(August 21, 2024) – Among active election integrity groups, Marc Elias is a household name. He’s the Democrat super-lawyer who used COVID as an excuse to rewrite election laws all across the country.
That includes Nevada where he successfully got the Legislature to pass automatic mail-in balloting and vote harvesting. And 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 skewers groups and organizations who are working to protect the security and integrity of our elections – including our own Pigpen Project. And he’s at it again.
Yesterday, 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 over a thousand 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. And all that our submissions did was trigger a verification postcard mailing by election officials to assure 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 around 150,000 such postcards to suspicious voters and, as a result, over 100,000 of them had their status changed from “Active” to “Inactive” earlier this month.
That means it was 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. Not confirmed by US. Confirmed by election officials.
Mr. Cohen goes on to write…
“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.”
First, we already 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 United States Postal Service.
And 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 the suspicious voter no longer lives where the suspicious voter is registered. And 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. And our volunteers have proven that our information and data is accurate and reliable.
In a separate blog post on Nevada’s new VREMS (Voter Registration and Election Management Solutions) system yesterday, Cohen wrote…
“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…
Bottom Line: 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…period.
Seriously, 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.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“When you have dirty voting rolls, you can have dirty elections.” – Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch
The Pigpen Project is a project of Citizen Outreach Foundation, an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) grassroots organization founded in 1992. Donations are tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes.