Brennan Center sounds alarm about vote challenges in the upcoming 2022 elections
8th August 2022 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
A new report from the Brennan Center of Justice voices concerns that 2020 election deniers are organizing to challenge votes in the 2022 midterm elections.
“Several former Trump advisers and officials who promoted baseless claims of widespread vote fraud and worked to overturn the 2020 election ahead of January 6 are now enmeshed in a new effort to challenge votes, voter eligibility, and election results in 2022 and beyond,” wrote the Brennan Center in its report.
The Conservative Partnership Institute is one of the centerpieces of these efforts. It is a right-wing nonprofit that received a $1 million donation from Donald Trump’s Save America PAC, according to campaign finance records. Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows is a senior partner with the Conservative Partnership Institute. Dan Scavino, a former Trump social media director who promoted the January 6 rally, is a digital fellow at the institute.
“It (the Conservative Partnership Institute) is organizing a network of groups and individuals committed to taking more control of election administration in future contests,” wrote the report.
Cleta Mitchell, one of the lawyers involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, has hosted workshops to discuss mobilizing poll workers and poll watchers. Mitchell received notoriety for being on a phone call Trump made to Georgia state officials urging them to find evidence to overturn the state’s presidential election results. Mitchell later resigned her partnership from the Washington, D.C., office of Foley & Lardner.
An online guide from the Election Integrity Network of the Conservative Partnership Institute is worded very carefully. The guide advises volunteers to always go to election offices in pairs so witnesses will be present at any event and to never lose their temper or raise their voice. The guide also writes: “Never engage in any conduct that would imply or suggest that volunteers are harassing or intimidating voters. All contacts must be respectful, and research must be conducted in a manner that does not intimidate, accuse, or harass any voter.”
The Brennan Center’s report, however, finds fault with the guide for failing to describe critical differences between partisan monitoring efforts and official roles that serve all voters.
“It (the Conservative Partnership Institute’s Guide) instructs citizens to get exhaustive information to locate ‘bad addresses’ and challenge voter eligibility, without explaining common missteps that other organized efforts to challenge voters have previously made, such as failing to account for the ways election officials record the addresses of student voters, unhoused voters, and military voters,” wrote the Brennan Center. “And it encourages state-level activists to identify whether officials in attorney general’s offices are ‘friend or foe.’”
The Brennan Center fears that the “combative yet vague instructions and promoting the unjustified specter of widespread fraud, the unprecedented effort to organize an ‘army’ of citizens could lead to voter interference and intimidation, improper mass voter challenges, election security breaches, and other forms of lawbreaking in November.”
The Brennan Center is not the only outlet to have concerns about nakedly partisan election monitoring efforts. Claire Woodall-Vogg, executive director of Milwaukee’s Election Commission, voiced similar concerns to The Washington Post in a June 15 article. “People shouldn’t have a vested interest one way or another when doing the work of an election inspector…The concern is if they understand when they’re on the job they should check their politics at the door,” Woodall-Vogg told the Post.
If a voter does feel intimidated or threatened while at the polls, Gowri Ramachandran, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Election and Government Program, said they should report that behavior to an official poll worker immediately.
The Conservative Partnership Institute is not the only right-wing group pointed out in the Brennan Center’s report. The American Constitutional Rights Union’s website implies that fraud is more likely to happen with elderly voters because they rely on other people for assistance even though providing transportation or assistance to elderly voters is not illegal.
“It’s okay to get help voting if you need help,” Ramachandran said.
Another group, called Audit the Vote PA, called for volunteers to do recon on whether or not nursing home administrators were Democrat or Republican.
Ramachandran added that the best tactic for fighting false claims of voter fraud is to promote and distribute accurate information to others. Even Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, said he saw no evidence of fraud in 2020 that would have changed the election’s results. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the 2020 presidential election was the most secure in American history.
Federal and state judges dismissed over 50 lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies challenging the presidential election. A post-election audit in Georgia conducted by Republican Brad Raffensperger confirmed the original vote count. A similar audit conducted by Arizona Republican Karen Fann said her review’s overall vote count matched Arizona’s initial results in November.
“There is no widespread voter fraud,” Ramachandran said. “There is no reason to believe your vote won’t count.”
This article originally published in the August 8, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
