(Chuck Muth) – OK, this is a long one. But – HOO-BOY! – do we have a lot to cover today.
At Freedom Fest last month, I participated in a panel discussion on election integrity and was asked if things were better now than they were in 2020. I said yes…primarily because Republicans got caught flat-footed in the last presidential election and now know what to look for.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
In addition, election integrity projects have launched all over the country focusing on various aspects of better securing our elections…and the left/liberals/progressives don’t like it one bit.
As such, their hand-maidens in the media have begun attacking such efforts, including a recent hit piece by CNN (naturally) and a new article in Wired incitingly-titled, “Election Deniers Are Ramping Up Efforts to Disenfranchise Voters.”
Ugh.
Here in Nevada, our Pigpen Project has been focusing on cleaning up the voter rolls because our state population is extremely transitory and has a lot of bad registrations on the lists. Plus, in 2021 the Legislature decided to automatically mail a ballot to every active registered voter whether they asked for one or not.
And we’ve now been mentioned in three left-wing hit pieces – including the latest one in Wired. So I want to go through the accusations and clarify the misinformation these outlets are putting out…at least as it applies to our Pigpen Project.
Words Matter
The Wired article uses the old trope “election denial groups” to paint all efforts to better secure future elections with folks who raised a stink about problems in the 2020 elections. But just because groups like ours point out problems in current election laws and processes doesn’t make us “election deniers.”
We’re not. And never have been.
And just as the left routinely adds the word “widespread” to election fraud allegations, in an effort to deny that ANY election fraud occurs, it also uses the word “purge” to scare people into thinking they might wrongly be removed from voting rolls.
We’re not out to “purge” eligible voters. Our objective is to clean up the voter rolls of people who are no longer eligible to vote at the address where they are registered. And there’s NOTHING nefarious about that.
Wired also accuses various election integrity groups of using “unreliable data.”
I can’t speak for any other groups, but the Pigpen Project only uses official government data directly from election offices and the United States post office. So if the data is wrong, blame the government, not us.
Wired claims election integrity groups “threaten to disenfranchise voters by removing legitimate registrations.”
“Disenfranchise.” Another code word used to frighten the public.
But in Nevada, that just can’t happen. We have same-day registration. So anyone who might have their voting status inadvertently changed by mistake can simply re-register right up until Election Day if they are, in fact, lawfully eligible to vote.
And our efforts aren’t targeted at “legitimate” registrations. We only look at registrations where we have a reasonable belief, based on reliable data from the government, that the registration is ILLEGITIMATE.
Wired goes on to accuse election integrity groups of trying to “stop Democratic voters in swing states.”
While Nevada is, indeed, a swing state, this accusation, at least as it pertains to the Pigpen Project, is horse manure. We don’t look at the partisan affiliation of suspicious voter registrations, and for a very good reason.
You see, it doesn’t matter how a suspicious voter is registered. When it comes to potential voting fraud, it only matters who might get their hands on a loose ballot from a trash dumpster or apartment complex mail room.
For an election crook, the party affiliation of the voter whose ballot they obtain is meaningless. A Republican crook can vote a Democrat voter’s loose ballot for Republican candidates and a Democrat crook can vote a Republican voter’s loose ballot for Democrat candidates.
This is only common sense. And at the Pigpen Project, we focus on ALL suspicious registrations with no regard for party affiliation.
Challenges
The Wired article alleges that “the number of (voter registration) challenges” by groups such as ours “is expected to increase dramatically ahead of the upcoming deadline on August 7 that prohibits states from systematically removing voters within 90 days of a federal election.”
This demonstrates an ignorance of the law, at least as far as Nevada is concerned.
By law, when we file a challenge to a voter, the election department is required to send out a confirmation postcard to the challenged voter. That voter then has 33 days to confirm their registration.
If they don’t do so within that 33-day period, then, and only then, are they moved from “active” to “inactive” status – which would mean they’d no longer automatically receive a mail-in ballot.
So the almost 4,000 challenges we filed on Monday means the challenged voter has until around the end of August to return their card.
That means it will already be within the 90-day “blackout” period.
And that means none of our challenged voters will have their status changed before mail-in ballots are mailed out in October. Those who are successfully challenged won’t have their status changed until AFTER the November 5th general election.
So much for that scare tactic.
EagleAI
Wired then goes on to impugn the reliability of a new software program the Pigpen Project uses called “EagleAI.”
EagleAI cross-matches post office data with government voter registration data to identify possible anomalies that warrant further investigation. Wired alleges that the EagleAI technology “is also reportedly facing numerous technical issues.”
Another red herring.
I’m proud to say the Pigpen Project was chosen to “beta test” the technology over a year ago. And like any new software program, there were some “bugs” in the system that we helped identify and fix with the developer.
But none of the technical issues had anything to do with the reliability of the data itself.
Wired then goes on to say that “Tiny errors in name spellings, such as missing commas, can lead to names being removed from voter rolls incorrectly.”
This is one of the dumbest arguments the left can make.
First, “tiny errors” such as name spellings already exist within the voting rolls themselves. In our experience, that’s how many duplicate registrations appear on voting rolls in the first place.
It’s nothing nefarious by election officials. It’s just a reality of massive amounts of data which is often entered manually by human beings who are prone to occasional typos and such.
But more importantly, such “tiny errors” do NOT “lead to names being removed from voter rolls incorrectly.”
What it leads to are challenges which then trigger a confirmation process. If the voter is legitimate and was flagged by a “tiny error,” the voter is notified and has ample time to correct the “tiny error” before having their voting status changed.
Anyway, thanks, in part, to the Pigpen Project’s early involvement with beta testing the EagleAI software, it’s now an absolutely amazing program that, frankly, election officials should consider using themselves.
Canvassing
Wired goes on to criticize “door-to-door canvasses” as “a practice that has been condemned for intimidating voters.”
What B.S. Let me outline exactly what our “boots on the ground” have been doing…
Let’s say we identify a suspicious voter named Joe Smith who is registered to vote at 123 Main Street in Las Vegas. But the post office shows he’s moved to 456 Maple Avenue in Dallas.
Our volunteer goes to the address where Mr. Smith is still registered in Las Vegas. Nancy Jones, the current resident, says that Mr. Smith no longer lives there and hasn’t for some time.
So our volunteer asks Ms. Jones if she’ll sign an official “Non-Resident Report” – which has been provided to our volunteers by the election department – since she has “personal knowledge” that Mr. Smith no longer lives there.
If Ms. Jones does fill out and sign the report, we submit it to the Clark County Registrar of Voters (ROV). The ROV then sends out a confirmation postcard to Mr. Smith. If Mr. Smith does not return the postcard within the 33-day deadline, his registration status is changed from active to inactive.
If Ms. Jones chooses not to fill out and sign the report, our volunteer thanks her and moves on to the next suspicious registration. There is absolutely NO “intimidation” involved whatsoever. We’re simply following the law and established procedures as outlined by election officials here.
So that dog won’t hunt.
Back to EagleAI
Wired relies on “leaked documents” to allege that “the funders of EagleAI is Ziklag, an ultra-secretive group of wealthy individuals dedicated to pushing an overtly Christian nationalist agenda.”
The article goes on to allege that “one of the group’s goals is to ‘remove up to one million ineligible registrations and around 280,000 ineligible voters’ in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin.”
First, I have absolutely no idea if this allegation about funding is true or not, but also have no idea whatsoever what it has to do with anything. The only thing that matters is if the software works and is reliable for the purpose of identifying suspicious voter registrations.
And it is.
Secondly, what the hell is wrong with trying to remove INELIGIBLE voter registrations from the voter rolls? If they are, indeed, INELIGIBLE, they SHOULD be removed from the voter rolls.
Duh.
Wired then goes on to attack Cleta Mitchell of the national Election Integrity Network (EIN) and accuses groups involved in the network of using unreliable data from organizations such as VoteRef and Check My Vote.
I can’t speak for other groups around the country. But I repeat that we ONLY use official government data from government election departments and the government’s U.S. Postal Service.
Wired then begrudgingly admits that “voter rolls are notoriously difficult to maintain, given federal laws that prevent citizens from being removed years after they may have left the jurisdiction.”
Don’t we know it!
Voter Fraud
The article then goes on to maintain that “there is no evidence to back up the claims that this issue causes voter fraud.”
Au contraire.
In a highly-publicized instance following the 2020 election, it was proven that a Nevada voter – a REPUBLICAN voter – had obtained his deceased wife’s mail-in ballot and voted it for her.
How many others got away with something similar?
The Wired article went on to quote Matt Heckel, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of State…
“These challenges are an attempt to circumvent the list maintenance processes that are carefully prescribed by state and federal law. 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.”
Well, I can’t speak for Pennsylvania, but this certainly isn’t true of our Pigpen Project. As noted below, we’ve tried to use the “list maintenance” process but have been rebuffed by some counties and urged to use the challenge process instead.
And again, we don’t use “unverified information.” We use only official government data. And we don’t “disenfranchise” any eligible voter, especially since Nevada has same-day registration should a rare error occur.
As for “the extra workload created by these mass voter challenges,” Tammy Patrick, CEO of the National Association of Election Officials, told Wired that “over a third of our local election offices do not have a full-time employee and any additional tasks can quickly become burdensome and overwhelm those who are responsible for conducting our elections.”
And she has a point. Sort of.
Essential Function
Conducting fair and accurate elections is one of the few legitimate, essential duties of the government.
And if a local government doesn’t have the personnel to fulfill this responsibility, then government officials should eliminate funding for other non-essential government programs and give these local officials the personnel they need.
In fact, this is such a critical role of government it shouldn’t be up to outside organizations such as ours to do this job. Election departments have access to the exact same official data and information that we use and should be incorporating what we’ve been doing in their own internal operations.
Believe me, I WISH we didn’t have to do this. But it is what it is.
Flaws in the Laws
Wired also quoted unnamed “election administrators” who maintain “that the processes in place to ensure voter rolls are as accurate as possible already work.”
No, they don’t…as the Pigpen Project has already inarguably demonstrated through our door-to-door canvassing and by all the confirmed Non-Resident Reports we’ve obtained and submitted.
Which brings me to the part of the article that specifically attacks the Pigpen Project…
“Similar initiatives are occurring locally as well. Nevada’s Pig Pen Project, run by former executive directors of the Nevada GOP Dan Burdish and Chuck Muth, files voter roll challenges by using its own software as well as EagleAI.
“Now, they’re conducting door-to-door canvasses in collaboration with landlords in a bid to verify the lists of residents they believe are illegally registered on voter rolls. On its website, the group features multiple endorsements, including one from white supremacist Paul Nehlen.”
First, yes, it’s true. We did just file voter challenges this week. But that’s only because, by law, our efforts to assist county clerks/registrars through the regular list maintenance process allows, but doesn’t require, the clerks/registrars to accept and process our requests.
As such, in a directive (Memo 2024-004) issued last March by the Nevada Secretary of State’s office to Nevada’s 17 county clerks/registrars, Mark Wlashin, Deputy Secretary of State for Elections, wrote…
“The NVRA (National Voter Registration Act) allows removal (of voters) based on individualized information at any time, and challenges to voter registration under NRS 293.535 and NRS 293.547 must be made on personal knowledge. External parties may wish to use these challenge processes instead of the NRS 293.530 process.”
Since the county clerks/registrars aren’t obligated to work on list maintenance requests with external parties, such as our Pigpen Project, under Section 530, it was the Nevada Secretary of State’s office itself which encouraged us to use the Section 535 and Section 547 challenge processes instead.
So it wasn’t OUR decision not to use the Section 530 list maintenance process. We tried to do that. It was the way the law is written and the Secretary of State’s office that encouraged us to use the challenge process instead.
Secondly, our door-to-door canvasses haven’t been done “in collaboration with landlords.”
Some apartment owners learned of our project and asked for our help in cleaning up the voter rolls after seeing piles of undelivered ballots to residents, who no longer live in the apartments where they’re registered, piling up in mail rooms.
The apartment owners and managers – who clearly know when a particular resident has moved out – attempted to file official “Non-Resident Reports.” But they were advised that since they didn’t actually live in the specific apartment UNIT, they weren’t allowed to file those reports.
So the apartment owners/managers have been forced to also file Section 535 challenges based on their knowledge of the fact that the renter has moved out.
Lastly, there’s no endorsement of our project on the Pigpen Project’s website by Paul Nehlen and I have no idea where they got that from since they didn’t provide a link. Pure “fake news.”
In Conclusion
The Wired article wraps up by quoting Brendan Fischer – deputy executive director at Documented, a far-left organization hellbent on blocking efforts to clean up voter rolls – who opines that “these mass voter challenges also seem to be laying the groundwork for litigation that could result in people getting kicked off the voter rolls.”
Which brings us to the bottom line…
There’s nothing wrong with “crying wolf” if there’s really a wolf. And there’s nothing wrong with filing voter challenges if a voter really is on the voter rolls who shouldn’t be.
Whether it’s one voter or one thousand voters or one hundred thousand voters.
And as detailed above, no voter is “kicked off the rolls” due to a voter challenge.
A voter challenge only sets in motion the legal process for verifying if the challenged voter is, in fact, legally eligible to vote from the address where they are registered.
So the REAL question is why anyone would object to that.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“Fewer than 530,000 voters returned a mail ballot (in Nevada’s 2022 general election). But ballots were sent to almost all of the state’s more than 1.8 million registered voters. You don’t have to claim there’s widespread fraud to point out that 1 million ballots floating around isn’t a best case for election security.” – Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial, 2/3/23
The Pigpen Project is a project of Citizen Outreach Foundation, an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) grassroots organization founded in 1992. Donations are tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes.
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