Voter fraud doesn’t usually happen. But when it does, it’s usually by Republicans.
by David Atkins
Voter fraud: it almost never happens. When it does, it usually gets caught. And it’s usually by Republicans like this guy:
A Shorewood man has been charged with more than a dozen counts of illegal voting, accused of casting multiple ballots in four elections in 2011 and 2012, including five in the 2012 gubernatorial recall.
Robert D. Monroe, 50, used addresses in Shorewood, Milwaukee and Indiana, according to the complaint, and cast some votes in the names of his son and his girlfriend’s son.
According to the complaint:
Monroe cast two ballots in the April 2011 Supreme Court election, two in the August 2011 Alberta Darling recall election, five in the Scott Walker-Tom Barrett recall, one illegal ballot in an August 2012 primary, and two ballots in the November 2012 presidential election.
In the presidential election, Monroe cast an in-person absentee ballot in Shorewood on Nov. 1 and drove a rental car to Lebanon, Ind., where he showed his Indiana driver’s license to vote in person on election day, Nov. 6, the complaint charges. Monroe owns a house there, according to the complaint.
The 26-page criminal complaint was filed Friday in Milwaukee County Circuit Court and is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, one of the prosecutors involved in the John Doe investigations of Gov. Scott Walker’s staff when he was county executive and the now-halted probe into fundraising by Walker’s gubernatorial campaign.
The complaint indicates the investigation started in Waukesha County as an inquiry into possible double voting by Monroe’s son, who lives in Waukesha. But the son denied any knowledge of requesting an absentee ballot from his father’s Shorewood address, and the investigation shifted back to Milwaukee County.
Remember the Nevada voter who cast multiple ballots in the same election because she wanted to test the integrity of the elections system? She was a Republican voter.
Remember the Texas voter who cast absentee ballots on behalf of his girlfriend for the five years after she died? He was a Republican voter, too.
Remember the Indiana secretary of state convinced to voter fraud? Yep, a Republican.
I don’t doubt that there are examples from the other side of the aisle, but they just haven’t left the kind of impression these amazing cases have.
There are a few cases of Dem-leaning voters out there, but a scramble of news stories tends to turn up more on the GOP side.
Again, this isn’t a big problem–and that’s really the whole point. It’s really rare. It’s almost always caught. But there’s little question which side has less compunction about cheating.
“I remember, I was a teenager, had just become a teenager and voted for Ronald Reagan — limited government, you know, smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense. You knew what you were getting. You knew how a Reagan administration, a Reagan presidency was going to be better for you.”
Scott Walker was 13 in 1980 and 17 in 1984. If he voted, he did so illegally.
Of course, it’s most likely that he’s just lying. But considering the fact that he’s currently being investigated for cheating during the recall election it’s not completely out of the question that Scott Walker committed voter fraud.
Right Wing News made a transcription error and issued a correction on Monday to an interview published in January. During the interview, Walker discussed “a vote for Reagan,” and did not state that he voted for Reagan as a teenager.
John Hawkins, the writer who interviewed Walker for Right Wing News apologized for the error.
“All I can do at this point is apologize for the error,” he wrote on Monday. “This was our mistake and it was very unfair to Scott Walker who is catching flack because of an honest error on our part.”
If there is no evidence of voter fraud, they’ll just have to manufacture some
by digby
Considering my earlier post about post-truth politics and the culture of mendacity, here’s a report to curl your hair from Think Progress:
As it is more likely that a person will be struck by lightning than that they will commit in-person voter fraud, proponents of voter ID laws have had trouble coming up with enough fraud examples to justify potentially disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of low-income and minority voters. True the Vote is hoping to change that by policing elections with untrained poll watchers heavily recruited from Tea Party events. These poll watchers will record common irregularities like mismatched addresses, typos, or dual registration errors as “fraud” to create the false impression that voting restrictions are justified:
As one strategy, the group buys voter rolls from states and counties, then disseminates the lists to thousands of largely unsupervised volunteers, who are urged to submit to election officials names from the rolls that may be improperly registered.[…] True the Vote encourages recruits to “build relationships with election administrators” because “they control the access to the vote,” as [elections coordinator] Ouren told a gathering in Houston.
In 2010, the group was able to get a list of voter registration data from Republican Harris County registrar Leo Vasquez, who reportedly refused the same to the Democratic Party, for which the party sued. When the King Street Patriots submitted to him their list of fraudulent actions they claimed to see at the polls, Vasquez accepted them without verification and held a press conference with Engelbrecht asserting Harris County polls were “under a systemic and organized attack.”
As ThinkProgress has documented, these purge lists are often riddled with errors and frequently disenfranchise legitimate voters. But volunteer voter purges are just one part of the multi-pronged strategy True the Vote will use, in the courts and at the polls, to influence the November election — and, if they can, every election to come.
It’s not as if we weren’t warned. Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation wrote this in January of 2011:
The second thing that must be a Tea Party priority is stopping voter fraud. Liberal hero and man voted most likely to be an ACLU board member, Joseph Stalin, once said, “it’s not who votes that counts, it is who counts the votes.”
In this past election, the left made a concerted effort at voter fraud. This fraud effected elections. Now, in many areas, for a conservative to win, not only do they have to have a majority, they have to have a fraud proof majority.
At Tea Party Nation we have received a lot of information about what happened and will be making some of the news public in the next few weeks. What is very disturbing was a pattern of “test marketing” certain types of fraud. Certain types of voter fraud that we saw in limited amounts in 2010, we will see across the country in 2012.
The Tea Party movement must united across the country and work to eliminate voter fraud. In some states it will be easy. In socialist states like California or corrupt, I mean Democrat controlled states, like Illinois, it will be very tough. If we are going to win, we must. If we do not eliminate liberal voter fraud, our votes won’t matter because they will not be counted.
Stopping voter fraud is going to be a major project for Tea Party Nation this year.
In Texas, there is a group that is doing an outstanding job of fighting voter fraud. The group is called True the Vote. What they do can be taken and duplicated in almost any state or locality. On January 15th, they are going to have a conference in Houston, TX. They are going to talk about what they did and how you can work in your community to prevent voter fraud. The cost is $50. If want more information, visit their website, Kingstreetpatriots.org.
Stopping voter fraud must be a top priority for us this year. The left knows it cannot win free and fair elections. They can only win by cheating. We must stop them now or Chicago style elections will become the norm for the United States. We must stop this fraud, while we still can.
These people did a test run in Wisconsin and it was fruitful:
Wisconsin’s election to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) was the most recent test drive for True the Vote’s vote suppression project. During the June recall election, a voting hotline received numerous calls from college students claiming True the Vote “poll observers” challenged their right to vote. These poll observers exploited a provision in the state’s new GOP-sponsored voter ID law to claim it was illegal for students home for the summer to vote in local precincts if they had been home for less than 28 days. Others were hassled for proof of residency.
Minority voters in Wisconsin also reported harassment by True the Vote’s white poll watchers, who took notes and watched as the predominantly black line of voters cast their ballots. When Walker survived the recall election, True the Vote congratulated their poll watchers on “a victory of their own making.”
Yes, these people do live in an alternate universe, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of doing what they set out to do, which is disrupt voting and possibly construct a false narrative of voter fraud with the help of compliant election officials.
Hopefully they are more bluster than anything else, but keep in mind that all these groups have friends in very high places.
Analysis of the resulting comprehensive News21 election fraud database turned up 10 cases of voter impersonation. With 146 million registered voters in the United States during that time, those 10 cases represent one out of about every 15 million prospective voters.
“Voter fraud at the polls is an insignificant aspect of American elections,” said elections expert David Schultz, professor of public policy at Hamline University School of Business in St. Paul, Minn.
“There is absolutely no evidence that (voter impersonation fraud) has affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least any recent election in the United States,” Schultz said.
The News21 analysis of its election fraud database shows:
In-person voter-impersonation fraud is rare. The database shows 207 cases of other types of fraud for every case of voter impersonation. “The fraud that matters is the fraud that is organized. That’s why voter impersonation is practically non-existent because it is difficult to do and it is difficult to pull people into conspiracies to do it,” said Lorraine Minnite, professor of public policy and administration at Rutgers University.
There is more fraud in absentee ballots and voter registration than any other categories. The analysis shows 491 cases of absentee ballot fraud and 400 cases of registration fraud. A required photo ID at the polls would not have prevented these cases.
“The one issue I think is potentially important, though more or less ignored, is the overuse of absentee balloting, which provides far more opportunity for fraud and intimidation than on-site voter fraud,” said Daniel Lowenstein, a UCLA School of Law professor.
Of reported election-fraud allegations in the database whose resolution could be determined, 46 percent resulted in acquittals, dropped charges or decisions not to bring charges.
Minnite says prosecutions are rare. “You have to be able to show that people knew what they were doing and they knew it was wrong and they did it anyway,” she said. “It may be in the end they (prosecutors) can’t really show that the people who have cast technically illegal ballots did it on purpose.”
Felons or noncitizens sometimes register to vote or cast votes because they are confused about their eligibility. The database shows 74 cases of felons voting and 56 cases of noncitizens voting.
Voters make a lot of mistakes, from accidentally voting twice to voting in the wrong precinct.
Election officials make a lot of mistakes, from clerical errors — giving voters ballots when they’ve already voted — to election workers confused about voters’ eligibility requirements.
“I don’t think there is a mature democracy that has as bad of an elections system as we do,” said Richard Hasen, a professor of political science and election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. “We have thousands of electoral jurisdictions, we have non-professionals running our elections, we have partisans running our elections, we have lack of uniformity.”
81% of people see voter fraud as a problem, with 43% saying it is a major problem. Only 14% say it is not a problem. And yet, voter fraud is complete and utter bullshit — it doesn’t exist. Apartisan faction that wishes to steal elections has managed to convince a large majority of Americans that it does, nonetheless.
We’ve had some journalistic failure in our time, but this one ranks right up there with the WMD hoax.
Not that this will stop the wingnuts from their crusade but it should. Turns out that the South Carolina zombies weren’t zombies after all:
A top state election official disputes a recent claim that more than 950 people who voted in recent elections could actually be dead. Of the six names her office was allowed to examine, all were eligible to vote.
But to hear some Republican officials tell it, you’d think that on Election Day in South Carolina, graveyards all across the state empty out and hordes of zombie voters lurch to the polls.
But dead people can’t vote. They’re dead.
This apparently needs some clarification, because during testimony at a Jan. 11 House hearing, S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles director Kevin Shwedo estimated that 950-plus dead people had voted since – well, since being dead.
So alarmed was Shwedo – who Gov. Nikki Haley appointed to the DMV post last January and who registered to vote here the following month at age 54 – sent the data to state law enforcement.
The reliability of that data, however, came into question today during another hearing on the issue where State Election Commission director Marci Andino testified that some of the voters the DMV data said were dead are very much alive – and were eligible to cast a ballot.
But you know this will be a rural legend throughout Real America. They are just determined to believe that a bunch of people are trying to steal elections. Because that’s what they’re trying to do.
In this case they seem to be more than a little bit confused. It was a Republican primary. I know these people think these Democratic zombies are stupid but do they think they’re so stupid that they would commit fraud to vote for Obama in an uncontested election? Or is it that they want to elect … Romney? Hard to figure either way.
Let’s just say that this one doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Apparently, the Republicans believe that Democrats are so lame that they are going to steal this election and lose anyway:
I’m just going to reprise a post I wrote two years ago:
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Eye On Eagle Eye
by digby
In case you’re wondering what the right wing bloggers are obsessing about these days, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know that they have an ACORN in their bonnets:
“ACORN – An ever cooperative organization with standards so lofty they struggle to meet them. They are merely providing a public service.”
A convenient loop when your very defense is your offensive strategy: Overwhelm the local systems and staffs, thereby increasing the likelihood of fraudulently inflating vote totals with multiple-instance voters completing multiple ballots. But rest assured, ACORN is cooperating fully and eager to assist in investigations. With so much to cross-check and verify, they should have internal findings for investigators in a timely manner. Sometime around, say, January 30th.”
Back in the day I used to get criticized by certain people for not talking more about the black box voting and touch screen systems. I always replied that I thought it would take a whistleblower of epic gravitas to prove such a thing, but in the meantime we were developing a theme of stolen elections that the right wing would gleefully appropriate the minute they were in danger of losing an election. And I knew this would gall me beyond belief since the one consistent thing conservatives of both parties have done since the beginning of popular voting was to try to keep the riff raff from casting a vote. When the Democrats were the southern party, they certainly did their best to keep blacks from voting. But ever since the Southern Strategy, it’s been the Republicans who made a fetish of it.
The “vote fraud” fantasies are tinged by deeply right-wing racial and anti-urban panics. I’ve talked to many conservative who seem to consider the idea of mass non-white participation in the duties of citizenship is inherently suspicious. It’s an idea all decent Americans should consider abhorrent. It is also, however, a very old conservative obsession–one that goes back to the beginnings of the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party itself. Let me show you. Read this report from 1964, running down all the ways how Barry Goldwater’s Republican Party was working overtime to keep minorities from voting. The document can be found in the LBJ Library, where I researched my book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus:
John M Baley, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, charged today that “under the guise of setting up an apparatus to protect the sanctity of the ballot, the Republicans are actually creating the machinery for a carefully organized campaign to intimidate voters and to frighten members of minority groups from casing their ballots on November 3rd. “‘Let’s get this straight,’ Bailey added, ‘the Democratic Party is just as much opposed to vote frauds as is the Republican party. We will settle for giving all legally registered voters an opportunity to make their choice on November 3rd. We have enough faith in our Party to be confident that the outcome will be a vote of confience in President Johnson and a mandate for the President and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey, to continue the programs of the Johnson-Kennedy Administration. “‘But we have evidence that the Republican program is not really what it purports to be. It is an organized effort to prevent the foreign born, to prevent Negroes, to prevent members of ethnic minorities from casting their votes by frightening and intimidating them at the polling place. “‘We intend to see to it that the rights of these people are protected. We will have our people at the polling places–not to frighten or threaten anyone–but to protect the right of any eligible voter to cast a secret ballot without threats or intimidation.’ Bailey said the Republican program, called “Operation Eagle Eye,” is really “a program to cut down the vote in predominantly Democratic areas by harassing, frightening, and confusing the voters.” He continued: “‘The strategy is to help Senator Goldwater by cutting down the vote in large cities in states with many electoral votes. “‘As such, it is an admission to the American people that if all Americans were free to vote they would overwhelmingly elect Lyndon B. Johnson, but if millions of Americans could be prevented from voting, Senator Goldwater might succeed.’ “‘Operation Eagle Eye’ was publicly established by the Republican National Committee on October 13. To make the program nation-wide a ‘ballot security’ official–the very name suggests that voting is illegal or at least dangerous–was named in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. “‘In one state, Minnesota, ‘Operation Ballot Security’ issued a seven-page single-space private memorandum detailing a variety of methods for challenging voters at the polls, with instructions to discourage helpful judges in Democratic precincts, to cut off waiting lines in Democratic precincts but not in Republican precincts, and to encourage stalling in Democratic precincts while preventing stalling in Republican precincts. “‘The Minnesota document goes so far as to state its purpose, not as encouraging each American to exercise his right to vote freely but ‘to safeguard the investment of time, money, and effort that the Republican Party, its volunteers, its candidates, and their volunteers have made in this election.’ “As for specific instructions, the Republican memorandum says: “‘If any questions or dispute arises, refer to the pertinent authority cited below and (when it is to your party’s interest) insist that the law be followed.’ (Emphasis added). “‘Stalling in booths is a common trick when lines are long in order to discourage those waiting. In GOP precincts, keep lines moving.’ “Memorandum like this leave no doubt in my mind that the Republican strategy for November 3 is the excessive, indiscriminate and unnecessary challenge of every voter. “How else will ‘Operation Eagle Eye’ work? A Wall Street Journal article of October 22 by Stanley Penn told how. “Penn quoted one ‘ballot security’ official as saying he planned to equip his poll watchers with cameras to frighten people into believing that voting irregularities can be photographed. He wrote: ‘The official notes that even if poll watchers don’t now how to use the cameras, potential Democratic wrong-doers may be frightened off.’ Here is an example of using a camera to intimidate a voter. “‘Another example used by Penn was a booklet written by Louisiana Republican ‘ballot security’ chief James A. Reeder, who urged his party to make all efforts to enlist the help of sheriffs and local police on eleciton day. The booklet explained why: ‘We are advised that all sheriffs in the State of Louisiana, except one, are sympathetic with Senator Goldwater’s election. We should take full advantage of this situation.’ “This booklet is one of the most damning aspects of this so-called ‘Operation Eagle Eye.’ When a political party publicly aligns itself with law enforcement officers in behalf of its candidate, this is certainly not the best way of promoting freedom of choice among the voters. this is the worst sort of intimidation. “‘Operation Eagle Eye’ is not the only Republican group that is working along these divisive lines. “In Chicago, the Republican ‘Operation Double Check’ was responsible for the charge by Elroy C. Sanquist Jr., GOP candidate for attorney general, that more than 4,000 voters on the city’s Democratic rolls were ineligible. “Then there is the ‘Honest Ballot Association,’ which Journal reporter Penn unknowingly described as ‘nonpartisan’ in its plans to send 500 lawyers and volunteers to New York precincts alone. “But the ‘Honest Ballot Association’ was the prime force in a voter intimidation campaign conducted in Detroit two years ago, a campaign that now appears to have been a dry run for the Republicans nation-wide effort this year. “In Detroit, less than a month before election day in 1962, an organization called ‘The Committee for Honest Elections’ was established and immediately proceeded to: “–Mail 159,000 copies of a letter misrepresenting the Michigan election law to ‘high mobility’ areas that were predominantly Democratic. The letter created the impression that anyone who had moved 30 days before the election could not vote. It also appealed for informers to come forward and report suspected cases of voter fraud. “–Plan to flood these Democratic areas with fliers that said: ‘WANTED–FOR VOTER FRAUD.’ “–Recruit 600 ‘challengers’ who would use ‘Honest Ballot Association’ credentials to indiscriminately challenge voters on election day. “‘Fortunately, sufficient publicity and court action blocked these measures for the most part and the planned voter harassment and intimidation was rendered ineffective. “I deeply resent ‘Operation Eagle Eye’ and these other programs that seek to deprive our citizens of their Constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. “‘Operation Eagle Eye’ is not even founded on the principles of freedom of choice and freedom to vote. It speaks only of alleged frauds, alleged wrongdoings. Even the press release announcing its formation did not seek to encourage voters. It sought to frighten them with this headline: ‘GOP Launches Nation Wide Campaign To Prevent “Any Repetition of 1960 Voting Fraud Scandals.”‘ “I believe the only way to have a fair election in this country is to encourage voters of both parties–not just of one party–to come forward, along with independent voters. This has been the basis on which the Democratic National Committee has conducted the entire 1964 campaign. “We want Americans to exercise their right of freedom of choice.”
plus ça change…
It’s not like this ACORN bs is unprecedented, is it? They do this stuff over and over and over again and they’re doing it again. After Jesse Jackson’s 1980s registration drives, they totally professionalized Operation Eagle Eye and now it’s a national program. The right wing bloggers can pretend that vote suppression is a phantom all they want, but the evidence is clear. (On the other hand, the evidence of systematic voter fraud is simply non-existent.)
It appears that Obama is on course to win big enough that this won’t work. And although the wingnuts have learned a thing or two about how to extend these themes beyond election day and keep their base riled up to obstruct and delegitimize the new president, the country is facing an economic crisis which tends to focus people’s minds a bit. So, I’m hopeful that this won’t have salience beyond a few cranks.
Still, we’ve never been in this particular place before. Obama is black and that seems to make the lizard brains on the right start foaming at the mouth even more than usual. And even if that weren’t so, they have developed a conceit ever since Reagan that they are entitled to the presidency and a Democrat simply cannot legitimately win the White House. They will be tested this time out, but I doubt they’ll give it up.
Update: Fox seems disinclined to report on real cases of voter fraud, intimidation and manipulation. How odd.
In case you wondered if Rand Paul’s campaign could let loose with a patented GOP hissy fit, wonder no more. His campaign issued a statement in response to the accusations that his supporters have been intimidating voters with their “vigilance” against “voter fraud.” Dave Weigel reports that they issued a statement which:
… mocks “Charles Merwin Grayson III” and accuses him of “lies and distortions,” including willful misreading of election law. One Paul source tells me that the sense in their camp is that Grayson has “lost it.” Charles Merwin Grayson III, in this, his Last Stand, has escalated his campaign of lies and distortions about the Paul campaign. Grayson, who is the Secretary of State and Chair of the Kentucky Board of Elections, and therefore charged with the monitoring of the election laws, has obviously attempted to signal poll workers who work under his authority to prevent the Paul campaign from engaging in legal and constitutionally protected activities to assure a fair and free election. – a task Grayson should applaud…
It goes on about the law and interpreting the law and rises in tone to a fever pitch of nearly hysterical outrage that anyone, anywhere, could possibly accuse them of doing anything untoward. Textbook hissy fit.
For those uninitiated in the GOP’s vote suppression tactics, here’s a lovely little story about a man in Arizona, a few decades ago.
(I have to admit that I’m quite enjoying watching the Republicans use their playbook on each other. How do you like it now, McConnell?)
I thought I knew what we were dealing with. When Donald Trump began his rise to power in 2015, he struck me as a dangerous but recognizable demagogue. As a biographer of presidents, I tend to think historically and seek analogies from the past to shed light on the present. And so, for years Mr. Trump’s marshaling of fear, prejudice, resentment, xenophobia and extremism put me in mind of grievance-driven figures ranging from Huey Long to Joseph McCarthy to George Wallace. To me, Mr. Trump was a difference not of kind (we had long contended with illiberalism in America) but of degree (since the Civil War, no figure with such illiberal views had ever actually won the White House).
Then he proved me wrong. His concerted efforts to overthrow the November 2020 election very nearly succeeded — tangible proof that he is in fact willing to follow through on the authoritarian threats he so freely makes. I now see him as a genuine aberration in our history — a man whose contempt for constitutional democracy makes him a unique threat to the nation.
Let’s not forget that the conservative movement paved the way for this demagogue who would use the many years of right wing vote suppression tactics and lies about voter fraud for his own purposes. He would not have been able to do what he has done without them.
And they’ve gone along with him every step of the way. It’s not just him.
Now that it’s clear that Elon is “Dark Gothic MAGA” he’s using multiple ways to help Trump return to power. Here’s one I spotted the other day, from Doge Designer (a suspected Musk sock puppet account).
He says Elon Musk’s PAC launched an X Community focused on “exposing voter fraud and election interference” and it asks people to post videos or information about “election interference” or “anything compromising election integrity” in the X Community.
What’s this really about? It’s a place to dump false and unverified stories that can be used to create the appearance of widespread voter fraud. It will be used right after the election to demand that the votes not be certified until the “fraud” is investigated. It’s also about “flooding the zone with sh*t” in social media so that the media, who are all still on Twitter/X, will have to address all the “fraud” that is posted. Especially since the Musk X algorithm will be amplifying them.
I went to X’s “Election Integrity Community” and found a handful of posts. Three were looking to dox someone who delivered ballots. MAGAts are going after a postal worker for doing his job. Just like they went after election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss for doing their jobs.
This line of attack, going after someone dropping off multiple ballots, presuming they are fraudulent, is the same one used by the widely debunked film 2,000 Mules.
For years I have been writing about the FAILURE of social media companies to enforce their own rules and guidelines about threats of violence on their platforms. Legislators in most states have FAILED to pass laws to address the harm from doxing and harassments of public health officials & workers during the height of the pandemic.
So what are people like this ballot delivery guy to do when they start getting death threats and harassed? Report them to the DOJ’s Election Threats Task Force. It was set up in 2021 for this purpose.
It’s good that the Election Threats Task Force exists, but it’s not enough to change the attitude that it’s okay to threaten, dox and harass people online. Because of that attitude I’ve been suggesting the use of civil cases.
How do we bust Musk & the MAGA attackers of election workers?
I’m the kind of Vulcan who wants to know the logical steps for how to do things, & then prepare for the illogical actions of humans who do NOT WANT TO DO those things. I say to people, “This is our 3rd rodeo.” We’ve seen these tricks before. We know how the bull will buck. We know how the orange-faced rodeo clown will try to distract us from our goal.
I’m betting that MAGA people will find the ballot delivery man, dox, harass and threaten him. The Election Threats Task Force will need to be alerted to investigate. They might not be able to successfully prosecute a criminal case, because the laws against harassment and doxing aren’t in every state, but it is their mission to take on these kinds of cases. They have the resources to track down all the connections to his threats, including those who amplified, organized and spread false & unverified information that was used to target him. But as I said, lots of humans in law enforcement do NOT want to investigate & prosecute anything that has to do with WORDS. Because of that history I’ve been teaching people. & groups how to file civil lawsuits against the people who defamed and threaten them.
I hope that concurrently to the Task Force investigation the doxxed, harrrassed & threatened ballot deliverer goes to the group that won the Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss civil defamation case. Or the group that sued Dinesh D’Souza, & The Salem Media group.
He will need resources to sue Elon Musk, his PAC and the people who carried out the threats. But, there are now multiple successful cases that the lawyers can point to as a reason to keep the lawsuits going for the years it will take. People need to know Musk has lost cases. He doesn’t prepare for the lawsuits that will come following his rash actions and that makes vulnerable. He has a grade school level of understanding of the law & thinks his definition of free speech is a get out of jail free card for when he breaks laws about speech that is not protected..
The other reason I want to see civil cases is so the lawyers for the plaintiffs can keep talking about the case in public. Civil lawsuits don’t go into the black hole of the DOJ and come out 19 month later with a press release about the win. The DOJ is TERRIBLE at promoting their successful prosecution of threats to election workers and officials.
For example, did you hear about Brian Ogstad, the guy who got 30 months in prison for threatening Arizona election workers? Of course you didn’t! The DOJ put out a press release, didn’t you read it? It didn’t have any photos of Ogstad though, so the media that DID pick it up showed images of a ballot box or a building. I searched for him and found the photo below from when he “confronted” the Cullman City Council on it’s COVID-19 response. )
Brian Ogstad, recording with his phone, confronts the Cullman City Council over the City’s COVID-19 response in August 2021. (Cullman Tribune file photo)
Brian Ogstad, a former business professor at Maricopa Community Colleges, sent 18 messages to Maricopa County Election workers between August 2 and August 4, 2022, a majority of which contained threats against the workers’ lives. (Photo taken from X, formerly Twitter)
I wanted to make a short video of the threats Ogstad & others made that was powerful enough to get on Fox News, but it’s hard when the DOJ doesn’t even bother to provide MUG shots of the people they put away for years for their true threats to election workers.
In the past people would ask private entities to enforce their own rules & guidelines about speech, especially on social media where people said things that that were “awful, but lawful.” But Musk ignores rules developed on his own platform to protect the community from harm. The “Election Integrity community” looks like it is violating X’s OWN Civil Integrity rules, which, sadly, no one expects Musk to follow. But based on what I’ve seen so far, the new X community violates multiple state and federal laws. I’m going to dig into it more, but just because Musk is protected under rule 230 of the Telecommunication Act, doesn’t mean he’s above all laws. Stay tuned.
