Voter Fraud (Election Fraud)

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      A Jan. 6 Defendant Pleads His Case to the Son Who Turned Him In

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      The trial was over and the verdict was in, but Brian Mock, 44, kept going back through the evidence, trying to make his case to the one person whose opinion he valued most. He sat at his kitchen table in rural Wisconsin next to his son, 21-year-old A.J. Mock, and opened a video on his laptop. He leaned into the screen and traced his finger over the image of the U.S. Capitol building, looked through clouds of tear gas and smoke and then pointed toward the center of a riotous crowd.Listen to This ArticleOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.“There. That’s me,” he said, pausing the video, zooming in on a man wearing a black jacket and a camouflaged hood who was shouting at a row of police officers. He pressed play and turned up the volume until the sound of chants and explosions filled the kitchen. “They stole it!” someone else yelled in the video. “We want our country back. Let’s take it. Come on!”A.J. shifted in his chair and looked down at his phone. He smoked from his vape and fiddled with a rainbow strap on his keychain that read “Love is love.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Las denuncias de fraude electoral de Milei emulan las estrategias de Trump y Bolsonaro

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      El economista libertario de extrema derecha Javier Milei podría ganar la presidencia de Argentina el domingo. Si no lo consigue, ya ha planteado que sería por fraude.Las denuncias de Donald Trump sobre fraude electoral ya habían ayudado a inspirar a un líder sudamericano, el expresidente de Brasil, Jair Bolsonaro, a sembrar dudas sobre la seguridad de las elecciones de su nación, lo que provocó disturbios en la capital de Brasil este año.Ahora, a 2400 kilómetros al sur, hay un nuevo político latinoamericano que denuncia un fraude electoral con escasas pruebas, socavando la fe de muchos de sus partidarios en las elecciones de su país de este domingo.Javier Milei, economista libertario de extrema derecha y personalidad televisiva, compite en una segunda vuelta electoral para convertirse en el próximo presidente de Argentina. Durante la campaña, ha aceptado con beneplácito las comparaciones con Trump y Bolsonaro y, al igual que ellos, ha advertido repetidamente de que si pierde, podría ser porque le hayan robado las elecciones.Milei ha afirmado, sin pruebas, que papeletas robadas y dañadas le costaron más de un millón de votos en las elecciones primarias celebradas en agosto, es decir, hasta el 5 por ciento del total.Milei afirmó que un fraude similar podría haber amañado también la primera vuelta de las elecciones generales del 22 de octubre, en las que quedó segundo con el 30 por ciento de los votos. “Hubo irregularidades de semejante tamaño que ponen en duda el resultado”, declaró en una entrevista televisiva la semana pasada.El miércoles, su campaña intensificó las acusaciones. La hermana de Milei, que dirige su campaña, presentó una denuncia ante un juez federal en la que alegaba un “fraude colosal” y afirmaba que, en las votaciones previas, funcionarios argentinos anónimos cambiaron papeletas de Milei en favor de su oponente. Dijeron que la información procedía de fuentes anónimas.El ascenso de Milei de incendiario comentarista de televisión a líder político a las puertas de la presidencia de Argentina ya ha sacudido la política de este país de 46 millones de habitantes. Sus promesas radicales de sustituir la moneda argentina por el dólar estadounidense y cerrar el banco central del país han hecho que los argentinos se preparen para lo que podría ocurrir si gana.Pero ahora, con sus alegaciones preventivas de fraude, los argentinos también se preparan para lo que podría ocurrir si no gana.Milei ha prometido modificar radicalmente el gobierno y la economía de Argentina, al eliminar el banco central del país y reemplazar su moneda por el dólar estadounidense.Sarah Pabst para The New York TimesLas encuestas apuntan a un empate técnico entre Milei y su oponente, Sergio Massa, ministro de Economía de centroizquierda.Muchos de los partidarios de Milei ya han empezado a quejarse, culpando al fraude de su segundo lugar el mes pasado y saliendo a la calle al menos tres veces para protestar lo que según ellos son planes de la izquierda para robar las elecciones. El jueves, sus partidarios anunciaron planes para protestar ante la autoridad electoral del país el día de las elecciones.Hasta ahora, las protestas han sido relativamente pequeñas y pacíficas, pero los observadores electorales señalan que podría deberse a que Milei sigue en la contienda.“No me preocupa que el sistema electoral argentino esté en riesgo”, dijo Facundo Cruz, politólogo argentino que ha seguido de cerca las denuncias de fraude. “Pero sí que ciertas prácticas que vimos en Estados Unidos y en Brasil se repitan”.El aprieto de Argentina sugiere que los esfuerzos de Trump para revertir las elecciones estadounidenses de 2020 no solo dejaron una marca duradera en la democracia estadounidense, sino que también siguen reverberando mucho más allá de las fronteras de EE. UU., donde algunos líderes políticos están recurriendo al fraude como una nueva excusa potencial para la derrota electoral.“En 40 años de democracia, nunca hemos tenido críticas serias ni idea alguna de fraude como la que se denuncia ahora”, afirmó Beatriz Busaniche, directora de la Fundación Vía Libre, una organización argentina sin fines de lucro que ha trabajado para mejorar los sistemas de votación del país. (Argentina estuvo bajo el control de una dictadura militar de 1976 a 1983).“Todas las personas que creen en el sistema electoral, la democracia y la transparencia están muy preocupadas”, añadió Busaniche.Las autoridades electorales argentinas afirman que no hay pruebas de fraude. En la votación del 22 de octubre, recibieron un total de 105 denuncias de papeletas perdidas o dañadas, una cifra habitual.Las autoridades electorales afirmaron que tampoco han recibido ninguna queja formal de la campaña de Milei en relación con un posible fraude. La autoridad electoral argentina, en un comunicado, calificó sus declaraciones de “invocaciones de fraude sin fundamento que en estos días desinforman a la opinión pública y socavan a la democracia como sistema de creencias compartidas”.En Argentina, los ciudadanos votan introduciendo una papeleta del candidato de su preferencia en un sobre y depositando el sobre cerrado en una urna. Las campañas distribuyen sus papeletas en los centros electorales. Milei y sus aliados afirman que algunas personas han estado robando sus papeletas de los centros electorales, impidiendo a sus partidarios votar por él.Sin embargo, cuando se les ha presionado, Milei y su campaña no han presentado muchas pruebas. Después de que el fiscal electoral argentino pidiera a la campaña de Milei que presentara pruebas, esta declaró que había respondido con videos y fotos de las redes sociales.El hombre que coordina la respuesta de Milei a los funcionarios electorales, Santiago Viola, director jurídico nacional de la campaña, dijo en una entrevista que había recibido entre 10 y 15 quejas por escrito de personas que afirmaban que en sus centros electorales habían faltado papeletas con el nombre de Milei.Viola dijo que creía que funcionarios de campaña de otras partes del país habían recogido otras quejas, pero que él no las había visto. No pudo verificar la afirmación de otro funcionario de la campaña el mes pasado de que había 4500 denuncias de papeletas desaparecidas. El mes pasado votaron más de 26 millones de personas.“Javier maneja los números mejor que yo”, dijo Viola refiriéndose a Milei.Milei afirma que hay “estudios” que demuestran que le robaron el 5 por ciento de los votos en las elecciones primarias, pero no los ha compartido.Argentina utiliza boletas de papel en las elecciones.Daniel Jayo/Associated PressMilei ha dicho que un indicio de fraude es que, al votar, algunos centros electorales no reportaron ningún voto a su favor. Milei afirma que eso es estadísticamente imposible. En realidad, los tres candidatos más votados el mes pasado obtuvieron cero votos en casi el mismo número de centros electorales —aproximadamente 100 cada uno—, sin contar los centros que no registraron ningún voto. Existen 104.520 centros de votación.“No salí a denunciar fraude”, dijo en una entrevista Massa, oponente de Milei. “Puede que haya mesas o urnas donde nadie te vote”.Massa dijo que Milei está siguiendo un manual ya conocido. “Es la misma metodología de Bolsonaro, la misma metodología de Trump”, afirmó.Milei se ha mostrado proclive a las teorías conspirativas. Ha calificado el cambio climático de complot socialista. Ha dicho que duda de los resultados de las elecciones de 2020 y 2022 en Estados Unidos y Brasil. También ha afirmado que los subsiguientes ataques de manifestantes contra edificios gubernamentales de EE. UU. y Brasil no tuvieron nada que ver con Trump o Bolsonaro.En septiembre, Milei dijo a The Economist que se había demostrado que lo ocurrido en Brasil fue organizado por el propio gobierno brasileño. Sin embargo, hay pruebas claras y abundantes de que los partidarios de Bolsonaro asaltaron la capital de Brasil en un intento de revertir la derrota electoral de Bolsonaro.Partidarios de Bolsonaro saquearon el Supremo Tribunal Federal y otros edificios gubernamentales durante un motín en enero.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesComo candidato presidencial, Milei tiene mucho menos poder del que tenían Trump y Bolsonaro como presidentes en ejercicio cuando denunciaron fraude. Sin embargo, tanto en Estados Unidos como en Brasil, las instituciones gubernamentales que controlaban resistieron en gran medida las acusaciones de fraude.En su lugar, fueron sus partidarios —quienes habían escuchado durante meses denuncias de fraude electoral— quienes asaltaron los edificios del poder.Tras conocerse los resultados de la primera vuelta el mes pasado, Julián Ballester, trabajador de construcción de 21 años, se plantó ante el cuartel general de la campaña de Milei la noche de las elecciones, convencido de que los números estaban amañados. “Tiraron muchas boletas”, dijo, afirmando que había visto fotos en grupos de WhatsApp. “Es evidente el fraude”.La situación en Argentina se ha vuelto más tensa en el último año a medida que la economía se ha ido desmoronando. La inflación anual supera el 140 por ciento, mientras que la pobreza y el hambre han aumentado. Milei ha construido su campaña en parte sobre la afirmación de que una secta oculta de la élite, liderada por Massa, está robando a los argentinos de a pie.El año pasado, un hombre movido por teorías conspirativas apretó el gatillo de una pistola a escasos centímetros de la cara de la vicepresidenta argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, aliada política de Massa.El arma tuvo un desperfecto y no disparó.Milei dijo esta semana que su campaña planeaba combatir el fraude el domingo armando a los 103.000 supervisores electorales de su campaña con boletas, para que pudieran reponer las existencias en los centros electorales en caso de que se robara alguna.Milei afirmó que era una tristeza que su campaña tuviera que recurrir a esas medidas. “¿Te das cuenta las locuras que estamos discutiendo?”.Jack Nicas es el jefe de la corresponsalía en Brasil, que abarca Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay. Anteriormente reportó de tecnología desde San Francisco y, antes de integrarse al Times en 2018, trabajó siete años en The Wall Street Journal. Más de Jack Nicas More

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      Ahead of Argentina’s Presidential Election, Milei Is Already Pointing to Fraud

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      Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian economist, could be elected Argentina’s president on Sunday. If he is not, he has already pointed to fraud.Donald J. Trump’s claims of election fraud already helped inspire one South American leader, former president Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, to sow doubt about the security of his nation’s elections, leading to a riot in Brazil’s capital this year.Now, 1,500 miles to the south, there is a new Latin American politician warning of voter fraud with scant evidence, undermining many of his supporters’ faith in their nation’s election this Sunday.Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian economist and television personality, is competing to become Argentina’s next president in a runoff election. On the campaign trail, he has embraced comparisons to Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolsonaro, and, like them, has repeatedly warned that if he loses, it may be because the election was stolen.Mr. Milei has claimed, without evidence, that stolen and damaged ballots cost him more than a million votes in a primary election in August, or as much as 5 percent of the total.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Letters With Suspicious Substances Sent to Election Offices Spur Alarm

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      Letters, some apparently containing fentanyl or other substances, were sent to local election offices in Georgia, Oregon and Washington State.Local election offices in at least three states were sent letters containing fentanyl or other suspicious-looking substances, the authorities said on Thursday. The letters come at a time when election offices are seeing a growing array of threats and aggressive behavior that has followed baseless charges of election fraud in recent years.The letters targeted election offices in Fulton County, Ga., which includes much of Atlanta; Lane County, Ore., which includes Eugene; and King, Spokane, Pierce and Skagit Counties in Washington. At least two of the mailings were reported to include messages, but beyond an apparent call to stop the election sent to the Pierce County Elections office in Tacoma, their nature was unclear.The Pierce County mailing included a white powder later identified as baking soda. A preliminary analysis of letters sent to King and Spokane Counties in Washington identified the presence of fentanyl, law enforcement authorities said. The letter sent to Fulton County was identified and flagged as a possible threat but had not yet been delivered, said Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state.Fentanyl can be fatal if ingested even in small doses, but in general, experts say, skin contact such as might occur when opening a letter poses little risk. None of the affected election offices reported injuries to employees.The F.B.I. and the U.S. Postal Service are investigating the letters, most of which arrived in Wednesday’s mail. In Washington State, they arrived only days after at least two synagogues in Seattle, the largest city in King County, received packages containing white crystalline or powdery substances.Officials in the affected states called the mailings threats to the democratic process. Mr. Raffensperger called on candidates for political office to denounce them.“This is domestic terrorism and needs to be condemned by anyone who holds elected office and wants to hold elected office,” he said. “If they don’t condemn this, then they’re not worthy of the office they’re running for.” He said his own son died five and a half years ago of a fentanyl overdose.While the mailings drew national attention, intimidation and threats of violence against election officials have become commonplace since former President Donald J. Trump and other Republican officeholders began raising baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.The Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections, singled out early by Mr. Trump and others claiming fraud, has been a frequent target, but hardly the only one. It was not clear whether the mailing to Atlanta had any connection to the racketeering trial playing out in Fulton County court. But election offices nationwide have tightened security, screening visitors and sometimes even installing bulletproof glass, in recent years.Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state, said on Thursday that she had received more than 60 death threats since she was named as a defendant in September in a lawsuit challenging Mr. Trump’s right to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot. Threats against officials statewide are common enough that her office has established a process for detecting them.“We’re seeing a high threat environment toward election workers,” said Ms. Griswold, a Democrat. In Oregon, “the very charged interactions with patrons, voting or not, the aggressive pursuits of staff — we’re starting to see that here as well,” said Devon Ashbridge, the spokeswoman for the Lane County Elections office. “This has been a frankly frightening situation.”Nationally, the tide of threatening behavior toward election workers is a factor in the growing number of people leaving the profession and the difficulty in recruiting replacements.“We do see trends in retirements, but this is on a much grander scale than we’ve ever seen before,” said Tammy Patrick, the chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials.The Justice Department has filed criminal charges involving election-related threats against at least 14 people since it formed a task force on the issue in June 2021. Ms. Griswold and others say, however, that both the federal and state responses have fallen short of what is needed.And they say they worry that the supercharged atmosphere surrounding the coming presidential election will only make matters worse.Election workers are “our neighbors, our grandparents, Republicans, Democrats together,” Ms. Griswold said. “They didn’t sign up for a really hostile environment for participating in American democracy.” More

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      Ballot-Stuffers Caught on Camera Have Upended a Race for Mayor

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      In Bridgeport, Conn., a judge found evidence of mishandled ballots in the Democratic primary for mayor and ordered a revote. But first, the city will hold a general election. After that? Stay tuned.Residents of Bridgeport, Conn., are preparing to cast their ballots in what may be the most confusing election in the country.A judge this week tossed out the results of the Democratic mayoral primary, citing surveillance video that appears to show significant voting irregularities. He ordered election officials to hold a new primary but had no authority to postpone the general election in the meantime. And so, on Tuesday, the general election will go on as planned.What happens after that is uncertain.“Obviously, we’re in very uncharted legal waters here,” said State Rep. Steven Stafstrom, a Democrat from Bridgeport and a co-chair of the legislature’s judiciary committee.The city finds itself in this mess after videos surfaced that showed suspicious activity at absentee ballot drop boxes. In clip after clip, two women are seen stuffing wads of paper into the boxes.“The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties,” Judge William Clark of the Superior Court in Bridgeport wrote in his ruling. He added, “The volume of ballots so mishandled is such that it calls the result of the primary election into serious doubt and leaves the court unable to determine the legitimate result.”Although voting fraud is rare across the country, Bridgeport, a city of about 150,000 people in the southwest part of the state, has been dogged by election improprieties in recent years.In June, the State Election Enforcement Commission, which is investigating the primary, said there was evidence of possible criminality in the 2019 mayoral primary. Last year, a judge ordered a new Democratic primary in a state representative race over allegations of absentee ballot fraud. In 2017, a judge ordered that a Democratic primary for City Council seats be rerun after a single absentee ballot, which was improperly handled, decided the race.The incumbent mayor, Joe Ganim, was first elected in 1991 and served until 2003. He was convicted on federal corruption-related charges, resigned and spent seven years in prison. In 2015, he mounted a comeback and has been mayor ever since.“We’ve been faced with a lot of disappointment, just over and over and over and over again,” said Joel Monge, 23, who runs Bridgeport Memes, a popular social media page.The current legal fight started after the September primary in which Mr. Ganim beat his opponent, John Gomes, by 251 votes. Mr. Gomes challenged the outcome in court, citing the video clips, which were taken from municipal surveillance cameras stationed near the city’s four absentee ballot drop boxes. A clip appeared on social media days after the primary, leading Mr. Gomes’s lawyers to file a lawsuit to get all 2,100 hours of tape on the drop boxes.Judge Clark ruled that just two women made or were directly involved in 15 incidents of drop boxes being stuffed with ballots. He wrote that the videos showed “credible evidence that the ballots were being ‘harvested’” — a process by which third-party individuals gather and submit completed absentee ballots in bulk, rather than individual voters submitting them for themselves, in violation of election laws.Both women, the judge wrote, were “partisans” for Mr. Ganim.Bill Bloss, Mr. Gomes’s lawyer, said his own review of the surveillance videos showed that no more than 420 people submitted ballots at Bridgeport drop boxes, but at least 1,253 ballots were submitted there.Mr. Ganim denied any involvement. “I was as shocked as everyone when the video came out,” he said.Both candidates said they were dismayed by the videos, and both men acknowledge that some of their supporters submitted multiple ballots.“On both sides, there is video of the irregularities,” Mr. Ganim said. He added: “That’s not acceptable. We all want everyone’s vote to count. We all want fair elections.”Mr. Gomes said his supporters had acted legally and had been submitting ballots for family members. The entire scandal is unfortunate, he said, adding, “Another black eye for Bridgeport.”But the judge’s order focuses on Mr. Ganim’s supporters, some of whom appear to have submitted many ballots, many times.“These instances do not appear to the court to be random,” Judge Clark wrote. “They appear to be conscious acts with partisan purpose.”As a result of the primary confusion, choosing the city’s next mayor has become exceedingly complicated.On Tuesday, the general election ballot will feature four candidates: Mr. Ganim; Mr. Gomes, now running as an Independent; David Herz, a Republican; and Lamond Daniels, an unaffiliated candidate.If Mr. Gomes wins the general election, he intends to withdraw his complaint about the Democratic primary and, if necessary, formally ask the judge to cancel his order for a new vote. In that scenario, presumably, Mr. Gomes would just become mayor.If Mr. Gomes does not win on Tuesday, but does win the second primary, he would advance to a second general election as the Democratic nominee. (Mr. Ganim would still be on the ballot, this time with the New Movement Party, according to Rowena White, his campaign spokeswoman.)Alternatively, if Mr. Ganim wins the general election on Tuesday, and then wins the second primary, there would be no second general election, Mr. Bloss said. Mr. Ganim would be re-elected.If one of the other two general election candidates wins on Tuesday, Bridgeport would hold a new Democratic primary and then a new general election.Officials have yet to decide when a second primary would occur. Mr. Ganim or the city could still appeal the judge’s order calling for the new vote. And both campaigns would need time to get back into gear, even for a do-over vote.For voters, the bizarre election spectacle has been dispiriting.“There’s just not the checks and balances,” said Anthony L. Bennett, the lead pastor of Mount Aery Baptist Church, adding, “It’s a great city, with great people, that has had a troubling history with unchecked and unaccountable governmental leadership.”Officials are trying to regain voters’ confidence. This week, Stephanie Thomas, the Connecticut secretary of state, appointed a temporary election monitor to oversee the mayoral election.“The public should know that everything that can be done is being done,” Ms. Thomas said.But critics noted that many absentee ballots have already been submitted for the general election — and questioned how one person could appropriately monitor the whole election.And election skeptics across the country, who have long pushed to restrict voting by absentee ballot, have seized upon Judge Clark’s ruling.They argue that Bridgeport — a historically Democratic city in a deeply Democratic state — is just one of the first places that absentee ballot fraud has been caught on camera.“That this happened here is beyond reasonable doubt,” Elon Musk wrote on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “The only question is how common it is.”That worries many Democrats in Connecticut, including Mr. Ganim, who noted that many of his constituents struggle to access voting places on Election Day and need the option of absentee ballots. They may have health concerns, he said, or cannot get enough time off work to vote.Many would-be voters in Bridgeport believe they have been let down by the government once again.“A lot of people in Bridgeport just don’t vote in general just because they always assume Joe Ganim is going to win,” said Mr. Monge, who runs Bridgeport Memes.But, he said, the videos had angered many of his friends, perhaps spurring them to participate: “I think a lot of people are going to go out and vote.” More

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      After Antifraud Crusade, a Trial Asks: Were Illegal Voters or Legal Ones the Target?

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      True the Vote challenged the legality of 250,000 Georgia voters, offered cash for fraud evidence and recruited poll watchers. A federal trial will determine why.As Republican candidates and their supporters increasingly focus on specious claims of rampant voter fraud, a federal trial starting in Georgia on Thursday will examine whether a key campaign to unmask illegal voters in 2020 actually aimed to intimidate legal ones.The outcome could have implications for conservative election integrity organizations that are widely expected to ramp up antifraud efforts during next year’s general election. The trial also could clarify the reach of an important section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the historic civil-rights law that the Supreme Court has steadily pared back over the last decade.That question is serious enough that the Department of Justice has filed a brief in the case and will defend the government’s view of the act’s scope at the trial. The campaign, mounted in December 2020 by a right-wing group called True the Vote, filed challenges with local election officials to the eligibility of some 250,000 registered Georgia voters. The group also offered bounties from a $1 million reward fund for evidence of “election malfeasance” and sought to recruit citizen monitors to patrol polls and ballot drop-off locations.The lawsuit, filed by the liberal political action committee Fair Fight Inc., alleges that finding fraud was a secondary concern. The actual purpose, the group argues, was to dissuade Democratic voters from turning out in tight runoffs that month for Georgia’s two seats in the U.S. Senate.That would violate a clause of the Voting Rights Act that broadly prohibits any “attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote.”Lawyers for True the Vote argue that the group’s efforts have nothing to do with intimidation and are an essential form of constitutionally protected free speech. Two Democratic candidates, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, won the Senate runoffs in early January 2021. The case has since plodded through the legal system for nearly three years before coming to trial.In a briefing last week, Cianti Stewart-Reid, the executive director of Fair Fight, cast the lawsuit as a move to head off what she called “a troubling plan to undermine the results of the 2024 election based on disinformation and bad faith attacks on voter eligibility.”“Georgia has become the testing ground for modern-day voter challenges and other antidemocratic tactics we believe are being deployed as part of a national effort led by followers of the Big Lie,” she said, referring to former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen.Catherine Engelbrecht, a founder and president of True the Vote, did not respond to requests for comment. But in court filings, lawyers for her and the organization said that efforts to search for illegal voters like those in Georgia are protected by the First Amendment.Threatening to punish people for casting ballots clearly violates the Voting Rights Act and has no free-speech protection, one of the lawyers for True the Vote, Cameron Powell, said in an interview. But he said that there was reason to worry that people might cast ballots in places where they did not live. He said the state had mailed seven million absentee ballots to Georgia residents, a measure to make voting easier during the Covid pandemic, although some people on voter rolls no longer lived where they had registered.(In fact, the state sent absentee ballot applications — not actual ballots — to 6.9 million registered voters in 2020. About 1.3 million absentee ballots were cast in the November election, and the state said that “all of them were verified for the voter’s identity and eligibility.”)Lawyers for Catherine Engelbrecht, a founder and president of True the Vote, said that efforts to root out fraud are protected by the First Amendment.Bridget Bennett/Reuters“Engaging in speech about elections and voter integrity, engaging in facilitating petitions by Georgia voters who are concerned about the residency status of other Georgia voters, is subject to the highest First Amendment protections,” he said. “And it’s a very high bar to show that this was done in bad faith.”The intimidation clause of the Voting Rights Act has been invoked before to punish both large-scale challenges to voters’ eligibility and the dispatch of monitors to watch polling places for “suspicious” activity. The national Republican Party was barred from participating in so-called ballot security efforts from 1982 to 2018 because of its involvement in both.The Georgia lawsuit presents a less clear-cut picture than those instances, said Justin Levitt, an election law scholar at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.“It’s not in the center of the strike zone, but it’s not a wild pitch, either,” he said. “The context in this is everything.”True the Vote, a Texas-based organization that arose from Ms. Engelbrecht’s Tea Party activities more than a decade ago, has a checkered financial and legal history. Ms. Engelbrecht’s forays into conspiracy theories and far-right politics have led even some former allies to distance themselves from her activities.The organization’s former lawyer, the conservative legal powerhouse James Bopp Jr., quit the Georgia case in March and sued her and True the Vote over what he claimed was nearly $1 million in unpaid bills.The group has regularly aired charges of fraudulent voting and helped produce the recent film “2,000 Mules” that made widely debunked charges of ballot-stuffing at voting drop boxes in Georgia and elsewhere. In Georgia, the group, saying that it had planned to challenge 364,000 voter registrations statewide, unveiled its election integrity initiative in mid-December 2020, as early voting in the Senate runoffs was getting underway. The voters who faced a legal challenge were among Georgians who had filed change-of-address notices with the Postal Service but had not registered to vote at a new address. Experts say that comparing address lists and registration rolls is not a reliable method of identifying potentially illegal voters. True the Vote and a handful of allies, including local Republican Party officials, eventually forwarded to county election boards some 250,000 potential challenges to registrations. A majority of boards refused to consider them, and those that did appeared to have found no evidence of illegality.But in some cases, the plaintiffs said, local officials summoned voters to bring proof of their eligibility to hearings, and others were told to cast provisional ballots that would be counted only if their eligibility were proven. Political operatives have long used a similar tactic, sometimes sending warning letters about eligibility directly to voters, in efforts to depress turnout.Fair Fight claims that the Georgia effort, combined with the public recruitment of poll watchers and the promise of a financial payoff for allegations of fraud, were largely designed to frighten voters, not to uncover wrongdoing. In court filings, True the Vote has called the allegations overblown and stressed that very few voters were ever notified that their legitimacy had been challenged.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      Jenna Ellis, Former Trump Lawyer, Pleads Guilty in Georgia Election Case

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      Three lawyers indicted with Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election results will now cooperate with prosecutors in the racketeering case.Jenna Ellis, a pro-Trump lawyer who amplified former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud as part of what she called a legal “elite strike force team,” pleaded guilty on Tuesday as part of a deal with prosecutors in Georgia.During a public hearing Tuesday morning in Atlanta, Ms. Ellis pleaded guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She is the fourth defendant to plead guilty in the Georgia case, which charged Mr. Trump and 18 others with conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Mr. Trump’s favor.Ms. Ellis agreed to be sentenced to five years of probation, pay $5,000 in restitution and perform 100 hours of community service. She has already written an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia, and she agreed to cooperate fully with prosecutors as the case progresses.Prosecutors struck plea deals last week with Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of the effort to deploy fake Trump electors in swing states, and Sidney Powell, one of the most outspoken members of Mr. Trump’s legal team in the aftermath of the 2020 election.Late last month, Scott Hall, a bail bondsman charged along with Ms. Powell with taking part in a breach of voting equipment and data at a rural Georgia county’s elections office, pleaded guilty in the case.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., obtained an indictment of the 19 defendants in August on racketeering and other charges, alleging that they took part in a criminal enterprise that conspired to interfere with the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. More

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      in Elections

      The Lawyers Now Turning on Trump

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      Clare Toeniskoetter and Marion Lozano and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicOver the past few days, two of the lawyers who tried to help former President Donald J. Trump stay in power after losing the 2020 election pleaded guilty in a Georgia racketeering case and have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against him.Richard Faussett, who writes about politics in the American South for The Times, explains why two of Mr. Trump’s former allies have now turned against him.On today’s episodeRichard Fausset, a correspondent for The New York Times covering the American South.The two lawyers pleading guilty in the Georgia case are Sidney Powell, left, and Kenneth Chesebro.Photos: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters; Pool photo by Alyssa PointerBackground readingSidney Powell, a member of the Trump legal team in 2020, pleaded guilty and will cooperate with prosecutors seeking to convict the former president in an election interference case in Georgia.Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump-aligned lawyer, also pleaded guilty in Georgia.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Richard Fausset More