Bombastic claims of voting fraud made in the right-wing conspiracy movie “2000 Mules” sounded alarming, and Georgia election officials wanted to get to the bottom of it.
If there really was a massive plot to stuff ballot drop boxes and rig the 2020 presidential election, wouldn’t the conservative organization behind the allegation, True the Vote, help investigators prove it?
Instead, True the Vote said in a recent court filing that it doesn’t know the identity of its own anonymous source who told a story of a “ballot trafficking” scheme allegedly organized by a network of unnamed groups paying $10 per ballot delivered.
True the Vote also told the court it doesn’t have documents about illegal ballot collection, the name of its purported informant or confidentiality agreements it previously said existed. The records were subpoenaed by the State Election Board in 2022.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Georgia election officials and voters are left to wonder whether True the Vote and “2000 Mules” told the truth — or if they were drumming up outrage based on vague suspicions and an unnamed whistleblower, fueling suspicions about Democrat Joe Biden’s win over Republican Donald Trump.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” said Matt Mashburn, a Republican former acting chairman of the State Election Board. “It’s odd to have someone make an allegation and then fight so hard to hold onto the truth of that allegation.”
Three vote counts and multiple investigations have upheld the results of the presidential election in Georgia, but polls show most Republican voters lack confidence in the state’s elections, a sentiment that GOP state legislators use to justify changing state voting laws.
The State Election Board already dismissed cases involving several voters who were accused in “2000 Mules” of illegally delivering ballots in the 2020 election. An investigation found that in each case, the voters were delivering ballots that belonged to family members in their household, which is allowed by Georgia law.
The board continued investigating the bigger claims of a coordinated election fraud effort, overriding True the Vote’s attempt to withdraw its complaint when asked for more information.
True the Vote, a Texas-based organization that raises money from its activism, said Georgia officials already have all the information they need to investigate cellphone signals that purportedly came within 100 feet of multiple drop boxes during the 2020 election.
But without any witnesses, perpetrators or stronger evidence, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation declined to pursue an inquiry.
“The GBI consequently has ready access to the underlying data, and could, we believe, reconstruct it, but it declines to do that,” True the Vote said in a statement. “At this point, it would be redundant and cost-prohibitive for True the Vote to do so on its own. It is in that sense that there is nothing more for True the Vote to provide that it has not already provided to the GBI.”
Without more information, the Georgia investigation appears to be stalled. True the Vote said in court filings it would produce some documents but didn’t identify which ones.
“Once again, True the Vote has proven itself untrustworthy and unable to provide a shred of evidence for a single one of their fairy-tale allegations,” said Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office. “Like all the lies about Georgia’s 2020 election, their fabricated claims of ballot harvesting have been repeatedly debunked.”
Four of the State Election Board’s five members didn’t respond to requests for comment about the True the Vote case.
Board member Ed Lindsey said the lack of evidence makes him question True the Vote’s allegations, and he referred questions about the case to the attorney general’s office, which represents the State Election Board.
A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said she wouldn’t comment because of the possibility of more litigation. It’s unclear whether the attorney general’s office will further pursue the court case after True the Vote responded to the subpoenas without providing the information requested.
Despite the failure to provide evidence of fraud in 2020, lawmakers are pushing a variety of bills that would allow election investigations of the secretary of state’s office, remove computer codes from ballots, increase election audits and add watermarks to ballots.
The State Election Board voted down a resolution Tuesday that would have asked the General Assembly to limit absentee voting to people who are disabled, older than 75 or out of town.
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