by Sharon Rondeau
(Aug. 3, 2022) — On Monday the non-profit Look Ahead America‘s Voter Integrity Project released a follow-up report containing additional results from its ongoing work in the states of Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia identifying questionable voter registrations and ballots cast in the 2020 general election.
The research, begun early in 2021, identified up to seven categories, depending on the state, of disallowed voter registrations and has been shared with election clerks throughout the three states as well as in with the purpose of improving the accuracy of local voter rolls.
LAA’s earlier reports on identified voter irregularities and clerks’ responses from those states can be read here:
Wisconsin – clerks’ responses
Wisconsin – initial findings of more than 157,000 potentially illegally-cast ballots in the 2020 election, rendering the winner of the presidential race “unknowable”
“In this report, we received responses from the Department of Transportation in Arizona,
Georgia, and Wisconsin,” the latest report reads on page 3. “All three states’ agencies are currently investigating cases in which voters may have used false addresses to obtain a driver’s license or state identification.”
“Likewise, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Investigations Unit has notified us of a new case
involving 22 voters registered at postal locations in Gwinnett County. Additionally, as of this
writing and to our knowledge, no cases from our organization under investigation have closed.”
Along with the follow-up report, LAA founder Matt Braynard released a video which he hopes to make a weekly event describing the organization’s ongoing efforts to identify “likely illegal voters” prior to the 2022 midterm elections.
In the interest of engaging everyday Americans in civic action, LAA conducts weekend “America First” “community organizing” seminars around the country. There is no charge to attend, Braynard explained in the video, other than the cost of travel to and from the event.
Shorter webinar training sessions are also offered, he said, while research volunteers and/or donations are needed and appreciated.
In Georgia, LAA referred over 1,400 instances to clerks of non-residential addresses having been provided as residences, some of which, as noted above, went on to become full-fledged investigations by secretaries of state’s offices or district attorneys. Also uncovered was a deceased voter whose name remained on the voter roll 20 months after the election until LAA brought it to the attention of Burke County Board of Elections and Registration Executive Director Beau J. Gunn.
As LAA Director of Research Ian Camacho related in previous interviews with The Post & Email, LAA researchers utilize the National Change of Address (NCOA) database containing the names of all U.S. residents filing changes of address with the post office, with LAA looking only at those changes stated as “permanent.” Other tools accessed are property and tax records, social-media postings, voteref.com, state-run public databases such as Wisconsin’s MyVote, and purchased voter rolls from secretaries of state.
As in previous reports, LAA’s disclaimer on page 2 acknowledges that “while this report identifies many illegally cast ballots and the names of ineligible voters in whose name those ballots were cast, it does not allege that those persons necessarily cast the illegal ballots.”
In the case of Walton County, GA, Camacho filed challenges to two voters’ registrations based on LAA’s research showing their residence addresses were that of a post office. In response, Walton County Elections Director Jenni Phipps told Camacho the challenges would be placed on the agenda of a September board meeting (p. 10 of PDF).
Neither Georgia, Wisconsin nor Arizona allows the use of non-residential addresses for drivers’ licenses and voter registration; however, LAA researchers identified 335 such voters in Arizona, 65 in Wisconsin and 1,401 in Georgia, with 928 of those in Fulton County alone.
On July 25, 2022, an investigator for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Camacho he opened a new case “stemming from a complaint you filed, which involves 22 Gwinnett County (GA) PO Box Voters,” pledging to keep him abreast of any new developments (p. 14).
In the city of Madison, WI, LAA found a voter who cast a ballot in 2020 but had previously registered to vote in Oregon (p. 19). The election official, Jennifer S. Haar, said her office uses the NCOA and “notifications from the State” to update its voter rolls and that she could not remove a voter based solely on Camacho’s information.
LAA’s research showed the voter in question had registered to vote in Oregon in 2012 and “re-registered” there in 2019 “AFTER she registered in Wisconsin 10/15/2019.” In an email dated May 24, 2022, Haar confirmed that the individual “registered online” to vote in Wisconsin on October 15, 2019.
Harder to prove is voters’ potential violation of Wisconsin’s “indefinitely confined” provision relating to absentee ballots which the state’s highest court ruled is determined by each voter and not by election clerks, as it was in some cases at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On October 29, 2020, the MacIver Institute reported that in Wisconsin, “the number of indefinitely confined voters has increased over 200% in little more than a year” and that such voters “enjoy a special perk when requesting an absentee ballot – they are exempt for the state’s voter ID law.”
On a different issue, on July 8 the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that ballot drop-boxes are outside the scope of “legislative policy” and can no longer be employed in the state’s elections.
On Tuesday we spoke with Camacho about LAA’s latest report, asking several questions arising from the additional information.
In a July 26, 2022 reply email to Wisconsin Department of Transportation (DOT) official Adam Guess (page 16), Camacho referenced “API,” for which we asked for clarification. “‘API’ stands for ‘Application Programming Interface,'” Camacho, who has a technical background, said.
IBM defines the term as:
An application programming interface, or API, enables companies to open up their applications’ data and functionality to external third-party developers, business partners, and internal departments within their companies. This allows services and products to communicate with each other and leverage each other’s data and functionality through a documented interface. Developers don’t need to know how an API is implemented; they simply use the interface to communicate with other products and services. API use has surged over the past decade, to the degree that many of the most popular web applications today would not be possible without APIs…
An API is a set of defined rules that explain how computers or applications communicate with one another. APIs sit between an application and the web server, acting as an intermediary layer that processes data transfer between systems.
As it relates to LAA’s work, Camacho said, the apparent inability of various governmental systems to communicate with each other to flag improper voter registrations could present “a vulnerability.” His question for Guess, he explained, was, “Isn’t there a way to automate this?”
A further source of information for “API,” Camacho said, is the U.S. Postal Service, which in fact has a wealth of references to the term in connection with “Web Tools,” a USPS registered trademark, for use by e-commerce businesses.
In regard to the voter who was registered in both Wisconsin and Oregon, The Post & Email noted that both states are members of ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center), which did not flag the double registration when, according to its website, “ERIC mission is to assist states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.”
LAA had flagged the voter as an “out-of-state subsequent registration” (OOSSR), Camacho said. “She did not vote in Oregon, although registering there to me shows intent,” he told us. “The only thing in that voter’s favor, potentially, is that she did not vote in Oregon. If the person votes in the new state and then goes back and votes in the old state, that’s worse, but in any case, she still registered in a new state and voted in Georgia. So ERIC did not flag her as a double-voter.”
He hypothesized that people who are registered to vote in two states may be attempting to “shop their vote,” meaning they will cast a ballot in the state where they believe it could make a difference.
In some states, Camacho said, a voter who relocates out-of-state should notify the clerk in his former voting jurisdiction of the move, as it does not always occur automatically.
Finally, we asked Camacho if LAA has the ability to discover non-citizens voting in U.S. elections, among the other types of potential fraud it has discovered. The type of information one would need to determine that, he replied, is not publicly available and therefore not something the organization has the ability to probe.
In the case of the voter who relocated from Georgia to Florida and passed away shortly after the election, The Post & Email asked Camacho which agency would have been responsible for notifying the local election clerk to remove her name from the rolls. “How long does it take for a local official to be informed of such changes?” we asked.
“It should have been flagged,” Camacho responded. “In fairness to the clerk, they said they received a National Change of Address notification. We had found this person initially as ‘active,’ and the clerk had designated her as ‘inactive.’ That happens after a person has been flagged as having changed address permanently. I would assume they mailed her something in January for the runoff (election) and never heard anything back. We notified the clerk that she was still on the rolls, and our position was that she shouldn’t have voted in Georgia anyway since she had permanently moved several months prior. That’s how we flagged her. So we confirmed the voter was ‘inactive,’ but if someone tried to cast a ballot in her name, how would anyone know she was deceased?
“You hear the legacy media telling you that ‘it never happens” and ‘they clean the rolls regularly,’ but this is clearly an indicator,” he added. “Granted, she was not ‘active.’ I think you hear the ‘dead voter’ thing a lot. I don’t think it’s as common as people think it is, but I do think it’s a sign there are a lot of people on the rolls who shouldn’t be. I agree we don’t want to disenfranchise anyone who is legally eligible to vote and does it the right way, but the question is, ‘Why are these people not being removed?'”
Very recently, a member of the group Wisconsin H.O.T. demonstrated, at the risk of his own prosecution, apparent vulnerabilities in requesting absentee ballots. Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling, who last fall accused five of six members of the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) of criminal conduct in the 2020 election relating to its directives on ballots distributed within nursing homes, said Wisconsin’s attorney general is investigating the incident.
As a result of its work in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, LAA asks the public to take action. “We request the assistance of citizens in these states and ask them to contact us so that they may file challenges and file complaints against potentially ineligible voters, and even clerks not doing their diligence. This will empower citizens and force elected officials to be accountable.”