With critical midterm elections just days away, stories have arisen in multiple states suggesting voter fraud may be afoot, but a leading conservative advocate for fair elections says some of these concerns are greatly exaggerated while others are worthy of further scrutiny.
In just the past two weeks, Project Veritas released undercover videos of liberal activists tacitly or openly condoning voter fraud on mail-in ballots. Thousands of non-citizens are feared to be on the voting rolls in North Carolina and reports surfaced of voting machines in Cook County, Illinois, registering votes intended for Republicans on the Democratic side.
True the Vote is an organization dedicated to ensuring integrity in elections through updated voter rolls, requiring photo identification for voters and other measures designed to guarantee only eligible voters are taking part in our political process. It has been very visible in it’s battle with the IRS over unwarranted scrutiny into the group’s application for tax-exempt status.
Of those three controversies, True the Vote Communications Director Logan Churchwell says the Colorado story is the most alarming. The Project Veritas video shows progressive interest groups encouraging undercover reporters to fish mail-in ballots out of trash cans, fill them out and mail them in. One activist even directed Project Veritas to a predominantly black neighborhood where apartment buildings would have many unused ballots in the trash.
“One thing that Project Veritas seems to be very keen at is trying to expose the corruption that could lead to crime. It looks like, yet again, there is that willingness that people are willing to play games in order to tilt the election in their favor. It’s important that we continue to show that that kind of corruption is out there, it could occur and to be vigilant against it,” said Churchwell.
As for the North Carolina story of non-citizens being on the voter rolls, Churchwell says this is a classic example of why state and local officials have a solemn duty to verify that each person on the list is eligible to vote and failing to do that job compromises the system.
“This is what happens if you don’t stay on top of your data and you’re not constantly verifying that. That requires action on the government’s level and the citizens holding it to account,” he said.
However, Churchwell doesn’t necessarily see anything sinister in the Tar Heel State.
“Yes, there were about 150 or so people that are shown to be non-citizens with no legal status in the United States but got their way onto the voter rolls out of a pool of 10,000. They’ve got to figure out if there were more of that 10,000 that fit into that same category,” said Churchwell, who believes there may be a simple explanation for how those non-citizens got added to the rolls.
“In North Carolina, if you’re applying for citizenship and you’re in the normal pipeline, you can get a driver’s license too. What they’ve got to figure out is of those 10,000 potential illegal aliens on the voter rolls, we have to figure out if some of those people were actually in the pipeline for citizenship and had actually been granted it. So the jury is still very much out on the North Carolina issue,” said Churchwell.
In Illinois, Cook County has a long reputation for political corruption, but Churchwell says machines registering votes for the wrong candidate or wrong party is not a sign of corruption and is very easily corrected.
“You’re going to hear many stories about how a machine malfunctioned when someone went to vote. This happens all the time. It probably doesn’t get reported as much as it occurs,” he said.
“All that’s required is that you raise your hand and tell the election judge or whatever they’re called in your community, ‘This machine doesn’t seem to be working right.’ They can do a very quick recalibration, probably right there on the spot and reassign you to a different booth so you can vote correctly the way you intended to,” he said.
In short, stories of malfunctioning machines should not trigger conspiracy theories.
“A lot of people freak out when they see their votes change on them. Then the mind begins to wander on what all could be causing it. You do not need to panic,” he said.