Trump allies probe election system weaknesses in Texas, other key states

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This protection is made doable by Votebeat, a nonpartisan news group protecting native election administration and voting entry. The article is out there for reprint underneath the phrases of Votebeat’s republishing policy.

Two of former President Donald Trump’s most outstanding allies in his combat to overturn the 2020 election are main a coordinated, multistate effort to probe native election officers in battlegrounds comparable to Texas, Michigan and Arizona forward of the November election.

The America Project — a corporation based by Michael Flynn, a retired three-star common and former nationwide safety advisor, and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne — has to this point interviewed or tried to interview officers in almost 200 counties throughout eight swing states, based on copies of notes, recordings of the interviews and other paperwork Votebeat discovered on webpages related to the group. The survey questions mirror the identical debunked conspiracies and deceptive information about elections that Flynn and Byrne have been propagating for years.

The survey questions seem meant to detect potential weaknesses in native election techniques and collect detailed information about how elections are run. Election consultants say the information might simply be used to gas misinformation campaigns, disrupt voting or problem outcomes. In Texas, volunteers have to this point interviewed election officers in 18 counties, together with Cameron, Collin, Denton and Fort Bend, based on the copies of the paperwork and recordings. Officials in 11 other counties in the state, together with Bexar, Dallas and Harris, declined to be interviewed.

“It seems consistent with their efforts to really understand how to manipulate the machinery of election administration in this country,” mentioned Ben Berwick, counsel at nationwide nonprofit Protect Democracy, a analysis and advocacy group.

In 2020, Byrne and Flynn had been among the many Trump loyalists who devised a plan to grab voting machines throughout the nation and dig up sufficient proof of fraud to influence state lawmakers, Congress or the vp to overturn the election outcomes. Now they’re focusing their efforts on the midterm election, with new methods. A group backed by The America Project, for example, is attempting to purge voter rolls in Georgia forward of the election.

The surveys are a part of The America Project’s newest mission, dubbed Operation Eagles Wings, which is organized on foramericafirst.com, with webpages for every of the swing states the group is targeted on. Key to the trouble is constructing relationships with native election officers, based on two manuals for local volunteers on the group’s web sites. The officers are requested their opinions on debunked conspiracy theories, maybe to find out whether or not they’re likeminded people. Interviewers are additionally marking down which clerks are significantly useful.

Berwick factors out that it’s the mission of outstanding Trump supporters to fill positions of energy — from governors all the way down to native clerks — with individuals who imagine their allegations of election fraud and improprieties. Noting who does and doesn’t assist the trigger, he mentioned, could be the group’s method of figuring out “who will be sympathetic to their efforts in the future.”

Election officers have typically been pleasant to their interviewers however have additionally repeatedly assured them that their elections are honest, voting machines are safe and voter rolls are correct.

In Harris County, Georgia, an election official repeatedly assured the interviewer that nobody voted on behalf of deceased voters in the county.

“In some counties they did,” the interviewer insisted. “They weren’t removed from the rolls. And there have been some reports. It’s down to the proof. Prove it.”

The group interviewed elections administrator Remi Garza in Cameron County in July. Garza despatched Votebeat a duplicate of the e-mail he acquired from a volunteer coordinator requesting a gathering. It follows a script offered in a guide from The America Project. The assembly was “meant to be a positive experience, with positive outcomes, for both citizens and local clerk’s office,” the e-mail mentioned.

“Our findings will be shared publicly in hopes that it will increase transparency and public confidence in election processes, and to provide the public with the information needed to accurately evaluate the integrity of current processes and procedure,” the e-mail mentioned.

The America Project and its officers didn’t reply to telephone and electronic mail requests for remark concerning the surveys.

Surveys probe officers on debunked theories

The survey questions differ barely by state, although almost all ask if counties take away deceased voters from the rolls. They additionally request contact information for distributors who service voting machines and ask whether the county will think about designating a “neutral” third-party group for “training and support” for ballot watchers. Some ask whether or not voting machines are linked to the web and if the native election officers are assured that native advocacy teams register voters “without bribery, intimidation or coercion.”

Interviewers requested the officers whether or not they assist counting votes utilizing a “manual process like that used in France.” This is a common talking point of such activists, who routinely reward the nation for effectively hand-counting votes and use it as justification to finish the usage of vote-counting machines.

“If France can do it, we can do it!” shouted Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, on his “War Room” podcast earlier this year. Mike Lindell, his visitor and a outstanding conspiracy theorist who can also be the proprietor of My Pillow, agreed. “Terminate the machines!” Lindell yelled. There are several differences between French and U.S. elections that make hand-counting more practical in that nation.

Byrne and Flynn have each voiced robust assist for these concepts, routinely claiming with out proof that voting machines were manipulated and that left-leaning activists routinely facilitate mass voter fraud. “Our country and its founding principles are under attack by globalists and their allies in government, Wall Street, the legacy media and by others which make-up the political left in this country,” the Georgia for America First website states. “The weapon of choice is our vulnerable election system.”

The America Project was the highest funder of the Arizona Senate’s election evaluation, and Byrne supported the now-discredited investigation of voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan. Both have mentioned they’ll proceed to work to remake American elections.

“This will be our last shot,” Byrne wrote in his e-book, “The Deep Rig,” which he self-published final yr. The e-book declares, “If we do not restore election integrity by then, then next election will also be rigged, and we will have tipped our way into a fascist, authoritarian dystopian version of America, run by Goons.”

Operation Eagles Wings

A key purpose of Operation Eagles Wings is to create small volunteer groups throughout the nation that observe the whole thing of the election course of, beginning in half with the surveys, based on the manuals Votebeat discovered.

It’s an expansion of what they’ve dubbed “the Virginia model,” which refers to the work of Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network in Virginia to create a community for the state’s 2021 election, based on the manuals. The America Project offered funding for that effort.

The bigger Operation Eagles Wings initiative is aimed toward educating “election reform activists on everything from grassroots training to election canvassing and fundraising,” based on The America Project’s website. The web site claims the group supplies coaching “for Americans who want to make sure there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election.”

“We need to do everything in our power to protect the voting process from election meddlers who care only about serving crooked special interest groups that neither respect nor value the rule of law,” the homepage says.

Along with the surveys, the initiative encourages election skeptics to function ballot staff and observers, carry out in-person “voter registration audits,” and visit “large farms, factories, businesses and especially care homes” and ask residents whether or not anybody is forcing them to vote, based on the manuals.

Election officers’ prime concern? Misinformation.

Volunteers have carried out interviews in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, based on copies and audio recordings of the interviews that Votebeat discovered on-line. Most of the paperwork are saved on what look like unlisted pages of a web site referred to as libertyshepherd.com, which had no energetic homepage as of Friday, whereas the Florida paperwork are accessible from the state’s web page on foramericafirst.com.

Election directors surveyed by the group advised Votebeat they weren’t bothered by the questions, inviting them as alternatives to debunk misinformation.

Many election officers advised the interviewers that their prime concern concerning the upcoming election was misinformation. In Sterling Heights, Michigan, City Clerk Melanie Ryska advised the interviewer that folks insinuate “that we aren’t doing something right, that we are hiding something, that our [early voting] ballots are not legitimate, that we have early voting when we don’t, that we are trying to sway the vote somehow.”

Ryska advised Votebeat in an interview that she is glad when individuals come to her for information, reasonably than get it elsewhere.

“I just think it is great that different organizations are actually talking to clerks now and trying to get their side of the story, if you will, because the misinformation dramatically hurts the election administrators, their team, the process,” she mentioned. “Because it just creates so much mistrust in the process.”

Susan Nash, metropolis clerk in Livonia, Michigan, mentioned she was interviewed by two ladies with the group this summer time. “Nothing wrong with questioning,” Nash advised Votebeat. “It’s better to contact the clerks instead of getting misinformation elsewhere.”

Most interviews had been carried out in individual or by telephone, with the interviewers filling out the survey themselves. Shown the finished surveys, two election supervisors advised Votebeat the volunteers had not precisely recorded their solutions.

Cortney Hanson, metropolis clerk in Novi, Michigan, mentioned the interviewers recorded most of her responses appropriately, aside from one query. They used their very own phrases to mischaracterize the funds the town accepted from the Center for Tech and Civic Life earlier than the 2020 election, writing that she accepted “Zuck bucks” — a time period championed by some conservatives referring to the grant, which had been underwritten by grants from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his spouse, Priscilla Chan.

“It’s not a term I would ever use,” Hanson mentioned.

Wendy John, the county recorder in Graham County, Arizona, advised Votebeat by electronic mail that the recorded solutions “did not accurately reflect my response at all.” She didn’t elaborate.

Loaded questions

The vary of questions requested by the survey puzzled consultants. Barry Burden, a political science professor on the University of Wisconsin, mentioned the survey was made up of an odd “scattering” of questions, few of which might elicit helpful information concerning the techniques utilized by the counties in query. They would, nonetheless, burden election officers who’re already swamped with work and information requests given the upcoming midterms, he mentioned.

Flynn and Byrne, he mentioned, “don’t have a good record of being fact-based and practical.”

The manuals say that Flynn and Byrne intend to publicly publish survey outcomes, one thing Burden mentioned dangers circulating incorrect information.

For instance, a number of of the questions ask about safety practices, comparable to whether or not counties use a particular database to take away deceased voters from the rolls. The state might use the database, however not the county — a nuance that wouldn’t be captured by the survey.

In some surveys, election directors had been requested what number of households in their jurisdiction have “more than 7 individual registered voters living at the same address.” While this seems to handle bloated voter rolls, there are a lot of cases the place greater than seven voters may lawfully reside on the similar handle, comparable to school campuses and assisted residing houses. Activists across the nation have been submitting voter challenges on these and other grounds, that are routinely thrown out by local election offices and courts.

At the end of the survey, the interviewer is requested to “characterize your interaction with the Supervisor of Elections as (circle all that apply): Helpful, polite, defensive, unhelpful, antagonistic.”

“They could be trying to find friends and enemies among election officials,” Burden mentioned. “It’s really not clear. It’s just another strange part of the survey.”

The volunteer who interviewed supervisor of elections Lori Edwards in Polk County, Florida, in June circled useful and well mannered and wrote that she was “super nice, very friendly and accomodating.” The volunteer who interviewed Brenda Hoots, supervisor of elections in Hendry County, Florida, characterised her as “defensive.” Below his circled response, he wrote, “One of the most defensive interviews to date.” He positioned stars subsequent to the feedback.

Hoots mentioned she at all times tries to be very open concerning the county’s procedures and desires the general public to know elections, however the individual conducting the survey obtained mad when she tried to make clear her solutions.

“Am I defensive?” she advised Votebeat when proven the survey outcomes. “Yes. This is my job. This is what I do. When you question this, you are questioning my integrity as a person.”

Reporters Oralandar Brand-Williams and Natalia Contreras contributed to this text.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based mostly in Arizona. Contact Jen at [email protected].

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