In a since-deleted VoteAlert publish reviewed by WIRED, a consumer wrote: “I’m in all probability going to be fired for this however I used to be employed by the Riverside County Registrar of Voters as an Election Officer in Hemet, CA. Since I’m in cost at this polling middle, I’m asking for citizenship ID of anybody that appears suspiciously like they’re not right here legally.”
The publish went on to recommend that the Riverside County Sheriff’s workplace wouldn’t intervene in her scheme. “It’s only a drop within the bucket however I’m going to do my half to cease election fraud,” she wrote. “Want me luck🙏”
WIRED traced the e-mail related to the publish to a California girl who describes herself as an individual who’s “FED UP with all of the bullsh*t,” in response to one app profile. “You’re solely getting the exhausting, smack-your-face TRUTH from me.”
The girl, whose title WIRED is just not publishing as a result of it was revealed by way of a safety flaw, didn’t reply to requests for remark.
In a cellphone name, Riverside County public data officer Elizabeth Florer confirmed that the county had employed an election employee matching WIRED’s findings and dedicated to making sure all election legal guidelines are adopted and are investigating the incident. Florer added that extra personnel have now been deployed to the Hemet polling middle to offer oversight and guarantee strict compliance with election legal guidelines.
True the Vote is maybe finest identified for its function within the extensively debunked movie 2,000 Mules. The movie relied closely on the group’s analysis to allege that “poll mules” have been paid to fraudulently accumulate and ship ballots for Democratic candidates in key swing states through the 2020 election. Nevertheless, an investigation by the Associated Press discovered that the movie was primarily based on flawed and improper evaluation of cellphone location information. After a defamation lawsuit, the movie’s publishers, Salem Media Group, retracted the movie, removing it from its platforms, and mentioned there would not be any future distribution of the e-book. Additionally they issued an apology to a voter falsely portrayed as illegally voting within the movie.
Undeterred, in 2022 True the Vote launched an online app known as IV3, which it claimed led to the problem of a whole lot of hundreds of voter registrations. A WIRED analysis discovered that the app’s methodology was unreliable and liable to error, with specialists warning that IV3 weaponizes public information and is extra more likely to take away eligible voters from the rolls than to detect widespread fraud—an issue they be aware is nearly nonexistent within the US.
In information obtained by the nonprofit group American Oversight and shared with WIRED, in Could 2024, a person with the username Totes Legit Votes apparently used IV3 to problem the eligibility of 5,000 individuals in Florida.
True the Vote has struggled to offer courts with significant proof to substantiate its claims of widespread voter fraud.
In 2021, the group filed a criticism with Georgia’s secretary of state, alleging widespread unlawful poll stuffing in Atlanta through the 2020 election and subsequent runoff. Nevertheless, when ordered by a choose to offer proof, True the Vote admitted it had no names or documentation to support its claims.
The next 12 months, court marshals arrested Engelbrecht, True the Vote’s founder, and board member Gregg Phillips after they defied a court docket order to provide proof in a defamation case introduced by the software program firm Konnech. The lawsuit accused True the Vote of falsely claiming that Konnech saved US election employees’ private data on an unsecured server in China.
