For the past four years, wealthy Republicans and GOP donors have been hard at work supporting a number of organizations that aim to maintain election integrity and “Stop the Steal 2.0” should Donald Trump (once again) lose the election to his Democratic opponent.
According to the Wall Street Journal, donors have committed over $140 million to some 50 organizations dedicated to election integrity. Top tier donors include Hobby Lobby founder David Green, megadonor couple Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo, Publix Super Market heiress Julie Fancelli, and Patrick Byrne (former CEO of Overstock.com).
Strategies to both fortify election integrity and reverse the unwelcome changes to voting procedure implemented by Democrats during the pandemic include:
- The careful examination of voter registrations
- Lawsuits and extra paperwork designed to slow the counting process
- Litigation against pandemic-era expansions to mail-in voting and early voting
- The election of politicians who are willing to argue against official election results
- The installation of volunteers at polling facilities to observe proceedings and report suspicious behavior (the Harris campaign is also doing this).
Combined, the RNC and the Trump campaign have spent an estimated $28 million on the production of more than 100 lawsuits targeting the security (or lack thereof) of mail-in ballots, questioning the accuracy of voter rolls, demanding observer access to polling facilities, and generally opposing efforts by Democrats to change the way elections are held. These initiatives, explains David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, are designed not to fix existing problems, but “to set the stage for claiming the election was stolen post-election.”
Considering his failure to prove the widespread voter fraud he claimed cost him the election in 2020, Trump continues to make election integrity a key aspect of his 2024 campaign and has stated openly that he will only accept the outcome of this election if the process is “fair and legal.” Interestingly, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has become one of Trump’s most vocal allies on this topic.
And while some Republicans feel that the push to tighten election procedure is unnecessary, others are busy funding measures to ensure the system is as accurate as possible. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), for example, risked a government shutdown in September trying to pass a bill that would have required proof of citizenship for anyone registering to vote. In Georgia, local lawmakers attempting to pass a Trump-backed measure requiring a hand count of all paper ballots were stymied by lawsuits from Democrats who claimed the last-minute policy change would create unwelcome delays and provide more time for Trump to question election results.
A careful analysis of tax and campaign-finance filings conducted by the WSJ suggests the effort to eliminate or identify voter fraud has increased dramatically since 2020. Organizations involved in the so-called “Stop the Steal 2.0” are not required to identify participating donors.
Examples include the Servant Foundation, a Christian nonprofit based in Kansas that is partly funded by Mr. Green, which donated $6.4 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute and its “Election Integrity Network.” The Election Integrity Network, launched in 2021, provides training for poll watchers/poll workers and seeks to connect activist groups, elected officials, and volunteers who wish to ‘secure the legality of every American vote.’ Spearheading this effort is Cleta Mitchell, a GOP election lawyer who took part in the infamous phone conversation in which Trump pressured Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger to ‘find extra votes.’
Mitchell and others have (rightfully) accused Democrats of utilizing the pandemic to make changes to the traditional voting process (in some cases using charitable donations and private grants to do so) – changes that are said to have produced a noticeable uptick in Democratic voter turnout in key states. According to a lengthy report published after the 2022 midterm elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, Mitchell’s team of poll watchers identified significant failures with “technology, equipment, management, and leadership” that “robbed countless voters of their political voices.”
Mitchell’s work is supported by the EagleAI NETwork, a database developed by retired physician John Richards Jr. EagleAI accumulates data from state voter rolls, the National Change of Address database, county property records, and other sources in order to identify errors and/or fraud.
All told, Republicans seem more than prepared to fight back against election results with which they disagree. If nothing else, we are in for one hell of a ride next week.
“This is a warning to those who may decide to cheat or commit fraud during our elections,” wrote former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn on X. “The [government] may be watching us, but someone is watching you.”
Source:
The Secretive Billionaire Network Funding ‘Stop the Steal 2.0’
