Elias Group Tarnishes Watchdog To Keep Bad Voters On NV Rolls
The text discusses the activities of Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic lawyer known for his involvement in election law changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has been pivotal in implementing measures like automatic mail-in voting and vote harvesting in Nevada. The article critiques Elias and his organization, Democracy Docket, for their portrayal of election integrity efforts as deceptive. A specific focus is placed on a blog post by Matt Cohen, which claims that right-wing groups are attempting to remove millions of voters. The author counters that their submission of over 1,000 names of potentially inactive voters was a legal, responsible action to maintain accurate voter rolls, not an attempt to disenfranchise legitimate voters. The author also addresses misconceptions from a New York Times article, clarifying their collaborative and lawful approach to verifying voter registrations through authorized data and community engagement, emphasizing their commitment to election integrity.
Among active election integrity groups, Marc Elias is a household name. He’s the Democrat super-lawyer and Russia hoax architect who used Covid as an excuse to rewrite election laws all across the country.
That includes Nevada, where he helped ensure the implementation of automatic mail-in balloting and vote harvesting. Now this pirate is working feverishly to protect his ill-gotten booty — and telling the truth certainly isn’t part of his game plan.
His Democracy Docket blog and podcast regularly skewer groups and organizations who are working to protect the security and integrity of our elections — including my group, Pigpen Project. And he’s at it again.
On Aug. 20, one of his bloggers, Matt Cohen, scribbled a post headlined: “These Right-Wing Groups Are Trying to Remove Millions of Voters Around the Country.” He starts off with:
In June, a nascent right-wing group in Nevada sent more than a thousand names to 10 county clerks and registrars in an attempt to get them purged from the state’s voter registration.
Yes, it’s true that we submitted more than 1,000 names of suspicious voters, but this wasn’t an attempt to get legitimate voters “purged” — a scare tactic word used to undermine our efforts — from the voter rolls.
The names were of voters who appear to have moved out of Nevada and re-registered in another state who, if true, simply should no longer be on Nevada’s voter rolls. All that our submissions did was trigger a verification postcard mailing from election officials to ensure the accuracy of our information, exactly as the law requires.
In fact, after Nevada’s June primary, election officials in all 17 of Nevada’s counties mailed approximately 150,000 such postcards to suspicious voters and, as a result, more than 100,000 of them had their status changed from “active” to “inactive” earlier this month. That means election officials confirmed that they didn’t belong on Nevada’s voter rolls and won’t be automatically receiving a mail-in ballot for the November election.
Cohen goes on:
According to the New York Times, the group [Pigpen Project] is working with EIN, True the Vote and Vote Ref — another unreliable database of semi-public voter information — to identify voters. By Muth’s own admission, the group is also engaging in ‘boots on the ground’ to canvass door-to-door in the Silver State to confirm voter registrations.
We debunked the NYT hit piece way back in March. While it’s true we are a member of the Election Integrity Network (EIN) of groups working on this issue nationally, we have absolutely nothing to do with True the Vote or Vote Ref and only use official data from election departments and the U.S. Postal Service. One of the sources we use is Nevada’s statewide voter registration list, which the secretary of state’s office has authorized us to access.
Yes, we’ve had volunteers going door-to-door to verify our information before submitting suspicious voters to election officials. Current residents have been signing official “Non-Resident Reports” confirming that a suspicious voter no longer lives where the suspicious voter is registered. We submit those signed reports to the county clerk or registrar to trigger the official verification postcard mailings.
That’s called “responsible.” We don’t just make wild allegations. Our volunteers have proven that our information and data are accurate and reliable.
In a separate blog post about Nevada’s new VREMS (Voter Registration and Election Management Solutions) system on Aug. 20, Cohen claims:
Right-wing ‘election integrity’ groups like the Pigpen Project have recently tried to bring voter roll challenges to a number of counties in Nevada, using incomplete data from VoteRef, an online database of semi-public voter information that’s proven unreliable.
Again, that’s simply a flat-out lie. We have never used VoteRef. We have always used nothing but official government records and data.
We’re challenging voters who are reasonably believed to no longer be legally eligible to vote in Nevada. And we’re conducting our efforts “by the book.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with following the laws, processes, and procedures to make sure only legally eligible voters vote in Nevada’s elections.
You have to wonder why anyone would lie to keep people on Nevada’s voter rolls who no longer live in Nevada. What could possibly be their motivation? I think we all know the answer to that.
This article is republished from Pigpen Project, with permission.
Chuck Muth is the president of the Citizen Outreach Foundation. Pigpen Project was launched in January 2023 and is a project of the Citizen Outreach Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
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