Several election-denying groups that emerged in 2020, along with new ones, are ramping up their efforts again to fight supposed “fraud” in the November 2024 election. Despite a nearly unanimous consensus by experts that American elections are free and fair, and that fraud is miniscule and incredibly rare, election-denying organizations are creating voter dropbox monitoring groups, developing downloadable apps to report fraud, creating websites with features to report suspected “fraud,” and even offering “rewards” for finding evidence of voter fraud.
With the U.S. presidential election only two weeks away, these longtime election-denying groups have found new ways to spread chaos about the voting process. They are again incentivizing their followers to monitor voters and voting processes, for no legitimate reason, and spreading disinformation about the reliability of America’s election process. These organizations, led by conspiracists and others who spread misinformation about the 2020 U.S. elections, are particularly active in swing states including Wisconsin and Michigan.
Catherine Engelbrecht’s organization, True the Vote (TTV), has organized several initiatives for its followers to report on “election fraud” from a distance, monitor dropboxes, and create “election observers.” TTV is the organization that provided false data that served as the basis of the election denialist film “2000 Mules.” When TTV was subpoenaed to provide evidence of the illegal “ballot harvesting” claims made in the film, the group’s attorneys said that they did not have any names or documentary evidence to share with the court. Several months ago, TTV began an initiative called Voto Honesto (Honest Vote), led by Violet Sarria, in order to communicate their election denial claims to Spanish-speaking residents (see GPAHE’s previous reporting here).
More recently, TTV has been attempting to organize a campaign they refer to as a “dropbox surveillance reality show” alongside local sheriffs. This scheme involves the installation of “AI-driven” cameras at drop boxes in order to remotely monitor people voting. While Engelbrecht claims to be working with “three influential sheriffs” in Wisconsin, she did not name them. Beyond the intrusive nature of recording everyday citizens while they vote and then sharing the footage with thousands of others to watch, this campaign incentivizes regular citizens to monitor dropboxes and report supposed “fraud” based on what they “believe” they witnessed at the dropbox, a recipe for potential disaster. This initiative has been focused on drop boxes in swing states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, where Engelbrecht and “2000 Mules” co-star Gregg Phillips have been spending time recently. Other states the TTV team have been touring include Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.
TTV has also released “election observer reference guides” and are calling on their supporters to serve as poll workers and election observers. This list of guidelines includes procedures for monitoring polling places and reporting on election workers when they perceive that they have made an infraction. These efforts are to be systematized using TTV’s “VoteAlert” app, an in-browser application where voters can report “suspicious” behavior and unconfirmed allegations of election mischief. The app is filled with unconfirmed allegations about voting irregularities.
VoteAlert Post: A user reports on a suspicious drop box location
In keeping up with their non-English-speaking outreach initiatives, TTV also provides pre-written letters in Spanish and other languages presumably for activists to give to people they perceive as non-citizens to discourage them from voting illegally. Beyond listing the potential consequences of voting illegally, the letters also imply that there are people who may be “misleading you” by talking about voting. They warn recipients not “to be deceived by people who are only looking to use you to further a political agenda.”
Another notorious election denier, Mike Lindell, also hasn’t given up on spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories about voting. The disgraced CEO of My Pillow was one of the loudest voices during the 2020 presidential election, pushing conspiracy theories about voter fraud and “rigged” Smartmatic and Dominion voting machines, the latter resulting in a multimillion dollar lawsuit charging him with defamation. Despite this, Lindell continued to tour the country in the years following the 2020 election for events such as his “Cyber Symposium,” where he continues to try to convince people of his wild claims.
For the 2024 election, he and his Lindell Legal Offense Fund have organized a multipronged campaign to sow doubt about the election results. Funded to the tune of more than three million dollars as of 2022, this organization is led by some of the premier activists within the U.S. election denial movement. According to the Fund’s most recent tax return, its secretary is Thomas Datwyler, Lindell’s attorney, who previously worked for disgraced former Congressman George Santos (R-NY), and was accused in a complaint filed with the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board of illegally coordinating a political campaign he was employed on with an independent expenditure political committee group called Rescue Minnesota. Attorney Kurt Olsen, who previously worked to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and who surfaced repeatedly in the Capitol Hill investigations into January 6, 2021, is the Lindell Legal Offense Fund’s current president. Finally, there is Paul Lavelle, the head of Operation Restored Warrior (ORW), a Christian organization for military veterans.
According to “The Plan” announced by Lindell, they intend to organize “real time election monitoring” using Lindell’s personal social media platform “FrankSocial” and his website, “Cause of America,” as tools to “report election malfeasance” and spread news about the election. Lindell has described FrankSocial in the following way: “FrankSocial is an app that connects average Americans to one another as a tool to report election malfeasance while watching real time reports of election interference in their communities. Accounts are free and everyone can participate.” Unlike TTV’s VoteAlert, FrankSocial, which was recently rebranded as VOCL, is in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. It does not appear that the app complies with the Apple Store’s developer policy on reporting criminal activity, which requires that “Apps for reporting alleged criminal activity must involve local law enforcement, and can only be offered in countries or regions where such involvement is active.”
Lindell’s site, Cause of America, is used to train supporters on how to hand count votes, how to conduct poll watching, and about the basics of American elections. Notably, given Lindell’s attacks on voting machine companies, there is a video in the voting machine section of the site where an empty list of “election companies with a trustworthy track record” is shown with the sound of crickets playing in the background. They also plan to use “wireless monitoring devices” in order to indicate whether a voting machine is “connected to the internet.” Exactly how they would gain access to the machines is unclear.
Then there is Lindell’s Election Crime Bureau. It is ostensibly to be used as an information hub that communicates with “experts” on cyber crime. But according to reporting from September, Lindell has allegedly been using it for phishing attacks on Georgia county election officials. Under the pretense of an election cybersecurity initiative, Lindell contacted election officials with surveys asking for their home address, cell phone numbers, and other personal details, as well as other information about how they monitor security threats. This has resulted in civil society groups sending letters to the U.S. Attorney General and Georgia Attorney General urging them to investigate the matter. Lindell also attempted similar methods in Massachusetts.
Now we have Kris Jurski’s group, The People’s Audit, formed sometime in early 2022. Jurski is known for his election-related conspiracy theories and has ties to other conspiracist groups such as the John Birch Society, Mike Lindell, and election denialist David Clements. In September 2022, Jurski was appointed to the Statewide Committee for Voter Integrity of the Florida Republican Assembly, a position that he remains in today. According to the group’s website, Jurski started The People’s Audit after “discovering” during the 2020 election that “people who sold their homes and moved out of state were still voting from their Florida residences.” As such, the People’s Audit now has a tool on their website in order to see whether someone else voted from your house.
Finally, there is Peter Bernegger, the president of the Wisconsin-based group “Election Watch.” The group is active in Wisconsin and incentivizes private citizens to search for election fraud. Bernegger is a prominent figure on social media, where he regularly spreads election-related conspiracy theories. When he was invited in February 2022 by Republicans to testify to a Wisconsin state Assembly Elections Committee on voter fraud, Bernegger was unable to provide any evidence for his claims. As a result, the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously dismissed all the complaints he had filed of illegal voting and decided to charge him one dollar for every frivolous complaint he made, leading to a fine of more than $2,400.
Since the 2020 election, however, Bernegger has made a name for himself by clogging up the election system with tons of requests for election-related records and at least 20 lawsuits against election clerks and offices in state court. His many adventures in court, however, eventually landed him a criminal charge of his own, for “simulating legal processes” by unlawfully modifying a subpoena in a lawsuit against the state’s top election office. Despite this, his efforts continue to be supported by his loyal fans on Twitter, who donate to him through a GiveSendGo petition.
This is not the first time that Bernegger has swamped the court system with legal claims. In 2009, he was found guilty of mail fraud and bank fraud in Mississippi for deceiving people into investing more than $790,000 in various fraudulent ventures, such as the development of a gelatin made from the carcasses of catfish to be used for pharmaceutical and cosmetic purposes. After his conviction, he turned to flooding the court system with claims of “procedural errors, insufficient evidence, judicial bias, ineffective counsel, violations of his constitutional rights,” according to ProPublica, in order to overturn the ruling. Like his attempts to overturn the election, this strategy largely failed, and only resulted in his $2.2 million financial restitution requirement being reduced to $1.7 million.
This election cycle, Bernegger has offered a “reward of $25,000” for information “leading to the arrests and convictions of people ballot harvesting on a mass scale in Milwaukee for the November 5th election.” As of 2020, Bernegger had paid little of his restitution fines, so how he intends to make good on this reward while he is still asking for money from his supporters for court fees remains unclear. Regardless, calls to reward private citizens for this information will likely increase the spread of misinformation about the election, and possibly further burden the election system in Wisconsin with unfounded complaints.
