Trump Big Lie Cultists are conducting their own "audit" of voters, armed with voter registration information, going door-to-door in order to "check" to make sure there's not millions of illegal voters in your attic.
Across the country, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory internet is manifesting itself into knocks at the door. Individual election deniers and grassroots groups are canvassing for election fraud in states lost or even won by former president Donald Trump in 2020, including New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, and Nebraska. Despite 60-plus court losses and countless official audits and recounts confirming the 2020 election results, many of Trump’s supporters are still so convinced of his lies that they’ve turned to this kind of vigilantism.
It’s all part of a broader effort by Trump supporters — emboldened and given tacit support by Republican Party leaders — to deny the 2020 election results at all costs and cast doubt on elections going forward. When a contractor working on the Arizona Senate’s partisan and farcical “audit” proposed a similar door-knocking scheme last spring, the Justice Department warned that it could violate federal laws on voter intimidation. The Senate backed off, but volunteers did the canvass anyway and put out a sloppy report alleging all kinds of fraud without evidence to back it up. Though reporters quickly debunked their claims — including finding a house on the alleged “vacant” property gracing the report’s cover — the Arizona canvass results went viral on right-wing social media and have inspired copycats.
A member of the far-right Three Percenters militant group is helping lead the canvassing effort in Colorado, where a leader suggested volunteers carrying firearms could help secure the group as they went door-to-door, according to the Colorado Times Recorder. The Utah Voter Verification Project is requiring its volunteer canvassers to sign NDAs before they canvass and has instructed them to record their interactions with voters, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The sheriff’s office in Buffalo County, Nebraska, posted on Facebook on Nov. 4, warning about similar canvassing efforts and telling voters that the canvassers were not official or affiliated with the county.
The New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group claims to be nonpartisan. Its founder, Marylyn Todd, a 37-year-old from Nashua, told BuzzFeed News in an interview that she is registered as an independent. Todd claimed in a Facebook message that “many” of their canvassers voted for President Joe Biden, but would not name them or connect them with BuzzFeed News. Todd also said that she has expanded canvassing across the state, focusing on towns where the group believes there is the most potential fraud, but she declined to name the towns they’ve visited. The group, she said, “is just trying to get to the bottom of the truth, nothing more, nothing less.”
Members of the group credit Dean, whose last name Todd declined to provide, with creating the app they use to track down voters. (Dean did not respond to questions messaged to his Telegram account nor to questions Todd said she shared with him via email.) The app is designed with a free site that Democrats have used in the past to canvass voters before an election. The app shows canvassers where to find nearby voters, as well as their addresses, whether they voted in 2020, if they voted in person or absentee, and whether they registered to vote same-day. The app asks canvassers to confirm that information and, if they find any discrepancies, to get voters to sign an affidavit and mail it to a P.O. box.
Todd said they are sharing those affidavits with members of the state legislature, “many” of whom are interested in their findings, but declined to provide names. She described affidavits the group collected from two households alleging election misconduct, but declined to share any names or details that could be fact-checked, citing the affiants’ privacy. The Trump campaign used affidavits as part of its failed legal strategy to challenge the 2020 election and held up the sworn statements to try to add some legitimacy to its bogus fraud claims, but, as the Washington Post noted at the time, many of those affidavits were never filed in court and the ones that were filed were often thrown out.
So let's call this what it is: mass voter intimidation of Democratic voters on a multi-state scale, of tens, if not hundreds of thousands or more of registered Democrats, with the intent of these assholes trying to accuse Biden voters of fraud.
That's the entire point.
It's a message that if you are a registered Democrat, Trump Cultists know who you are, and know where you live.
It should be ludicrously illegal, but it's not.
Therein lies the problem.
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