “wouldn’t be very surprised” if there’s “an emergency called” before the next election, claiming that “it's necessary.” Ticktin, an attorney with a history of spreading election fraud claims, said at a conference organized by The Gateway Pundit, “I wouldn’t be very surprised if we find out before the next election that there’s kind of, be an emergency called,” with which “we’re going to be able to turn the tide.” Ticktin also said, “I don’t have it on good authority that this is going to be done, but a number of people are urging it because it’s necessary.” Media Matters, [7/9/19, 6/16/22, 7/15/22; The Gateway Pundit’s Vindicated conference, 8/23/25]
:{Podcaster Joe Oltmann, who refused to provide evidence in court of his claims that the 2020 election was rigged, said that Trump’s election-related executive orders “are permissible in states of national and foreign emergencies.” Responding to a social media post suggesting Trump’s proposed voter ID executive order violated the Constitution, Oltmann wrote, “Supremacy clause, and state of emergency. EO are permissible in states of national and foreign emergencies.” Colorado Public Radio, [7/31/25; USA Today, 9/5/24; Twitter/X, 8/31/25]
Conrad Reynolds, who is part of an initiative to get rid of voting machines, said, “We are encouraging the president to declare a national emergency right now on this issue.” According to Little Rock Public Radio, Reynolds “thinks Arkansas voting machines could be flipping votes” and runs an organization focused on “getting rid of voting machines” in favor of paper ballots. He was charged with electioneering over the issue. While appearing on a podcast, Reynolds said: “We have a national emergency. That's what this is. And we are encouraging the president to declare a national emergency right now on this issue.” He added that “if we don’t get this right, I'm telling you the midterms are not going to be good, and we need to fix it right now.” Little Rock Public Radio, [11/4/24, 10/10/25; The State of Freedom, 9/16/25]
During a call on “election integrity” on a Florida GOP official’s podcast, VoterGA’s Garland Favorito said that Trump “can execute his National Emergency Act powers” to supposedly protect elections. CNN reported that Favorito has “a long history of promoting debunked conspiracy theories” and a “penchant for pushing election misinformation.” During the podcast, Favorito said that Trump could “execute his National Emergency Act powers” in order to ensure that election systems “comply” with federal law, adding, “I believe that he’ll do that.” CNN, [10/9/24; ProPublica, 10/16/24; Stern American, 9/18/25]
Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn during a podcast appearance: “The only way that we’re going to have a fair federal election is if” Trump “declares ... some sort of a national emergency.” Flynn, who urged Trump after the 2020 election to seize voter machines and who Trump has since appointed to the board of visitors for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said on a podcast that “there’s all kinds of fraudulent activity and behavior” in elections, meaning that “the only way that we’re going to have a fair federal election is if the president of the United States declares ... some sort of a national emergency and says for federal elections,” there will be “picture ID”, “no mail-in ballots,” and “on election day, we do ... basically a paper count.” The New York Times, [1/31/22; Reuters, 3/17/25; Conversations in Energy with Stuart Turley, 10/14/25]
David Clements, who has spread claims about election fraud, said that Trump should use “plenary authority” to stop “a digital invasion and a digital rebellion taking place.” Lawfare reported in 2024 that Clements had “criss-crossed the country to evangelize about purported election fraud,” and The Washington Post reported in 2022 that he was “traveling the country trying to persuade local leaders to withhold certification of election results.” During an interview on a right-wing YouTube channel, Clements and his wife Erin discussed supposed ways to fix “rigged elections,” with Clements arguing that it’s necessary to “start looking at Title 50, Article 2 power, a national security framework for Trump to really be in a position where he’s not asking. He’s ordering. He’s telling you,” and that “even people like Peter Ticktin … have come to the same conclusion.” Clements added that Trump has to “be able to declare things from a framework of plenary authority, meaning he’s not ... relying on the legislature that’s been captured to come in and codify what he’s saying,” and that he believed Trump was “prepared to do that.” Lawfare, [10/31/24; The Washington Post, 9/8/22; Media Matters, 6/14/23; YouTube, 10/20/25]
Jerome Corsi, who previously worked for conspiracy theory network Infowars, said that a “national security emergency will allow Donald Trump to make sure that the elections in 2026 are secure even if we have to go to extreme measures and get the military involved.” Corsi also has a long history of producing false research, helped popularize the QAnon conspiracy theory, and was instrumental in pushing the lie that former President Barack Obama has a fake birth certificate. NPR, [3/2/23; Media Matters, 1/8/18, 11/13/18; Stern American, 9/18/25]
## Corsi has claimed to be working with Ticktin in the drafting of another Trump executive order based on a “national security emergency” ahead of 2026 elections
Jerome Corsi has repeatedly claimed that he and Peter Ticktin have been involved in the drafting of a Trump executive order “to be implemented for the 2026 elections.” During appearances on the podcasts Stern American and Nino’s Corner, Corsi claimed that he and Ticktin had been involved with a “17-page draft of an executive order” that would “declare a national security emergency” and includes “steps the states will be required to take in order to make sure the elections are secure.” Corsi has also claimed that Trump “can use his Article 2 powers as commander in chief and have the military run the elections if he had to.” In October, Corsi claimed to have been “briefed” that the order was “expected to come down the next couple of months and to be implemented for the 2026 elections.” *Stern American*, [7/14/25, 9/18/25, 10/8/25; Rumble, 9/2/25, 10/22/25, 10/22/25]
Corsi said the executive order would be “based on our research” and would target voter rolls, mandate voter ID, and require proof of citizenship to register to vote. Corsi said the order would “stop using all existing voter rolls, stop using all existing computers that handle those voting rolls, that we go to voter ID and proof of citizenship for new registrations, and that that proof of citizenship demand the ability to make sure someone is a citizen before they be allowed to vote.” *Stern American*, [7/14/25, 7/30/25]
Ticktin has also acknowledged Corsi’s involvement in targeting voter rolls.Ticktin, in a call on “election integrity” on the Stern American podcast, said of proving that the “voter rolls have been corrupted”: “We’ve got certain people. There’s Jerome Corsi, who’s been very involved in this. We’ve got Andrew Paquette, who really was the one that was on the forefront of all of this.” *Stern American*, [9/18/25]
//
07/15/22 12:39 PM EDT
08/25/25 7:06 PM EDT
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A sweeping new report from the Brennan Center for Justice warns that the Trump administration, backed by Republican legislators and allied state actors, is mounting what one civil‑rights coalition calls a “coordinated scheme” to rig voter rolls and control election machinery to stay in power regardless of how the public votes.
In an article for*People's World*published Monday, journalist Mark Gurenberg highlighted the key elements of this strategy that surfaced in an executive order signed March 25 titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”
It mandates documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport or naturalization certificate, for any voter registration using the federal form, and bars counting mail‑in ballots if they arrive after Election Day, irrespective of postmark date. States that do not comply risk losing federal election funding and may face enforcement actions by the Department of Justice or other agencies.
:{READ MORE:DC insider won't minimize Trump's repugnance:
The article highlighted the Brennan Center report's finding that more than 21 million eligible U.S. citizens — many low‑income voters, married women, seniors and people of color — lack ready access to the documentation required. This means that the order and its legislative counterpart in Congress, the proposal known as the SAVE Act, would likely prevent millions from ever registering to vote.
The center's report said: “A president has no right to rewrite the country’s election rules or regulate federal elections on his own."
“As a federal court recently put it, ‘The Constitution vests none of these powers in the president.’ In issuing the order, the president claimed extraordinary unilateral authority to regulate federal elections and usurp the powers of Congress, the states, and the (U.S.) Elections Administration Commission, an independent, bipartisan federal agency," it added.
“It’s a solution in search of a problem,”said one civil‑rights leader in April who testified before the Senate Rules Committee.
READ MORE:'Middle-aged Manson girls': Far-right 'bloodthirsty' MAGA women mocked in scathing take-down
“The SAVE Act is a direct attack on our freedom to vote and a dangerous attempt to silence the voices of millions—particularly voters of color, low income families, women, and young people … It is not about safeguarding elections. It is about stripping power from the people and undermining our democracy," the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said in a statement in March.
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Election denial groups and right-wing media figures are talking about their election interference plans as voting begins
Election denial groups have publicly talked about their plans to challenge voter rolls, monitor ballot drop boxes, and recruit and train poll workers to be a “spy in the camp” on Election Day
Written by Payton Armstrong
Research contributions from Media Matters Staff
Published 10/31/24
Election denial groups and some right-wing media figures have been discussing their plans to interfere in the 2024 voting process, building on previous efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and interfere with the 2022 midterm election.
Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, election denial groups and right-wing media figures have discussed their plans to challenge citizens’ right to vote, vowed to monitor drop boxes, claimed to be recruiting and training poll workers, launched apps to track supposed fraud on Election Day, and encouraged activists to monitor for noncitizen voting.
In the 2022 midterm elections, right-wing media supported election denial groups recruiting poll workers and poll watchers and asking for volunteers to monitor ballot drop boxes. These efforts had seemingly grown out of conspiracy theories from former President Donald Trump and right-wing media that the 2020 election was rife with voter fraud and had been stolen, culminating in a violent attempt to overturn the election by storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
As voting begins for the 2024 election, “election officials across the country are ramping up their security measures at polling places,” as reported by NBC News, including “beefing up law enforcement presence to donning bulletproof vests to deploying drones for surveillance amid an increasingly hostile environment.”
Right-wing groups and media figures are encouraging challenges to voter rolls, including asking supporters to flag “suspicious voter[s]” with “Hispanic-sounding last names”
Election denial group True the Vote has urged followers to submit voter-eligibility complaints by using an app, resulting in thousands of challenges to voter registrations.True the Vote is run by Catherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips, who regularly promote the group’s activities in right-wing media. CNN reported: “One of the main drivers of the fruitless challenges is a conservative Texas-based nonprofit group called True the Vote, an election-monitoring organization that has long peddled debunked voter-fraud theories. The group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, has called on followers to help clean voter rolls by using an app called IV3 that enables users to research voter data and submit voter-eligibility challenges to local election offices.” CNN, [7/29/24; Media Matters, 1/26/23]
Cleta Mitchell — who leads the Election Integrity Network and has appeared frequently in right-wing media to promote the group and its activities, and fearmonger about noncitizen voting — was reportedly involved in helping the development of EagleAI for mass voter challenges in various states.As reported by Documented, “Eagle AI draws from public data sources like voter files and newspaper obituaries to build a dashboard for activists to conduct their own ‘list maintenance’ and generate potentially thousands of challenges to voter eligibility with a few clicks.” Documented, [8/17/23; Media Matters, 6/14/24, 10/2/24]
Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, a coalition of election-denying activists, has reportedly been recruiting people at the state level to “target the registrations of potentially left-leaning voters.”The New Republic reported that the coalition “recruits activists at the state level and trains them to target the registrations of potentially left-leaning voters in an effort to tilt the balance of the electorate toward conservative-leaning voters.” The New Republic, [10/16/24]
In the last several months, the Ohio chapter of Election Integrity Network has reportedly “mounted a statewide effort to kick thousands of registered voters off the rolls in the runup to the 2024 election.”According to local reporting, at least 13 counties “have received thousands of voter registration challenges, the vast majority of which have been rejected” and that “most of those challenges, the officials say, come from locals identifying themselves as members of the Election Integrity Network.” Cleveland.com, [9/25/24]
On CBS News, the head of the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network encouraged people to flag “Hispanic-sounding last names” for potential voter roll challenges. In an interview with the network, James Womack, head of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, discussed creating a “list of suspicious voters” who may be on the voter rolls in North Carolina. CBS also aired a clip of a video in which Womack also said, “If you’ve got folks that you, that were registered and they’re missing information … and they were registered in the last 90 days before the election, and they've got Hispanic-sounding last names, that probably is, is a suspicious voter.” Media Matters, [10/22/24; CBS News, 10/21/24]
On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, the founder of Fight Voter Fraud, Linda Szynkowicz, offered the MAGA audience voter data for mass eligibility challenges in Georgia. “Go to our website, download the request data so you can have a list of people in your county that we believe should not be voting in your county, and you can actually hang on to those,” she said, adding, “Do your due diligence. We’ll even teach you how to do it.” Media Matters, [10/7/24]
Right-wing groups and media figures have been recruiting and training poll workers and observers
Election Integrity Network claims to have recruited tens of thousands of “election integrity patriots” and holds regular online coordinating calls. The Guardian, [10/21/24]
Right-wing group Judicial Watch announced that “as part of its ongoing election integrity efforts, its trained observers will monitor polling sites in Wisconsin on November 5.”Judicial Watch President and podcast host Tom Fitton was quoted in the press release saying, “Judicial Watch’s teams will monitor the election in Wisconsin to expose and deter any fraud.” Per Democracy Docket, Judicial Watch is “a right-wing legal group that’s constantly filing all manner of litigation against the government — Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, challenges to immigration policy, attempts to thwart environmental actions and any other issue that riles up Republicans. ‘Judicial Watch’s strategy is simple: Carpet-bomb the federal courts with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits,’ the New York Times wrote of the organization in a 2016 profile.” Judicial Watch, [10/22/24; Democracy Docket, 6/11/24]
* Tea Party Patriots, which sponsored Trump’s January 6 rally, is apparently doing “poll watcher trainings specifically in Georgia” in collaboration with Election Integrity Network.On War Room, election denial figure and Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin claimed her group is also partnering with Turning Point Action and America First Works on door knocking efforts. Martin also described the groups’ efforts in Georgia in a separate interview, saying they are “making sure that poll watchers are recruited and trained.” Media Matters, [9/9/24, 1/30/24]
Right-wing group VoterGA — co-founded by Garland Favorito, who has fundraised for his election denial organization during appearances on a far-right show — collaborated with the Election Integrity Network on poll-watcher training.CNN reported that “VoterGA, a nonprofit led by a computer consultant-turned-activist named Garland Favorito who has a long history of promoting debunked conspiracy theories, has made inroads with some election officials.” In a phone interview with CNN, “Favorito argued that he and his group are fighting for election integrity and that some state and local officials have sought to cover-up elections malfeasance in Georgia. As an example, he cited his inability to review ballots from the 2020 election,” ignoring that state law requires for the ballots to be sealed after the elections. CNN, [10/9/24; Media Matters, 6/14/23]
On the Christian nationalist program FlashPoint, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump recruited poll watchers and promoted the RNC’s new “election integrity division” to “ensure that there is no funny business” in the election.During the appearance, Trump said that the RNC is working to stop “3:00 a.m. dumps” and “ballots in suitcases that miraculously appear places,” and she called on the audience to “volunteer to be part of our team, ballot harvest with us where it's legal, you know, be a poll watcher, be a poll worker.” Media Matters, [5/30/24]
Christian nationalist “prophet” and podcast host Lance Wallnau has been traveling the country on his “Courage Tour” recruiting conservative Christians as poll workers to be a “spy in the camp” on Election Day.During Wallnau’s tour — which recently got a boost from Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) — attendees were directed to a group called Lion of Judah, which ProPublica reported “offers a free course titled ‘Fight the Fraud,’ with modules detailing poll workers’ basic duties and helping people find their local elections offices so they can apply as well as email templates to streamline the process.” Notably, Wallnau has already declared that “there will be cheating” in the 2024 election. ProPublica, [10/16/24; Media Matters, 9/27/24]
A Turning Point Action member used QAnon supporter Melody Jennings’ podcast to recruit poll workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.The member, Brett Galaszewski, urged Jennings’ audience to become poll workers and get involved with the Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Republican Party’s “Election Integrity Committee.” Jennings is an election denier who participated in election denial efforts during the 2022 elections by coordinating attempts to intimidate voters at ballot drop boxes. Jennings even took credit for armed men who staked out drop boxes in Arizona. Media Matters, [11/15/23; The New York Times, 11/1/22]
Right-wing “Stop the Steal” activist Scott Presler, who has previously pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, called on Donald Trump Jr.'s Rumble podcast audience to become poll workers and to investigate county voter rolls in Pennsylvania.Media Matters, [9/5/24, 1/30/23]
True the Vote is planning to monitor ballot drop boxes for supposed fraud, including partnering with Steven Crowder and “working with sheriffs”
True the Vote claims to be planning to monitor ballot drop boxes in Michigan and Wisconsin with “24/7 streaming video” that will be “available for anyone.” On War Room, founder Catherine Engelbrecht declared, “This cycle, we do intend to have eyes on those drop boxes with surveillance footage.” Media Matters, [9/5/24]
True the Vote also claims it “is reaching out to sheriffs across the country” to monitor ballot drop boxes.In different media interviews, Engelbrecht claimed to be working with “three very influential sheriffs” in Wisconsin and said the organization is offering local sheriffs “camera equipment” to monitor drop boxes and, in exchange, the public can livestream the footage to “see for themselves what’s happening.” Media Matters, [8/6/24]
YouTuber Steven Crowder is apparently “partnering” with True the Vote for “the scoop” from the group’s drop box monitoring.True the Vote claims it has been “setting up teams and schedules for drop boxes” to monitor “with a little handheld camera” in multiple states and says Crowder is “opening up” the organization’s efforts “to a whole new crowd.” Media Matters, [10/19/24]
## Right-wing groups have launched apps, hotlines, and websites for people to report supposed voter fraud and issues at the polls on Election Day
True the Vote launched a new app for users “to quickly report problems at the polls” and “document and report instances of suspected election fraud” to funnel to local law enforcement.True the Vote claims to be “working with sheriffs” in Wisconsin and plans to funnel reports of supposed “problems at the polls” from users of its new app. Media Matters, [9/12/24, 9/20/24, 8/6/24]
Election denial group The America Project launched an app “for people to hop on and report different things that they see that they know are illegal,” as described by the group’s Director of Rights & Freedoms, Amanda Freytes.The America Project was founded by former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who following the 2020 election, became one of the country’s biggest election denial funders. Twitter/X, [10/5/24; Media Matters, 1/26/23]
Right-wing group United Sovereign Americans launched a new “election complaint” webpage, where people can submit supposed voter fraud to authorities.Founder Marly Hornik has promoted the webpage on War Room. CNN, [10/23/24; Democracy Docket, 5/29/24]
Judicial Watch announced it “will run an Internet hotline for voters in all states to report suspicions of election and voter fraud.”The hotline’s poster asks people to send Judicial Watch a detailed email “if you witness any suspicious activity at your polling place, have issues with your voting machine, or witness voter fraud or intimidation.” Judicial Watch, accessed [10/23/24, 10/23/24]
* YouTuber Steven Crowder touted a plan to have “boots on the ground” on Election Day because “this already is election theft,” saying there will be a “live electoral integrity map” where his audience can “see any shenanigans going on” in real time.Crowder claimed there will be “investigative journalism units and team leaders, managers in every major swing city.” Crowder also said that he would be “partnering” with True the Vote for “Election Night,” and claimed that they “will have tens of thousands of volunteers” combined “watching hundreds of key polling locations and ballot drop boxes around the country.” Media Matters, [9/23/24; Truth Social, 10/28/24]
## Right-wing figures are also encouraging people to monitor for noncitizens voting, or registering to vote
During a so-called election integrity call, election denier Cleta Mitchell called on MAGA activists to watch their local Department of Motor Vehicles for noncitizen voter registration and distribute her group’s materials on the ground.Mitchell said: “There are things you can do in your local communities. Watching at your DMVs, watching - going to your election board, asking your local election officials what are you doing to ensure that noncitizen are not getting registered to vote and getting — we've got sample resolutions. We've got signs, you can download and leaflets you could hand out.” Media Matters, [10/8/24]
On a Rumble live stream, Election Integrity Network leader Kerry Toloczko said that “we don't want noncitizen voting,” and she offered materials for right-wing activists who are planning to monitor for noncitizen voting at the local level.Toloczko, who has also appeared on Newsmax to push baseless claims of noncitizen voting, said that their activists are “everywhere” trying to “suppress the people who are trying to vote unlawfully,” asserting, “We have activists, grassroots activists, so we're handing these [signs] out in churches, in parking lots, in voting centers.” Media Matters, [10/17/24, 10/18/24]
Wisconsin-based talk radio host Vicki McKenna urged her listeners to go to polling locations and “stand with very large signs that say in Spanish, ‘Noncitizens are not permitted to vote in the state of Wisconsin.’” McKenna warned of noncitizens voting and complained that “they don’t want you in the field. They don’t want you participating. They don’t want you observing elections.” 1310 WIBA,*The Vicki McKenna Show*, [10/18/24]
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mma
October 29, 2024, edition of WZFG The Flag's What's On Your Mind?
CLETA MITCHELL (ELECTION INTEGRITY NETWORK): And so there have been a lot of different changes that have been made in legislation and in statutes around the country. And that's a good thing but it's not enough. We have to do more.
But the biggest thing I think is that the RNC, to their credit, have filed a lot of lawsuits. They haven't won as many as I would have liked but at least they've been aggressive before the election and the other thing is we have citizens, we have so many volunteers who are trained who now know the election code better than most lawyers in their state and they are involved and they're engaged and they're working as poll observers and many of them have become election board members and election officials and so we have a presence and we have eyes on the process that we really didn't have in 2020And of course it makes the left's collective head explode. They hate it. T. hey hate me, they hate the Election Integrity Network, and they hate everything that we're doing which tells me we're on the right track.
mma 9 10 24
October 1, 2024, edition of Resolute Protector Foundation's The Bill Walton Show
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): The pattern is that Democrats are basing their political future on noncitizens. That is part of their national global plan for their political power. And why? If you cannot sell your policies and your proposals for the country to turn America into a Marxist, one world country, destroy our sovereignty, well, what do you do if you can't persuade a majority of the electorate? You just change the electorate. That's what this is about. It is by design. It is not an accident.
BILL WALTON (HOST): Well, we've been shouted down when we say the great, we talk about the great replacement theory. But listening to this and everything else, it's a fact. I mean, this is the strategy. It's the great replacement scheme.
mma
October 1, 2024, edition of Resolute Protector Foundation's The Bill Walton Show
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): But one of the reasons it matters in Wisconsin is because we know Wisconsin is a very close state. We know that the presidential election was decided by approximately 20,000 votes in 2020. And we know that there are very active left-wing groups, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, who are responsible for many, many thousands of illegals that they are bringing all over the state of Wisconsin and the Department of Transportation has signs posted everywhere saying no birth certificate, no documents, no problem. They will give you an ID which looks exactly like it looks exactly like a driver's license. There's no distinguishing characteristic. And they have same day voter registration in Wisconsin. So all you have to do is show up with your ID that looks like a driver's license and you're given a ballot.
an 9 24
A collection of GOP-aligned organizations are already hard at work planning to make it harder for predominantly Democratic constituencies to cast their ballots this November.
According to a Wednesday report in tech publication Wired, groups like True The Vote, the Election Integrity Network, Check My Vote and the Nevada-based Pig Pen Project are planning to blitz urban voting precincts in some of the more competitive battleground states this November like Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This initiative is likely to create headaches for voters who may show up to their polling place this fall only to find that their registration was removed due to challenges from one or more of these groups.
“These groups and the broader election denial movement have been building these structures, building these projects, over the course of many, many months and years, in preparation for this moment,” Brendan Fischer, who is the deputy executive director at Documented, told Wired. “And the pieces are finally falling into place, where they can begin to file these mass challenges for voter eligibility.”
READ MORE:Lara Trump says Republicans plan to 'strike' at 'major polling locations' and 'hit things'
"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," he added.
Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair Lara Trump — who is former President Donald Trump's daughter-in-law — has previously hinted at a well-funded infrastructure put in place to both challenge voter eligibility and to challenge election results themselves. During a Fox Business interview in May, Lara Trump told host Maria Bartiromo that the RNC is ready to engage in a campaign of mass disruption in the weeks following the November election.
"We plan on having attorneys in all of these major polling locations across the country," she said. "We can't wait to litigate something weeks after it has happened. We need to strike at a moment's notice. We want people there on the ready to hit things and hit the ground running when they happen so that we are never seeing 2020 happen ever again."
Pennsylvania Secretary of State press secretary Matt Heckel told Wired that election officials are already constantly working to keep voter lists accurate and up to date, saying that 400,000 registrations were removed in 2023 due to regular list maintenance. He warned that a wave of superfluous challenges from outside groups would only add to what is already a considerable workload.
READ MORE:'Carry that with me for the rest of my life': PA election worker lives under constant threat
"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," Heckel told Wired.
After losing the 2020 election, former President Trump filed more than 60 legal challenges to election results in various states. He lost all but one of those challenges, and the sole victory involved a negligible number of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania that were rejected on a technicality. Those ballots did not have an impact on the final tally.
READ MORE:Election workers 'scared to death' of threats from 'volatile' conspiracy theorists in 2024
*Click here to read Wired's report in full (subscription required).
---
an 9 24
Even though voters aren't going to the polls for several weeks, there are already a slew of conservative groups organizing to sow doubt about the result in one particular battleground state if Republicans suffer a loss.
The Guardian recently reported on a trove of emails it obtained detailing efforts by a collection of MAGA-aligned organizations aiming to undermine election results in Georgia should Vice President Kamala Harris defeat former President Donald Trump in the critically important swing state. Several far-right groups — including Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network — are working with election officials in several Georgia counties who are sympathetic to their cause in an effort dubbed the "Georgia Election Integrity Coalition."
The emails, which were obtained via public records request from watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and shared with the Guardian, show how election deniers in positions of power throughout Georgia are hoping to disrupt efforts to certify the 2024 election if Harris prevails. One of those election deniers is David Hancock, who is a member of the Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections.
READ MORE:Election officials fear 'conspiracy pushers' may disrupt vote certification in swing states
The effort appears to date back to January, when an unnamed website "admin" sent an email to members linking to an article by the United Tea Party of Georgia (UTPG) entitled "Georgia Democratic Party Threatens Elections Officials." That article described how an attorney with the Democratic Party of Georgia sent a letter to election officials in several counties reminding them that certifying an election wasn't discretionary and that failing to do so could result in legal action.
What likely prompted that letter was election officials in Cobb, DeKalb and Spalding Counties refusing to certify the 2020 election in Georgia, which President Joe Biden narrowly won by less than 12,000 votes. UTPG called it "Orwellian to demand that election officials certify an election even if they have unanswered questions about the vote."
CREW discovered that the unnamed admin who wrote that UTPG article was indeed Hancock, who the Guardian described as an "outspoken election denier." On the same day the article was published, Hancock wrote: "All right – I finished the article and posted it."
Several of the email's recipients include election officials who tried to decertify election results in Georgia, like Republicans Michael Heekin and Julie Adams of the Fulton County Board of Elections, Debbie Fisher in Cobb County, Nancy Jester in DeKalb County and Roy McClain in Spalding County. Hancock urged them all to share the article in a February email, writing: "I think the message needs to get out, so share as you feel led."
READ MORE:'Ripe for abuse': GA elections chief now allowing anyone to cancel a voter's registration
Adams, using her TeaPartyPatriots.org email address, sought to coordinate voter fraud messaging with the group in a separate email. The group has hosted election deniers at their meetings, including Cobb County Republican Party co-chair Salleigh Grubbs, who successfully got the Georgia State Board of Elections to adopt a rule making it easier for counties to refuse to certify election results. Another featured speaker was state election board member Dr. Janice Johnston, whom Trump mentioned by name during an August rally in which he praised Republican election board members as "pit bulls" who were "fighting for victory."
The core argument of election deniers is that "widespread voter fraud" tarnishes the legitimacy of election results, requiring a delay in certification to conduct an investigation. However, as the Washington Post reported, there is no such thing as widespread voter fraud. Loyola Law School-Los Angeles professor Justin Leavitt found that out of more than one billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014, there were just 31 instances of provable voter fraud. And in several Republican-controlled states including Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Texas and Virginia, voter fraud investigations dating back to the 2020 election only yielded 47 convictions.
According to the Guardian, Democrats have pointed to court cases in Georgia dating back to the 19th century showing that county election boards' certification duties are "ministerial," and not discretionary. Even Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger — a Republican — reportedly instructed a member of his office to remind county election officials that refusing to certify election results could subject them to legal proceedings.
Click here to read the Guardian's report in full.
READ MORE:GOP voter fraud prosecutions only yielded 47 convictions out of tens of millions of ballots: report
---
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editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect that the cancellation of 400,000 Pennsylvania voter registrations was due to normal list maintenance, not challenges from outside groups.*
A collection of GOP-aligned organizations are already hard at work planning to make it harder for predominantly Democratic constituencies to cast their ballots this November.
According to a Wednesday report in tech publication Wired, groups like True The Vote, the Election Integrity Network, Check My Vote and the Nevada-based Pig Pen Project are planning to blitz urban voting precincts in some of the more competitive battleground states this November like Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This initiative is likely to create headaches for voters who may show up to their polling place this fall only to find that their registration was removed due to challenges from one or more of these groups.
:{:{:{“These groups and the broader election denial movement have been building these structures, building these projects, over the course of many, many months and years, in preparation for this moment,}::{” Brendan Fischer, who is the deputy executive director at Documented, told Wired. “:{And the pieces are finally falling into place, where they can begin to file these mass challenges for voter eligibility.”}:
:{:{READ MORE:Lara Trump says Republicans plan to 'strike' at 'major polling locations' and 'hit things'
:{:{"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," he added.
:{:{Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair Lara Trump — who is former President Donald Trump's daughter-in-law — has previously hinted at a well-funded infrastructure put in place to both challenge voter eligibility and to challenge election results themselves. During a Fox Business interview in May, Lara Trump told host Maria Bartiromo that the RNC is ready to engage in a campaign of mass disruption in the weeks following the November election
:{:{"We plan on having attorneys in all of these major polling locations across the country," she said. "We can't wait to litigate something weeks after it has happened. We need to strike at a moment's notice. We want people there on the ready to hit things and hit the ground running when they happen so that we are never seeing 2020 happen ever again.
:{:{Pennsylvania Secretary of State press secretary Matt Heckel told Wired that election officials are already constantly working to keep voter lists accurate and up to date, saying that 400,000 registrations were removed in 2023 due to regular list maintenance. He warned that a wave of superfluous challenges from outside groups would only add to what is already a considerable workload.
:{:{READ MORE:'Carry that with me for the rest of my life': PA election worker lives under constant threat
:{:{"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," Heckel told Wired
:{:{After losing the 2020 election, former President Trump filed more than 60 legal challenges to election results in various states. He lost all but one of those challenges, and the sole victory involved a negligible number of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania that were rejected on a technicality. Those ballots did not have an impact on the final tally.
:{:{READ MORE:[Election workers 'scared to death' of threats from 'volatile' conspiracy theorists in 2024
{Click here to read Wired's report in full (subscription required).
Election denial groups have publicly talked about their plans to challenge voter rolls, monitor ballot drop boxes, and recruit and train poll workers to be a “spy in the camp” on Election Day
Written by Payton Armstrong
Research contributions from Media Matters Staff
Published 10/31/24
Election denial groups and some right-wing media figures have been discussing their plans to interfere in the 2024 voting process, building on previous efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and interfere with the 2022 midterm election.
Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, election denial groups and right-wing media figures have discussed their plans to challenge citizens’ right to vote, vowed to monitor drop boxes, claimed to be recruiting and training poll workers, launched apps to track supposed fraud on Election Day, and encouraged activists to monitor for noncitizen voting.
In the 2022 midterm elections, right-wing media supported election denial groups recruiting poll workers and poll watchers and asking for volunteers to monitor ballot drop boxes. These efforts had seemingly grown out of conspiracy theories from former President Donald Trump and right-wing media that the 2020 election was rife with voter fraud and had been stolen, culminating in a violent attempt to overturn the election by storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
As voting begins for the 2024 election, “election officials across the country are ramping up their security measures at polling places,” as reported by NBC News, including “beefing up law enforcement presence to donning bulletproof vests to deploying drones for surveillance amid an increasingly hostile environment.”
Right-wing groups and media figures are encouraging challenges to voter rolls, including asking supporters to flag “suspicious voter[s]” with “Hispanic-sounding last names”
Election denial group True the Vote has urged followers to submit voter-eligibility complaints by using an app, resulting in thousands of challenges to voter registrations.True the Vote is run by Catherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips, who regularly promote the group’s activities in right-wing media. CNN reported: “One of the main drivers of the fruitless challenges is a conservative Texas-based nonprofit group called True the Vote, an election-monitoring organization that has long peddled debunked voter-fraud theories. The group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, has called on followers to help clean voter rolls by using an app called IV3 that enables users to research voter data and submit voter-eligibility challenges to local election offices.” CNN, [7/29/24; Media Matters, 1/26/23]
Cleta Mitchell — who leads the Election Integrity Network and has appeared frequently in right-wing media to promote the group and its activities, and fearmonger about noncitizen voting — was reportedly involved in helping the development of EagleAI for mass voter challenges in various states.As reported by Documented, “Eagle AI draws from public data sources like voter files and newspaper obituaries to build a dashboard for activists to conduct their own ‘list maintenance’ and generate potentially thousands of challenges to voter eligibility with a few clicks.” Documented, [8/17/23; Media Matters, 6/14/24, 10/2/24]
Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, a coalition of election-denying activists, has reportedly been recruiting people at the state level to “target the registrations of potentially left-leaning voters.”The New Republic reported that the coalition “recruits activists at the state level and trains them to target the registrations of potentially left-leaning voters in an effort to tilt the balance of the electorate toward conservative-leaning voters.” The New Republic, [10/16/24]
In the last several months, the Ohio chapter of Election Integrity Network has reportedly “mounted a statewide effort to kick thousands of registered voters off the rolls in the runup to the 2024 election.”According to local reporting, at least 13 counties “have received thousands of voter registration challenges, the vast majority of which have been rejected” and that “most of those challenges, the officials say, come from locals identifying themselves as members of the Election Integrity Network.” Cleveland.com, [9/25/24]
On CBS News, the head of the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network encouraged people to flag “Hispanic-sounding last names” for potential voter roll challenges. In an interview with the network, James Womack, head of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, discussed creating a “list of suspicious voters” who may be on the voter rolls in North Carolina. CBS also aired a clip of a video in which Womack also said, “If you’ve got folks that you, that were registered and they’re missing information … and they were registered in the last 90 days before the election, and they've got Hispanic-sounding last names, that probably is, is a suspicious voter.” Media Matters, [10/22/24; CBS News, 10/21/24]
On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, the founder of Fight Voter Fraud, Linda Szynkowicz, offered the MAGA audience voter data for mass eligibility challenges in Georgia. “Go to our website, download the request data so you can have a list of people in your county that we believe should not be voting in your county, and you can actually hang on to those,” she said, adding, “Do your due diligence. We’ll even teach you how to do it.” Media Matters, [10/7/24]
Right-wing groups and media figures have been recruiting and training poll workers and observers
Election Integrity Network claims to have recruited tens of thousands of “election integrity patriots” and holds regular online coordinating calls. The Guardian, [10/21/24]
Right-wing group Judicial Watch announced that “as part of its ongoing election integrity efforts, its trained observers will monitor polling sites in Wisconsin on November 5.”Judicial Watch President and podcast host Tom Fitton was quoted in the press release saying, “Judicial Watch’s teams will monitor the election in Wisconsin to expose and deter any fraud.” Per Democracy Docket, Judicial Watch is “a right-wing legal group that’s constantly filing all manner of litigation against the government — Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, challenges to immigration policy, attempts to thwart environmental actions and any other issue that riles up Republicans. ‘Judicial Watch’s strategy is simple: Carpet-bomb the federal courts with Freedom of Information Act lawsuits,’ the New York Times wrote of the organization in a 2016 profile.” Judicial Watch, [10/22/24; Democracy Docket, 6/11/24]
* Tea Party Patriots, which sponsored Trump’s January 6 rally, is apparently doing “poll watcher trainings specifically in Georgia” in collaboration with Election Integrity Network.On War Room, election denial figure and Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin claimed her group is also partnering with Turning Point Action and America First Works on door knocking efforts. Martin also described the groups’ efforts in Georgia in a separate interview, saying they are “making sure that poll watchers are recruited and trained.” Media Matters, [9/9/24, 1/30/24]
Right-wing group VoterGA — co-founded by Garland Favorito, who has fundraised for his election denial organization during appearances on a far-right show — collaborated with the Election Integrity Network on poll-watcher training.CNN reported that “VoterGA, a nonprofit led by a computer consultant-turned-activist named Garland Favorito who has a long history of promoting debunked conspiracy theories, has made inroads with some election officials.” In a phone interview with CNN, “Favorito argued that he and his group are fighting for election integrity and that some state and local officials have sought to cover-up elections malfeasance in Georgia. As an example, he cited his inability to review ballots from the 2020 election,” ignoring that state law requires for the ballots to be sealed after the elections. CNN, [10/9/24; Media Matters, 6/14/23]
On the Christian nationalist program FlashPoint, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump recruited poll watchers and promoted the RNC’s new “election integrity division” to “ensure that there is no funny business” in the election.During the appearance, Trump said that the RNC is working to stop “3:00 a.m. dumps” and “ballots in suitcases that miraculously appear places,” and she called on the audience to “volunteer to be part of our team, ballot harvest with us where it's legal, you know, be a poll watcher, be a poll worker.” Media Matters, [5/30/24]
Christian nationalist “prophet” and podcast host Lance Wallnau has been traveling the country on his “Courage Tour” recruiting conservative Christians as poll workers to be a “spy in the camp” on Election Day.During Wallnau’s tour — which recently got a boost from Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) — attendees were directed to a group called Lion of Judah, which ProPublica reported “offers a free course titled ‘Fight the Fraud,’ with modules detailing poll workers’ basic duties and helping people find their local elections offices so they can apply as well as email templates to streamline the process.” Notably, Wallnau has already declared that “there will be cheating” in the 2024 election. ProPublica, [10/16/24; Media Matters, 9/27/24]
A Turning Point Action member used QAnon supporter Melody Jennings’ podcast to recruit poll workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.The member, Brett Galaszewski, urged Jennings’ audience to become poll workers and get involved with the Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Republican Party’s “Election Integrity Committee.” Jennings is an election denier who participated in election denial efforts during the 2022 elections by coordinating attempts to intimidate voters at ballot drop boxes. Jennings even took credit for armed men who staked out drop boxes in Arizona. Media Matters, [11/15/23; The New York Times, 11/1/22]
Right-wing “Stop the Steal” activist Scott Presler, who has previously pushed the QAnon conspiracy theory, called on Donald Trump Jr.'s Rumble podcast audience to become poll workers and to investigate county voter rolls in Pennsylvania.Media Matters, [9/5/24, 1/30/23]
True the Vote is planning to monitor ballot drop boxes for supposed fraud, including partnering with Steven Crowder and “working with sheriffs”
True the Vote claims to be planning to monitor ballot drop boxes in Michigan and Wisconsin with “24/7 streaming video” that will be “available for anyone.” On War Room, founder Catherine Engelbrecht declared, “This cycle, we do intend to have eyes on those drop boxes with surveillance footage.” Media Matters, [9/5/24]
True the Vote also claims it “is reaching out to sheriffs across the country” to monitor ballot drop boxes.In different media interviews, Engelbrecht claimed to be working with “three very influential sheriffs” in Wisconsin and said the organization is offering local sheriffs “camera equipment” to monitor drop boxes and, in exchange, the public can livestream the footage to “see for themselves what’s happening.” Media Matters, [8/6/24]
YouTuber Steven Crowder is apparently “partnering” with True the Vote for “the scoop” from the group’s drop box monitoring.True the Vote claims it has been “setting up teams and schedules for drop boxes” to monitor “with a little handheld camera” in multiple states and says Crowder is “opening up” the organization’s efforts “to a whole new crowd.” Media Matters, [10/19/24]
## Right-wing groups have launched apps, hotlines, and websites for people to report supposed voter fraud and issues at the polls on Election Day
True the Vote launched a new app for users “to quickly report problems at the polls” and “document and report instances of suspected election fraud” to funnel to local law enforcement.True the Vote claims to be “working with sheriffs” in Wisconsin and plans to funnel reports of supposed “problems at the polls” from users of its new app. Media Matters, [9/12/24, 9/20/24, 8/6/24]
Election denial group The America Project launched an app “for people to hop on and report different things that they see that they know are illegal,” as described by the group’s Director of Rights & Freedoms, Amanda Freytes.The America Project was founded by former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who following the 2020 election, became one of the country’s biggest election denial funders. Twitter/X, [10/5/24; Media Matters, 1/26/23]
Right-wing group United Sovereign Americans launched a new “election complaint” webpage, where people can submit supposed voter fraud to authorities.Founder Marly Hornik has promoted the webpage on War Room. CNN, [10/23/24; Democracy Docket, 5/29/24]
Judicial Watch announced it “will run an Internet hotline for voters in all states to report suspicions of election and voter fraud.”The hotline’s poster asks people to send Judicial Watch a detailed email “if you witness any suspicious activity at your polling place, have issues with your voting machine, or witness voter fraud or intimidation.” Judicial Watch, accessed [10/23/24, 10/23/24]
* YouTuber Steven Crowder touted a plan to have “boots on the ground” on Election Day because “this already is election theft,” saying there will be a “live electoral integrity map” where his audience can “see any shenanigans going on” in real time.Crowder claimed there will be “investigative journalism units and team leaders, managers in every major swing city.” Crowder also said that he would be “partnering” with True the Vote for “Election Night,” and claimed that they “will have tens of thousands of volunteers” combined “watching hundreds of key polling locations and ballot drop boxes around the country.” Media Matters, [9/23/24; Truth Social, 10/28/24]
## Right-wing figures are also encouraging people to monitor for noncitizens voting, or registering to vote
During a so-called election integrity call, election denier Cleta Mitchell called on MAGA activists to watch their local Department of Motor Vehicles for noncitizen voter registration and distribute her group’s materials on the ground.Mitchell said: “There are things you can do in your local communities. Watching at your DMVs, watching - going to your election board, asking your local election officials what are you doing to ensure that noncitizen are not getting registered to vote and getting — we've got sample resolutions. We've got signs, you can download and leaflets you could hand out.” Media Matters, [10/8/24]
On a Rumble live stream, Election Integrity Network leader Kerry Toloczko said that “we don't want noncitizen voting,” and she offered materials for right-wing activists who are planning to monitor for noncitizen voting at the local level.Toloczko, who has also appeared on Newsmax to push baseless claims of noncitizen voting, said that their activists are “everywhere” trying to “suppress the people who are trying to vote unlawfully,” asserting, “We have activists, grassroots activists, so we're handing these [signs] out in churches, in parking lots, in voting centers.” Media Matters, [10/17/24, 10/18/24]
Wisconsin-based talk radio host Vicki McKenna urged her listeners to go to polling locations and “stand with very large signs that say in Spanish, ‘Noncitizens are not permitted to vote in the state of Wisconsin.’” McKenna warned of noncitizens voting and complained that “they don’t want you in the field. They don’t want you participating. They don’t want you observing elections.” 1310 WIBA,*The Vicki McKenna Show*, [10/18/24]
---
an 8 24
[vid]
When
, that Donald Trump would not concede the presidential election if he lost, Trump's defenders accused the "Real Time" host of having "Trump derangement syndrome." But Trump, just as Maher predicted, refused to admit defeat after losing the 2020 election to now-President Joe Biden.
Now, four years later, a variety of Trump critics — from Maher to Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias — are warning that Trump will do the same thing again if he loses the 2024 election.
But The Guardian's Sam Levine, in an article published on August 12, stresses that there is a crucial difference between 2020 and 2024: Trump and his MAGA allies "may be better prepared" to steal the election this time.
READ MORE:Trump is losing it because he's afraid of losing
"(Cleta) Mitchell, a close Trump ally, has spent the last few years building up a network of activists focused on local boards of elections," Levine explains. "And the Republican National Committee's election litigation team is now being led by Christina Bobb, an election denier who is now facing criminal charges for her efforts to overturn the 2020 race."
The reporter continues, "The RNC claims it is recruiting an army of 100,000 poll observers who could provide significant disruption during voting and counting…. But more significantly, the idea that the 2020 election was stolen has moved from the fringes to being a pillar of the Republican Party. A January poll from PRRI found that 66 percent of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen."
Elias laments that election denialism has become the GOP's "standard position."
The attorney and Democracy Docket publisher told The Guardian, "I think we saw efforts by Republicans in 2020 that were pretty ham-handed. I worry that there will be both legal and extralegal efforts by Republicans to keep ballots from being counted."
READ MORE:['Has he met his boss?' Vance mocked after whining about Dems turning tables on the GOP
Similarly, Ben Berwick, an attorney for Protect Democracy, told The Guardian, "It's all part of creating sort of a pretext to say, 'Oh, we need to throw out this set of ballots' or 'We can't really know who the real winner is.' I think much of it won't stick, but I think the point is to have enough of it stick to create enough uncertainty for that critical post-election period."
Richard Pildes, an election law expert at New York University, told The Guardian he is "definitely concerned" that there will be "a lot of efforts to disturb" vote counting.
Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, believes that MAGA election denialism is much more sophisticated in 2024 than it was four years ago.
Morales-Doyle told The Guardian, "This has started earlier in the cycle and is louder and is more consistent. That is all just at a different level than it was before 2020.”
READ MORE:**Inside the GOP plot to silence Texas voters**
*Read The Guardian's full report at this link.
===
so much for remorse
06/14/24
---
--
alternet-no lnx
Analysis exposes the true design of MAGA’s 'election integrity' lies: 'Permanent minority rule'
Alex HendersonMay 20, 2024
Former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results are the focus of two of the four criminal indictments he is facing — one being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the other by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for the State of Georgia. And some of Trump's allies are up against criminal charges in an election interference case being prosecuted by Arizona State Attorney General Kris Mayes, including former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis and ex-Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
But despite all those criminal indictments, many MAGA Republicans are declaring their commitment to "election integrity" — a GOP talking point that journalist Kirk Swearingen urges fellow reporters to avoid in a biting article published by Salon on May 20.
"Can journalists please stop repeating the term 'election integrity' just because Republicans insist on saying it?" Swearingen writes. "Heck, if they don't offer credible evidence — because there is none — I wouldn't even quote Republicans when they use the term, at least not without setting the record straight. Election laws being put into place in Republican-controlled states have nothing to do with integrity and everything to do with denying citizens their right to vote and intimidating election officials and volunteers."
READ MORE:An obscure provision of Ohio law could keep Biden off the ballot there in November
Swearingen warns that the "MAGA party" is using "election disinformation" and dishonest "scare tactics" in the hope of "cheating its way to permanent minority rule."
"If the idea that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election — which he won by more than 7 million votes, with a 306-232 electoral vote victory — is Trump's Big Lie, then Republican efforts to ensure 'election integrity' around the country are lies metastasizing from the malignant tumor Trump introduced into our democracy," Swearingen explains. "Trump's con about election fraud is intended to succeed where his multifaceted effort to overturn the 2020 election failed."
Swearingen emphasizes that in order to do their jobs well, journalists will need to repeatedly debunk MAGA Republicans who are making false claims of widespread voter fraud.
"Media outlets must strive not to repeat any Republican permutation of 'election integrity' and must patiently spell out the truth again and again — and then again, as tiresome as that may be," Swearingen writes. "They should also report on the larger Republican effort to undermine confidence in elections, pass more rules that make it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote and intimidate those voters who show up anyway."
READ MORE:Biden warns 'unhinged' Trump is looking for 'revenge' in 2024
The journalist adds, "While the Biden Administration is doing what it can to promote voting, Republicans are working diligently to create the illusion that they support free and fair elections, all while creating a system of roadblocks and intimidation. They hope to create a system where voting takes place but the outcome is guaranteed."
READ MORE: Trump NY case could magnify 'mistrust' that made him 'president in the first place': conservative
Kirk Swearingen's full article for Salon is available at this link.
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Giuliani Is Served Arizona Indictment Notice After His 80th Birthday ... ›
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biden hires precinct workers, vs gop gather lawyers, poll watchers
const sheriffs say will grab machines
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April 8, 2024 RWW
David Gilbert @ Wired: Inside the Election Denial Groups Planning to Disrupt November
Groups like True the Vote and Michael Flynn’s America Project want to mobilize thousands of Trump supporters by pushing baseless claims about election fraud—and are rolling out new technology to fast-track their efforts.
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WIRED As the most consequential presidential election in a generation looms in the United States, get-out-the-vote efforts across the country are more important than ever. But multiple far-right activist groups with ties to former president Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee are mobilizing their supporters in earnest, drawing on one baseline belief: Elections in the US are rigged, and citizens need to do something about it.
All the evidence states otherwise. But in recent weeks, these groups have held training sessions about how to organize on a hyperlocal level to monitor polling places and drop boxes, challenge voter registrations en masse, and intimidate and harass voters and election officials. And some are preparing to roll out new technology to fast-track all of these efforts: One of the groups claims they’re launching a new platform for checking voter rolls that contains billions of “data elements” on every single US citizen.
These groups could have a major impact on the 2024 election. In addition to disenfranchising voters and putting additional pressure on already overstretched election offices, they could convince more and more people that US elections are fraudulent.
Catherine Engelbrecht and her organization True the Vote have effectively tried to disenfranchise voters for more than a decade by claiming that voter rolls are filled with phony voter registrations. Engelbrecht’s rhetoric was given an unprecedented boost in the wake of 2020, when Trump and other elected officials mainstreamed conspiracies that the elections had been rigged in favor of Democrats. Hundreds of national and local election denial groups were formed, and many of them amassed huge followings on social media platforms like Telegram. As the 2024 presidential election looms, they are ramping up efforts to do it again.
“It could be exponentially worse than what we saw in 2020, but we're going to be awake, we're going to be engaged, we are going to understand the process, and we're going to have options to continue to hold to those truths,” Engelbrecht said during a March webinar titled “Election Integrity Team Building 101.” “We're not going to back down. There's too much to lose.”
The hour-long presentation was delivered from a hotel room in Denver, with Engelbrecht laying out what could sound like a relatively benign plan to monitor elections and check voter rolls. “Keep a soft heart, keep a kind word in your mouth, approach people irrespective of party with love. You will find that things will be much better if that is the approach that is taken,” Engelbrecht said. The session, she said, was overbooked.
Engelbrecht then began speaking about elections being “perilously close to cracking in half,” and her presentation became a highlight reel of election conspiracies, references to crystals, Christian nationalist rhetoric, and militaristic jargon. “If this republic’s to be saved, it's because [of] people like all of you that are on this webinar right now. There are some bad actors out there and we live in particularly chaotic and caustic times,” said Engelbrecht. “If we wait on somebody to do something, we will watch freedom slip away on our watch. That's how close we are.”
“These groups are trying to lay the groundwork to potentially make later claims about the election that very well may be false. But the more chaos that can be caused along the way will give more fodder to that disinformation,” Andrew Garber, an expert at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, tells WIRED. “It's not just bad if there's a mass voter challenge because people might get kicked off the rolls. It's also bad if people then take that challenge and say, ‘See, look at all these ineligible voters,’ when in fact that's not the case.”
Engelbrecht founded True the Vote in 2010, when she was an activist for the right-wing populist Tea Party movement. After the 2020 election, Engelbrecht and her collaborator Gregg Phillips became central figures in the Stop the Steal movement, and starred in the widely-debunked election conspiracy film *2000 Mules*. They were also arrested for contempt of court after refusing to identify their source behind allegations that the Chinese government had accessed US election data. True the Vote also made wild allegations of widespread ballot stuffing in Georgia during the 2020 vote and a subsequent runoff in 2021. Earlier this year, True the Vote was forced to admit in court that the group had no evidence to back up its claims.
In 2022, the group rolled out a slick new software tool known as IV3, based on technology developed by Phillips, that compared names on voter rolls to a database maintained by the US Postal Service, allowing anyone to challenge voter registrations across the country if they spotted a discrepancy. A WIRED investigation, however, revealed that the information used to challenge the registration of hundreds of thousands of people was based on unreliable data.
Undeterred, True the Vote announced last week that it was relaunching IV3. Phillips claims that the software’s database now has close to “100 billion data elements about every single voter in the United States.” WIRED has not seen proof of this claim. The new IV3 system will soon be available in all 50 states, the organization said. On Thursday, the group held a webinar to train local activists on how to use it. The new system also relies on data from the US Postal Service, but Engelbrecht claimed during the presentation that Phillips and his team had “normalized” the data from all 50 states to ensure the system would not produce inaccurate results. She also said that thousands of people across the country were already registered, and that they had a long waiting list.
Additionally, she said that another software tool developed by Phillips’ team, called Ground Fusion, would be released soon; it is aimed at organizations and PACs looking to identify voting irregularities across larger geographic regions.
Engelbrecht declined to comment, claiming without evidence that WIRED had “written unfairly about True the Vote and IV3 in the past.”
True the Vote is not the only group seeking to leverage technology to supercharge the spread of election conspiracies. A secretive Georgia-based firm called EagleAI NETwork has developed a voter information database to fast-track the deletion of ineligible voters from the system. Voter rights groups have advised against its use, as insignificant errors—such as a missing comma before the suffix “Jr.”—have led to eligible names being removed. Still, at least one county in Georgia has agreed to use EagleAI to review voter challenges and conduct list maintenance activities.
One of EagleAI’s key backers is former Trump adviser Cleta Mitchell, who in the past two years has become central to the push to spread election conspiracies on a national level through her well-funded Election Integrity Network.
The group has held in-person training seminars in recent years, with session topics including how to protect “Vulnerable Voters from Leftist Activists” and “Monitoring Voting Equipment and Systems.” More recently, the group has made its training sessions available online, and is now once again ramping up its efforts ahead of the 2024 election with an initiative called Soles to the Rolls, aimed at boosting challenges to voter registration.
Mitchell, EagleAI, and the Election Integrity Network did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Another training webinar called “We the People” was also hosted last month by the America Project and its offshoot, Vote Your Vision. Broadcasted online to hundreds of attendees, the webinar featured a lineup of election conspiracists, Republican lawmakers, a guy who wrote a book about fifth-generation warfare, and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
The webinar, the group’s website said, was designed to give people “the secrets to reclaiming our power and reshaping history” by using “state-of-the-art election tools,” including those involving artificial intelligence technology. While the details of exactly what these tools will look like and how they will be used are unclear, the America Project has already scheduled more training sessions in the coming weeks to give supporters more information. The group also did not reply to requests for comment.
The America Project was cofounded by disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO and conspiracist Patrick Byrne, who also funds part of the organization. Both Flynn and Byrne reportedly attended a White House meeting in late 2020 to urge Trump to essentially declare martial law and seize voting machines.
While Flynn didn’t speak during last month’s webinar, he has arguably done more than anyone since 2020 to push the notion that America’s elections are fundamentally fraudulent, appearing at conferences, in podcasts, and on right-wing news shows on a near-daily basis. Trump has also indicated that Flynn will be brought back into his administration should he win.
These efforts have been given the seal of approval by the Republican National Committee, which was recently restructured by Trump to include election deniers and family members in top positions while cutting minority outreach efforts. One of those election deniers is Christina Bobb, who will be running the “election integrity unit.” A former Trump lawyer and TV presenter on far-right channel One America News, Bobb is a major promoter of the myth that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. The RNC’s election-related priorities, according to an internal memo recently obtained by NPR, include “a broader effort over the coming months to [legally] challenge voter identification and signature verification rules which were put into place for the 2020 election.”
During the America Project webinar last month, one of the hosts apologized to listeners for being unable to get Bobb to join the call that day, but promised that she would join a future session—highlighting just how closely these conspiracy-focused groups work with the mainstream GOP apparatus.
“These groups have a playbook nationally that they tend to deploy locally,” says Garber. “Some of these playbooks that have an intended national reach are then deployed through local activists, and it's concerning because it's the voters at the local level who suffer the effects. It's the election officials at the local level trying to keep order at the polls, trying to make sure their voter rolls are up to date, who have to deal with this stuff.”
One of Flynn’s core messages over the past four years has been that “local action equals national impact” —an expression that revolves around a concept called “precinct strategy,” which aims to get people into key positions on local committees in order to push their narratives at the local level. In 2024, that strategy has been primed and polished.
“This concept of precinct strategy was actually endorsed by President Trump in the last election cycle,” Yehuda Miller, a Republican county committee member in New Jersey, said during the America Project seminar. “We want to take the strategy to the next level. We want to get more organized, we want to start organizing across multiple counties in a state, we want to start organizing across multiple states. We have the power to direct our elected officials.”
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pt man on voter suppression 2024?
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Trump campaign says it plans to change tactics from 2020 when Joe Biden beat the then-incumbent president by more than 7 million votes, and this time go on “offense” by having “soldiers” and “poll watchers” at polling places.
Despite the Trump campaign’s relentless claims of voter fraud, more than 60 court rulings found those claims to be unsupported by facts: there was no significant voter fraud. Last year The Brookings Institution cited an extensive report from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which found, for example, voter “fraud in Texas amounted to 0.000096% of all ballots cast.”
Vowing to “to play offense this time around,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday, appearing on “The Kimberly Guilfoyle Show,” said they are “investing a lot of money into voter integrity efforts to ensure that every American knows their ballot will be cast and counted and matter.”
“We’re not going to play defense, like we unfortunately did in 2020. We’re going to have soldiers, poll watchers on the ground who are making sure that there are no irregularities and fraud like we saw in the last election.”
READ MORE: Trump Says He Thinks He’s ‘Allowed’ to Accept Foreign Money to Pay Fines
Guilfoyle, who is engaged to Donald Trump Jr., was at the January 6, 2021 rally at the Ellipse, and helped organize and fundraise for the event. Propublica that year reported she had “boasted to a GOP operative that she had raised $3 million for the rally that helped fuel the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.”
“Guilfoyle’s texts, reviewed by ProPublica, represent the strongest indication yet that members of the Trump family circle were directly involved in the financing and organization of the rally. The attack on the Capitol that followed it left five dead and scores injured.”
“I love it,” Guilfoyle told Leavitt. “I cannot wait.”
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Election denier and Tea Party Patriots founder Jenny Beth Martin — whose group sponsored a pre-insurrection rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021 — appeared with right-wing media host Steve Bannon and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk this week to discuss her group’s strategy ahead of the 2024 election. During her interviews, Martin claimed that her group is working with election denier and Trump-allied lawyer Cleta Mitchell’s activist group and training thousands of poll workers.
During the January 29 edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, Martin told Kirk that Tea Party Patriots is working alongside Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, a group of right-wing, election-denying activists who “monitor elections” for alleged fraud.
:{Video
CitationFrom the January 29, 2024, edition of Salem Media's The Charlie Kirk Show
“In Georgia and other states around the county we’ve been working very closely with Cleta Mitchell’s organization, Election Integrity Network, building election integrity task forces in the states that had the most trouble around the country,” Martin told Kirk. “Those groups are looking at how to clean the voter roles, they’re making sure that poll watchers are recruited and trained, they’re deploying poll workers, making sure people go work the polls.”
Cleaning voter rolls is an “often-flawed” process of deleting the names of ineligible voters in specific elections from registration lists, which the Brennan Center for Justice notes has the potential to “disenfranchise legitimate voters.”
Martin appeared alongside Bannon and Kirk at Turning Point USA’s Restoring National Confidence conference, an event held to counter the Republican National Committee’s annual winter meeting. Both events are currently occurring in Las Vegas. Turning Point’s decision to host an opposing event comes as RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel faces scrutiny from far-right and anti-establishment figures, including both Bannon and Kirk. Kirk and Turning Point USA are also under pressure from reporting on questionable spending at the organization and criticism of Kirk’s antisemitism.
The next day, during an interview with Bannon, Martin bragged about the amount of poll watchers her group has trained in recent years.
“When it comes to securing the election, we’re in a much better position right now in 2020 — I mean in 2024 than we were in 2020, way better,” Martin said. “In 2022, we trained 20,000 people who went on to be part of the 80,000 people that the RNC placed as poll watchers. That is massive.”
:{Video
CitationFrom the January 30, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
The right-wing organizing and poll watcher recruiting that Martin described have previously led to widespread voter intimidation.
Later in the interview, Martin explained that her group has partnered with Kirk and Turning Point Action’s Tyler Bowyer to create an app for “relational organizing,” to get out the vote to family and friends.
Bowyer has previously pushed election fraud conspiracy theories and acted as one of former President Donald Trump’s fake electors from Arizona during his push to overturn the 2020 election results.
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after Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes, Trump's claim that the election was stolen from him was repeatedly debunked. And some of the debunking came software engineer/elections technology expert Ken Block.
Trump and his allies hired Block in the hope of convincing others that widespread voter fraud occurred, but Block found no such fraud. And Block's findings were used as evidence by the January 6 Select Committee in 2022.
Block, owner of Simpatico Voting Systems and author of the forthcoming book "Disproven: My Unbiased Search for Voter Fraud for the Trump Campaign, the Data That Shows Why He Lost, and How We Can Improve Our Elections," revisits Trump's "steady diet of lies and innuendo" in an op-ed published by USA Today on January 2.
"Our findings have also been subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith's federal investigation and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' investigation in Georgia," Block explains. "Those e-mails and documents show that the voter data available to the campaign contained no evidence of large-scale voter fraud based on data mining and fraud analytics. More important, claims of voter fraud made by others were verified as false, including proof of why those claims were disproven."'
The election technolgy expert continues, "And yet, the cries that the election was lost or stolen due to voter fraud continue with no sign of stopping. Whether a stump speech, outrageous lawsuits like the so-called Kraken cases filed by Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani’s lies or the ongoing misguided efforts of people determined to prove the election was stolen, the constant drumbeat hardens people's hearts and minds to the truth about the 2020 election."
Block argues that while the United States' voting system has some room for improvement, Trump and Giuliani's lies about the 2020 election continue to do the United States an incredible disservice.
"A better use of time, money and energy would be to address systemic weaknesses in our election systems — such as the distressing lack of national election infrastructure to enforce election integrity [eg crappy machine and ltd hours in poor hoods?], destructive practices to our elections such as gerrymandering, and leveling the playing field so that our elections become fairer and more competitive," Block writes. "If voter fraud had impacted the 2020 election, it would already have been proven. Maintaining the lies undermines faith in the foundation of our democracy."
*Ken Block's full USA Today op-ed is available at this link.
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a new analysis of Republican-led "election integrity" prosecutions of alleged voter fraud found not only an extremely low success rate, but a common theme of prosecutions disproportionately targeting Democrats and minority voters.
This week the Washington Post published a report analyzing voter fraud prosecutions in six different Republican-led states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Texas and Virginia — dating back to the 2020 presidential election. The Post found that out of tens of millions of ballots cast in those states since then, there were only 47 confirmed convictions out of 136 total prosecutions. Additionally, 76% of defendants in those cases were either Black or Hispanic, compared to just 24% of defendants who are white.
"At best, these 'election integrity' units are for show, designed to placate far-right election denialists in the conservative base," Heather Sawyer, executive director of the watchdog group American Oversight, told the Post. "At worst, they are used to justify new voting restrictions and to intimidate people — especially racial minorities — from exercising their right to vote."
The Post's report additionally found that all of the 47 voter fraud-related convictions occurred in Florida, Ohio and Texas with Arkansas, Georgia and Virginia's prosecutions not yielding a single guilty verdict despite spending millions of tax dollars. And out of the 115 cases resolved as of December, the Post found that 42 of those prosecutions ended in dismissal, acquittal or dropped charges.
In addition to the investigations overwhelmingly targeting racial minorities, the publication found that 58% of defendants were registered Democrats while only 23% were registered Republicans. The remaining defendants weren't registered with any political party. And contrary to former President Trump's claims that he was unfairly disadvantaged by widespread cheating, the bulk of prosecutions were over minor mistakes, like falsifying a registration form or voting despite being barred from doing so due to a felony conviction.
"They did not have a record of fraud that they needed to go and create these investigative units," Rutgers University professor Lorraine Minnite said. "The fact that they have not produced evidence of fraud is support for their lack of necessity."
The Post's findings in its most recent report are similar to another deep dive into alleged voter fraud by Loyola University-Los Angeles law professor Justin Levitt. In a 2014 analysis for the Post, Levitt found just 31 credible instances of voter fraud out of more than one billion ballots cast since 2000.
READ MORE:Wife of Iowa Republican primary candidate convicted on 52 counts of voter fraud from 2020 election
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three of the most prominent rightwing groups which spread election denial lies and advocate for restrictions on voting rights in the US
have joined forces in a secret attempt to woo top election officials in Republican-controlled states.
Led by the Washington-based conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation, the groups have created an incubator of policies that would restrict access to the ballot box and amplify false claims that fraud is rampant in American elections. The unstated yet implicit goal is to dampen Democratic turnout and help Republican candidates to victory.
Details of the two-day “secretaries of state conference” held in Washington in February were obtained by the watchdog group Documented and shared with the Guardian.
Officials from 13 Republican-controlled states, including 10 top election administrators, participated in the event. Attendees discussed controversial “election integrity” ideas of the sort weaponized by Donald Trump.
Among the participants were nine secretaries of state and Virginia’s election commissioner, all of whom preside over both statewide and federal elections in their states including next year’s presidential contest. A list of attendees namechecks the chief election officials of Indiana, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
Documented also obtained the conference agenda which lists a number of Trump associates among the speakers. They include Ken Cuccinelli who, as acting deputy secretary for homeland security, played a key role in setting elections policy for the Trump administration.
Cuccinelli now runs the Election Transparency Initiative which is fighting Democratic efforts in Congress to shore up voting rights, and has been active in pushing state-level vote restriction measures.
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Heritage Foundation Secretaries of State Conference Agenda, obtained by Documented.
The keynote speech was given by Ken Blackwell,former secretary of state in Ohio. He was an early adopter of Trump’s lie about rigged elections, championing the idea in the 2016 presidential race which Trump won.
Blackwell now chairs the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute,a rightwing thinktank led by former Trump officials. The center has been touting election-related model legislation.
Heritage was careful to organize the conference amid tight secrecy. Among the records obtained by Documented is an email from Hans von Spakovsky, a lawyer at the foundation who leads their election work.
Responding to a query about the event from a Texas official, Von Spakovsky said: “There is no livestream. This is not a public event. It is a private, confidential meeting of the secretaries. I would rather you not send out a press release about it.”
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Email to Texas Senator Paul Bettencourt's staff from Hans von Spakovsky, obtained by Documented
Von Spakovsky has long been at the forefront of efforts to undermine US elections by claiming falsely that fraud is endemic. He helped spearhead the attack on voting by mail during the pandemic, holding private briefings with Republican state election officials – a drive that became a core part of Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Heritage and its political arm, Heritage Action for America, have spent tens of millions of dollars promoting their own model bills that impose strict restrictions on voting. They have targeted the investment on key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan that could hold the balance of power in the 2024 presidential race.
Heritage began hosting annual gatherings of Republican secretaries of state at the start of the Trump presidency in 2017. February’s in-person conference was the first to be sponsored by three rightwing powerhouses of election denial and voter suppression – Heritage, together with the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf), and the Honest Elections Project (HEP).
Pilf is a conservative legal group that sues election officials to force them to purge voter rolls, a process that has affected eligible US voters. The group is led by J Christian Adams, a former justice department lawyer who tried to use the Voting Rights Act to claim voting discrimination against white people.
Trump’s former lawyer Cleta Mitchell also sits on the Pilf board.
HEP is a conservative dark-money group closely tied to the Republican operative Leonard Leo who was instrumental in engineering the current conservative supermajority on the US supreme court. Reporting by ProPublica and the New York Times last year revealed that Leo has received control of a staggering $1.6bn to advance rightwing causes.
Concern about the potential of top election officials to subvert democracy intensified during the 2022 midterm elections when a number of individuals committed to Trump’s stolen election lie also ran for office. They formed the “America First Secretary of State Coalition” which became a conduit of far-right conspiracy theories linked to QAnon.
Most of those candidates failed in their bid to take over the reins of election administration in their states. But the Heritage conference suggests that the desire to deploy Republican secretaries of state as channels of voter suppression and election misinformation remains very much alive.
Though chief election officials are tasked with ensuring that ballots are fair and impartial, the Heritage conference was attended only by Republican secretaries of state.
The Guardian asked Heritage to explain why its conference was held in secret and with only Republican attendees. The group did not answer those questions.
Von Spakovsky said that the event was an “educational summit intended to provide information on current issues in elections and ensure that our election process protects the right to vote for American citizens by making it easy to vote and hard to cheat”.
He disputed the argument that security measures at the ballot box such as voter ID suppressed turnout. “The claim that secure elections somehow promote greater restrictions is outrageous and has been clearly disproven,” he said.
Von Spakovsky also pointed to Heritage’s election fraud database, which he said sampled “proven instances of election fraud from across the country”. The database records 1,422 “proven instances of voter fraud” stretching back to 1982 – a 41-year period during which billions of votes have been cast in the US.
Several of the participants at the conference have election denial and voter suppression track records. They include Florida’s secretary of state, Cord Byrd,who, soon after beingappointed by Governor Ron DeSantis last spring, refused to say whether Joe Biden had wonthe 2020 presidential election.
Byrd runs Florida’s “election integrity unit” that was set up by DeSantis last year to investigate election crimes, even though there is scant evidence of substantial voter fraud. More than a dozen citizens accused of illegally voting have been arrested at gunpointunder DeSantis’s crackdown on supposed voter fraud.
Another attendee – Jay Ashcroft, secretary of state of Missouri – has been a leading proponent of that state’s new restrictive voting law. His office has been named in numerous lawsuits in the last year for imposing extreme constraints on voter registration, including a recent lawsuit accusing Ashcroft of illegally blocking a ballot measure.
Tennessee’s secretary of state, Tre Hargett, another listed participant, has been accused by Democratic leaders in Tennessee of purging thousands of voters from the official rolls.
Panel discussions laid out in the agenda were held on several of the core talking points of the current Republican party. The opening discussion, moderated by Von Spakovsky, was on “Auditing Expertise”.
The main speaker was Paul Bettencourt, a state senator in Texas who has sponsored several bills making it harder to vote including a measure that would deploy armed “election marshals” to oversee polling stations.
Before the conference-goers attended a cocktail reception and dinner held at an upscale restaurant in downtown Washington, day one ended with a session entitled: “Realistic Eric Fixes and Reforms”. Eric – the Electronic Registration Information Center – is a non-profit group run collectively by 28 states which is used to finesse the accuracy of state voter rolls.
In recent months it has become the target of rightwing conspiracy theories fueled by Trump who claimed falsely that it was rigged to benefit Democrats.
Ashcroft, the Missouri secretary of state, was one of the speakers in that session. Earlier this month he announced that he was pulling Missouri out of Eric, making it one of the first Republican-controlled states to quit the organization along with Alabama, Florida and West Virginia.
| A guest post by |
Ed Pilkington is chief reporter of the Guardian in the US |
https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/gop-megadonors-funding-election-denial/
In an article published on November 3, the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger reported that “nearly 80 percent” of the $1.7 million that right-wing shipping magnates Dick and Elizabeth Uihlein donated to Republican candidates “between January 7, 2021 and August 31, 2022” went to “campaigns or committees tied to the 147 Republicans who voted, on January 6, (2021), to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.” But their fondness for MAGA election denialists, according to Sollenberger, goes beyond donations.
Sollenberger, writing for the Beast in an article published on November 28, reports that in 2021, Arizona Republican Party Vice Chair Gina Swobodawas hired as executive director for “the Uihlein-backed dark money nonprofit Restoration Action Inc.” Her salary was $108,750 per year.
“Swoboda, a former Trump campaign official and the vice chair of the Arizona Republican Party, is now leading a misguided charge against the ballot count in that state on behalf of GOP gubernatorial candidateKari Lake,” Sollenberger explains. “Swoboda currently serves as ‘election integrity’ coordinator for Lake, whose repeated false claims of voter fraud have ingratiated her to former President Donald Trump and who still refuses to acknowledge her election loss to (Democratic Arizona Secretary of State) Katie Hobbs.”
The Beast reporter continues, “After the election, Lake promoted Swoboda’s appearance on a right-wing podcast. In addition to hiring Swoboda, the filing shows Restoration Action’s accounts swelling for the second year in a row. According to the filing, in the 12 months following the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Restoration Action’s revenue topped $20.5 million — double what the group raised in 2020, and light years beyond its $64,000 haul in 2019.”
Sollenberger notes that Restoration Action is “tied to the larger Restoration of America network, funded almost exclusively by the Uihleins.”
Brendan Fischer, who serves as deputy executive director of the watchdog group Documented, told the Beast, “Restoration Action is a hub for election denial, including funding some of the key players pushing election falsehoods in Arizona at the moment. This is a reminder that there’s big money behind the push to undermine democracy. Through Restoration Action and other entities, an array of groups pushing election conspiracy theories are backed by literally tens of millions of dollars from just one billionaire couple.”
Restoration America, according to Sollenberger, “also threw $600,000 to the super PAC affiliated with January 6 rally organizer Tea Party Patriots” and “another $1.5 million…. to the Lawyers Democracy Fund, a conservative dark money group that advocates for changes in election law.”
“The group sent another half a million toFight Voter Fraud,which has also pushed baseless claims of election malfeasance, including in 2021,” Sollenberger reports. “Another recipient, the Liberty Initiative Fund,donated $675,000 to a group fighting for more restrictive voter ID requirements in Michigan. That Michigan group raised $2.2 million total, with $1.5 million coming from Uihlein himself.
READ MORE:'Selling the Big Lie': Reporter unloads on Kari Lake after her campaign ends in defeat
Financing Election Denial
Flynn has expanded his influence further through well-financed groups that advocate, among other things, changes to the way elections are run, based on the false premise that there is widespread voting fraud.
Flynn and Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com, last year launched The America Project, with Flynn’s brother Joseph as president. The group said it planned to spend $50 million in the 2021 budget year, according to a filing with North Carolina charity regulators. But Joseph Flynn and Byrne separately told AP that it had spent tens of millions less, though each gave different totals.
While Flynn himself is not listed among its officers, he is the face of the group, and it’s described as “General Flynn and Patrick Byrne’s America Project.” Byrne says Flynn is his closest adviser, telling the AP and FRONTLINE that Flynn is his “Yoda” and “rabbi.”
In April 2021, Flynn was named chairman ofAmerica’s Future, one of the country’s oldest conservative nonprofit groups. The organization was founded in 1946 and was previously led by ultra-conservative stalwarts, including Phyllis Schlafly and retired Maj. Gen. John Singlaub. Since Flynn took over, the group hired his sister, Mary O’Neill, as executive director and appointed Joseph Flynn to its board of directors. The group had about $3 million in assets at the end of 2020, its most recent IRS filings show. Flynn told the AP and FRONTLINE in February that he had raised an estimated $1.7 million for America’s Future since becoming chairman.
The two groups worked in close coordination last year, together donating more than $4.2 million for a widely criticized and misinformation-driven review of the 2020 presidential election results commissioned by Arizona Republicans.
Michael Flynn, Jr., talks to people as he sits at the merchandise booth for his father, a retired three-star general who served as Trump's national security adviser, during the ReAwaken America tour at Cornerstone Church, in Batavia, N.Y., Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022. The elder Michael Flynn has drawn together election deniers, mask and vaccine opponents, insurrectionists, Proud Boys, and elected officials and leaders in state and local Republican parties. Along the way, AP and Frontline documented, Flynn and his companies have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The America Project has given about $5 million to “grassroots organizations” around the country, Joseph Flynn said in a July appearance on an online show.
Many of the groups they support back what they call “election integrity,” a term often used by election deniers to justify making it more difficult to vote based on the falsehood that American elections are corrupt.
Campaign finance records show The America Project has given more than $150,000 to Conservatives for Election Integrity, a group that has supported several secretary of state candidates who have worked to undermine trust in 2020 election results.
The America Project gave $100,000 to a Colorado group, Citizens for Election Integrity, which used it for ads and text messages attacking a Republican candidate for secretary of state who ran against Flynn’s endorsed candidate. In Michigan, The America Project gave $100,000 in May to Secure MI Vote, which has reportedly pushed to roll back voter access.
In Georgia, they just announced they’re backing an effort to challenge voter registrations for tens of thousands of people.
Joseph Flynnsaid during a speech in May that The America Project also funded and advised many of what he termed “audits” of elections around the country, including in Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, though he did not give specifics.
In February, Flynn stood in a burger joint in Orlando, Florida, to announceThe America Project’s most public initiative, “Operation Eagles Wings,” the goal of which is to mobilize and train poll watchers and precinct captains, and to drive get-out-the-vote efforts.
“I think every single person in this country, every American citizen, now has to pay attention to politics. You know, when people go, ‘I don’t get involved. I don’t do that political stuff. That’s for the politicians.’ Well, that’s exactly why we are here. OK?” Flynn told the AP and FRONTLINE during a contentious interview. “So, it’s something else that you won’t write or speak about or it’ll be edited out.”
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As part of Operation Eagles Wings, The America Project has created affiliate groups in at leastnine states. Its Florida affiliate said in a Facebook post last month it’s seeking “America First Poll Watchers” and will train organizations for free. State affiliates in Illinois and Virginia advertised trainings in July and August on grassroots social activism, poll watching and how to get out the vote. The promotions also promise to teach attendees to “expose weaknesses,” “monitor and evaluate absentee voting” and conduct “investigative canvassing.”
The initiative has raised alarm bells with pro-democracy advocates.
“If people who tried to overturn the 2020 election, or who are fueled by election conspiracies, are trying to recruit their followers or allies to be election workers or volunteers as part of an election denial agenda, that poses real risks to fair and free elections,” said Jacek Pruski, of the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy.
‘Not Alone’
With his speeches, endorsements and outreach groups, Flynn has built a legion of acolytes who are listening closely to what he says and are ready to take action. They include Karen Ballash, 69, vice chair of the Summit County Republican Party in Utah, who heard Flynn speak in Salt Lake City.
“I totally believe in his message. We have to be the ones who make the change,” she said. “If we don’t do it, we won’t have a country.”
They include neophytes like Delainna Prettyman, who said she’s just become politically engaged in the past year. “That sent me deep down a rabbit hole. I don’t watch any news, any TV, anything. And I do a ton of research,” said Prettyman, who lives in the Salt Lake City suburbs.
She came to love Flynn, and believed “everything he says.”
Paintings of former President Donald Trump and Michael Flynn, a retired three-star general who served as Trump's national security adviser, are displayed in a vendor area during the ReAwaken America tour at Cornerstone Church, in Batavia, N.Y., Friday, Aug. 12, 2022.
“He’s got a lot of intel and insight about everything that’s going on. Of course, he can’t say everything,” she said. “We need more people like General Flynn.”
Under the tent in Batavia, the crowd thrilled to Flynn’s pronouncements from the stage. The general they claim as their own confirmed their feeling that the U.S. is changing, and not for the better. He validated the belief that the community they have built together is under attack.
They know many people — some of their very own friends and loved ones, and even Biden — say they are a destructive force. But inside the tent, Flynn assured them, they have found their tribe and they are in the right.
“We’re not alone in this is what I’m telling you. OK? We’re not alone in what it is that we are doing,” Flynn said. “We’re not alone. I want you to know that.”
Associated Press writers Richard Lardner, Eric Tucker, Helen Wieffering, and Aaron Kessler, photographer Carolyn Kaster, and FRONTLINE producers Richard Rowley and Paul Abowd contributed to this report.
Michelle R. Smith, Associated Press
rww 10 22
On the eve of Thursday’s hearing at which a congressional committee revealed even more damning evidence of former President Donald Trump’s central role in the Capitol insurrection and the broader plot to keep him in power after losing the 2020 election, former Rep. Michele Bachmann told religious-right activists that the insurrection was planned by Trump opponents to make him look bad.
Bachmann, who was at the U.S. Capitol that day, told a Family Research Council town hall on Christian nationalism that the Jan. 6 crowd was “happy” before the violence started. She declared that the attack was a “rebranding exercise” to portray Trump and the MAGA movement as terrorists.
Bachmann is an influential figure on the religious right.She is dean of the School of Government at Pat Robertson’s Regent University and board chair of the Family Research Council, which was the organizer of Wednesday’s event.
Bachman is an ardent election denialist who, like Trump, has refused to accept his defeat. On Election Day 2020, she had assured viewers of Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Network that “the Lord, our God, has sealed this election in the heavenlies and we are going to be rejoicing very soon.”
Weeks after the election, she screamedthat her vote had been “stolen” on election night, “when Satan was snatching away from America rule by the consent of the governed.” In April 2021, she responded to President Biden’s first State of the Union Speech by saying, “We had a fake election. We’ve had a fake presidency. This is a fake State of the Union address.” A month before, she used her post at Regent to host an “election integrity” conferencethat gave a platform to Gateway Pundit’s Jim and Joe Hoff and other conspiracy theorists.
Bachmann has also been a fervent promoter of bogus conspiracy theories about the insurrection since hours after the attack. The day after the insurrection, she falsely declared that the Capitol was invaded by left-wing “rabble-rousers paid to put together a coup.” Months later, she told right-wing radio listeners that the insurrection “was a theatrical event that the progressive left put on” to “rebrand Donald Trump as being an insurrectionist and a leader of a terrorist movement.”
She has her story, and she’s sticking to it, evidence be damned. [vid]
Tags: Michele Bachmann Capitol Insurrection Christian Nationalism Jan. 6 Family Research Council
ref 3/21
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/michele-bachmanns-election-integrity-conference-features-notorious-source-of-conspiracy-theories-the-gateway-pundit/
Former Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who was named dean of Regent University’s Robertson School of Government in December, is hosting an “election integrity” conferenceTuesday, March 23, featuring a mix of longtime voter suppression advocates and right-wing pundits who have promoted former President Donald Trump’s bogus “stolen election” claims. The conference is further evidence that the religious right has thrown its institutional muscle behind Republican efforts to gain and hold political power by passing laws designed to make it harder for some people to vote.
On election night last November, Bachmann told viewers of Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel that God had “sealed this election in the heavenlies” and that they would be “rejoicing very soon.” A few weeks later she declared that Satan stole the election from Trump.
Bachmann is using her perch at the “academic setting” of Regent University, which is affiliated with televangelist Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, to tout the supposed intellectual seriousness of her conference. She recently told radio host Dom Giordano that the event would feature “A-list speakers” and that she was “very careful” about who she chose to speak, saying, “I didn’t want any fringe people, people that would be considered nuts.”
One measure of Bachmann’s claims and her sense of what counts as not-fringey is that she has also said that a “centerpiece of this entire conference” will be an hour-long presentation by “the editorial board of The Gateway Pundit,” which she said has the “finest archive in the United States of stories dealing with questionable election practices.” The Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft and his brother Joe Hoft have both been listed as speakers in promotional materials for the conference, and The Gateway Pundit has in turn promoted the conference.
The Gateway Pundit has for years been widely recognized as a notorious source of conspiracy theories and disinformation about a range of topics. A 2017 Harvard University study of disinformation and propaganda said, “Gateway Pundit is in a class of its own, known for ‘publishing falsehoods and spreading hoaxes.’” Jim Hoft’s Twitter account was permanently suspended in February for spreading disinformation about the 2020 election in violation of the company’s “civic integrity policy.”
Research from the nonprofit research organization Advance Democracy noted just before the inauguration that The Gateway Pundit and other right-wing media were questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election and either downplaying the seriousness of the Capitol insurrection or falsely claiming that it was incited by left-wing activists. The day after the Capitol Insurrection, The Gateway Pundit promoted an article that referred to then-Vice President Mike Pence as a “traitor.”
Former Right Wing Watch investigative reporter Jared Holt, now at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, noted on March 17, “Since the Capitol attack, the pro-Trump disinformation rag The Gateway Pundit has been growing increasingly cozy to the modern militia movement. Recent articles have cheered on Ammon Bundy, and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, for example.”
Bachmann promoted the conference and touted The Gateway Pundit’s central role on a March 17
hosted by religious-right activists Jim Garlow and Mario Bramnick. Garlow and Bramnick have hosted a series of prayer calls since the election that promoted stolen election claims and fervent prayers and prophecies that God would intervene before Inauguration Day to miraculously keep Trump in power. The day after the Capitol insurrection, Bachmann appeared on one of the calls, where she said that Democratic wins in Georgia Senate runoff elections and the assault on the Capitol were both part of “a left-wing coup.”
In addition to a presentation by The Gateway Pundit, which Bachmann told her fellow prayer warriors would have people “clamoring for election reform,” the conference will also include sessions on thesupposed threat to democracy posed by H.R. 1, the voting rights and democracy reform legislation that has passed the House and is being considered by the Senate. Proponents of H.R. 1 say it is urgently necessary to prevent a new wave of state voter suppression laws from taking effect. Bachmann told radio listeners that it would lead to “one-party rule” by Democrats “for evermore.”
Bachmann has touted the participation of former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who is not widely known for his expertise on election procedures.
Other speakers include the following:
Eric Metaxasis an author and self-styled public intellectual whose plunge into the deep waters of Trumpism and conspiracy theorieshas confounded some conservatives. Metaxas emceed the pro-Trump Stop the Steal rally on the National Mall on Dec. 12 at which Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes called for bloody civil war if Trump did not remain in power. Metaxas responded with a “God bless you,” adding “keepin’ in real, folks.” Metaxas has continued to promote stolen-election conspiracies that have been debunked. The day after the Capitol insurrection, which Metaxas downplayed, he said, “The Deep State is Adolf Hitler.”
Mark Steyn is a right-wing Canadian author and commentator whose credentials for speaking at Bachmann’s conference appear to be his having served regularly as guest host for Tucker Carlson’s Fox News TV show and the late Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Steyn’s response to the Jan. 6 assault on Congress was in part, “I choke on the sanctimonious drivel of the continuing coverage. The political class … has been largely insulated from the pathologies they have loosed upon the land. For a few hours yesterday they weren’t.” Steyn’s rhetoric has criticized Muslims and other right-wing targets.
Kris Kobach is a former Kansas secretary of state who is popular among right-wing activists for his anti-immigration and voter suppression activism, but who in the past few years lost races for lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate. In 2018, a federal judge rejected Kobach’s defense of what the American Civil Liberties Union called a “show-me-your-papers” voter suppression law. His loss in the 2020 Senate Republican primary was disappointing to white nationalists who had been excited about the prospect of a Senator Kobach. Kobach, who served on Trump’s ill-fated and short-lived “election integrity” commission, has a history of making false and unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud.
Hans von Spakovsky, who leads the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, pushes claims that voter fraud is an extensive problem and advocates for more restrictive voting laws. He also served on Trump’s commission on voter fraud and urged the White House not to appoint any Democrats or moderate Republicans to the commission. In 2018, a federal judge slammed von Spakovsky for making “myriad misleading statements” about purported voting by noncitizens. In February, von Spakovsky compared the second impeachment of Trump to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s show trials of political opponents. In 2016, von Spakovsky waged an unsuccessful campaign against President Barack Obama’s pick to be the Librarian of Congress, claiming that she had just been chosen because she was a woman of color and wasn’t fitto be an advocate of “American cultural greatness.”
Jay Ashcroft is Missouri’s secretary of state. In January 2020, he criticized the state Supreme Court for upholding a lower court ruling against the state’s voter ID law. Last fall, he was sued by voting rights activists over restrictions on voting by mail; they said he had “worked vigorously to reduce access to the ballot for vulnerable Missouri voters.” In January, he said that the state had secured four “safe, secure elections” in 2020, prompting the St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial board to ask on Mar. 3 why, if that were true, Ashcroft was supporting new voting restrictions being pushed in the legislature. The paper called it “a cynical move clearly designed to undermine voter confidence in election integrity and advance the myth proffered by former President Donald Trump that vote fraud is a real threat to American democracy.” The editorial concluded, “Because, apparently, ‘safe and secure’ isn’t safe and secure enough—especially when the free exercise of voting rights might enable certain voters, such as minorities and the elderly, to vote for non-Republicans.”
John Fund is a conservative journalist who co-authored a book on voter fraud with von Spakovsky. Fund joined von Spakovksy on a panel on election fraud at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference, where Fund claimed that fraudulent same-day registration in Minnesota had been responsible for the election of former Sen. Al Franken and thus for passage of Obamacare. Fund did warn people not to believe every rumor and conspiracy theory floating around on the internet, including one connecting George Soros and electronic voting machines; it will yet to be seen whether Fund will publicly challenge any of the conspiracy theories likely to be promoted by Bachmann and her guests.
Tags: Eric Metaxas Hans von Spakovsky Jay Ashcroft Jim Hoft Joe Hoft John Fund Kris Kobach Michele Bachmann Disinformation Election 2020 voter suppression Voting Rights Gateway Pundit Heritage Foundation Regent University