“True the Vote”— Skew the Vote— or Screw the Vote?

“True the Vote” was created in 2009, shortly after Pres. Obama’s election. It pushes the false narrative that voter fraud is endemic and massive. Their website states: “Our Republic flourishes when citizens are confident that their vote is free, fair, and secure. Yet, according to a recent survey 81% of Americans believe that election fraud is a very real problem. This growing concern jeopardizes our entire system of government, eroding our trust in elected leaders and undermining our confidence in the system by which they govern—  beginning at the polls and rising up through the highest offices in the land.”

Sounds like a longer version of a Donald Trump tweet.

The real story is told by Ben Cady & Tom Glazer, Voters Strike Back: Litigating Against Modern Voter Intimidation, 39 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 173, 216-19 (2015).

True the Vote (TTV) is a voter suppression group that harasses minority voters.

Here is an excerpt of their research (quoting):

There are several recent examples of confrontational voter challenges at polling places. During a 2011 special election, Empower Massachusetts, a ballot security group, reportedly engaged in belligerent voter challenges targeted at Hispanics and people with disabilities. According to one report, a local official said the challenges were “unnecessary,” and another witness said that citizens came away from the polling place shaken and in tears and that “[s]ome people left saying, ‘I'll never vote again.”’ During the 2010 recall election in Wisconsin, voting “slowed to a crawl” at Lawrence University in Appleton due to “disruptive” challenges made by three elections observers, including one from TTV.

The 2012 election cycle also saw a large number of offsite registration challenges that raised concerns about intimidation. TTV and its local volunteers developed proprietary software to compile challenge lists using “driver's license records, property records and other databases.” Volunteers then used those lists to initiate registration challenges with local election officials.

In Hamilton County, Ohio, Tea Party groups challenged 2100 voter registrations, with some groups particularly focusing their efforts on students.

Many of these challenges were groundless; for example, Tea Party groups called into question hundreds of student registrations for failure to specify dorm-room numbers, but election officials roundly rejected these challenges.

Nevertheless, some voters received challenge notices in the mail stating that they were required to attend a court hearing to defend against the challenge. Many such hearings were sparsely attended. Ohio's chief elections official, a Republican, criticized the frivolous challenges and expressed concern that such efforts can “border on voter intimidation.”

For more, see https://socialchangenyu.com/volume-39-issue-2/voters-strike-back-litigating-against-modern-voter-intimidation/