In the YouTube video, Reagan George stands in front a slide entitled “Strategy for Winning Elections,” giving a presentation to the conservative Shenandoah Area Working Group.
“The Virginia Voters Alliance is a leg of a three-legged stool,” he explained, gesturing to the image of a labeled stool behind him. The top was labeled “Constitutionally Conservative Candidates. He explained that the two other legs are the precinct organizations and grassroots Tea Party groups. “We want to try to get away from three or four conservatives running against one RINO.” (That stands for Republican-In-Name-Only for those who haven’t been hanging around the Tea Party chatrooms.) He explained his group, the Virginia Voter Alliance, would have a targeted poll watching program in “problem precincts” and that they would involve the Republican Lawyers Association.
George, who declined to be interviewed for this story, focused heavily on getting Republicans elected. “Poll watcher training is done by the party in effect,” he said. “You’re there representing the Republican Party as a poll watcher.” He also spent much the 45 minute presentation telling the audience that voter fraud was a widespread problem, benefitting cheating liberals. “The Republican Party pretty much abandoned precinct organization and poll watching back in the 90s,” he told the Shenandoah Area Working Group. “One of the things we’ve talked about is how to get back into that mode.”
The Virginia Voter Alliance is one of a number of groups focused on voter fraud, and like many, it is affiliated with the national organization True the Vote. True the Vote, born out of the tea party King Street Patriots, gained national prominence in 2010 when it alleged there was massive voter fraud in Houston’s Harris County. They dispatched poll workers to early voting sites across Houston, but several reports showed a disproportionate emphasis on poor and minority polling places. Things quickly got tense, and there were numerous complaints that the poll watchers, trained by True the Vote but appointed by the Republican Party, intimidated voters. But the group, obviously well-funded, took on an increasingly prominent role and, as Colorlines recently reported, has expanded around the country. In addition to poll watching, the group now emphasizes investigating voter rolls for dead or illegitimate voters. The group claims to have trainees around the country, as well as a network of affiliated groups, all working through the TTV voter registration database and getting trained to watch the polls. “True the Vote has developed an exportable program of training, technology and support to equip citizens with the tools they need to get involved in election processes; from working at the polls to advocating for common-sense election code improvements,” reads one entry on the group’s site.
But while many descriptions of the effort have emphasized its military precision and “army” of volunteers, it’s evident these affiliated groups vary tremendously, both in terms of goals and in terms of power. I could find only a dozen that identified as “empowered by True the Vote,” the seemingly official term. But besides the gray and orange stamp and a general concern about voter fraud, there was little else to string them together.
While it’s hard to gather any complete data about these groups’ outreach or budgets, it’s abundantly clear that they run the gamut from the well-funded to the shoe-string. Almost all claim to be grassroots groups; of course True the Vote also makes that claim despite a budget big enough for trips to the Conservative Political Action Conference, well-produced videos and a complex database portal equipped for thousands to use.
There are multi-issue groups like Minnesota Majority, which works with True the Vote but also promotes a variety of social conservative policies or Champion the Vote which focuses on registering Christian voters and has dozens of partners. The websites reveal huge gaps: The Virginia Voter Alliance has a website that looks out of the early Geocities days, while, Arizona Verify the Vote has an active, professional-looking site, complete with its own logo.
The differences are hardly limited to the virtual world. Some groups take their cue from True the Vote and register as 501(c)3s, a non-profit tax status that precludes partisan or overtly political work. That can be a problem; True the Vote faces pending complaints in Texas for doing political work under the auspices of a non-partisan organization.
On the other hand, Arizona Verify the Vote, which is also a (c)3, seems to take pains to note their non-partisan status and not overstate claims. “Statistically we find 80 percent of the people who are challengers find the day to be uneventful, with nothing significant to report,” explains Jennifer Wright, one of the group’s leaders in a well-produced web video that resembles some sort of infomercial.
Meanwhile many of the groups, like Election Integrity Maryland or Ohio Voter Integrity, register as 501(c)4s, which allows them to lobby and participate in campaigns. That doesn’t necessarily mean they have much money. In an email, Catharine Trauernicht, a leader at Election Integrity Maryland, described the group as “a small grassroots endeavor.” While the group charges $15 to cover costs of poll watching training courses, she said there was “no budget to speak of.”
Then there are groups like the Voter Integrity Project in North Carolina, which counts itself as “inspired” by True the Vote, but has no official affiliation. “What we’re doing is outside what they want states to do,” said the group’s leader Jay Delancy. “They have a set model of what they want people to do [and] we’ve just gone hog wild doing research looking at any public database we can get our hands on.”
True the Vote offers the groups use of its database, but, according to the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, it requires all researchers to be vetted through the national organization. According to Ohio VIP, those who sign up without being referring through a state level group may wait a long time before getting security clearance. Once cleared, volunteers can log onto an account for database training and later to review voter rolls. However all flagged entries go through a local research leader. Many state-level groups provide state-specific instruction as well.Other affiliated groups are barely more than a few ladies giving a power point presentation. Nevada Clean Up the Vote doesn’t have a working email address and the Missouri Precinct Project mainly tells people where they can go for different trainings. “We don’t take any money, we don’t endorse anything,” explained Rita Keough, one of the Missouri Precinct Project, when I asked her if the organization was a (c)3 or a (c)4. “We’re not anything. We’re just registered with our name. That’s it.”
But not all states are working through True the Vote. Keough says the group only just got the data in for Missouri and no one has done the training yet. And in Maryland, Trauernicht says her group is doing its own research using publicly available records. It’s hard to judge how many volunteers are going through voter rolls, though some of the state groups proudly note they’ve flagged hundreds of names.
Flagging names is one thing-any such complaints must be investigated and verified by state or local election boards. More concerning is True the Vote’s goals for poll watchers. The group has announced a goal one million poll watchers in the 2012 election, to watch proceedings and make sure nothing’s amiss. It sounds inoffensive enough, but poll watching can easily get complicated, particularly when white poll watchers go into minority polling places or when the election officials aren’t prepared to take precautions against voter intimidation. In 2010, I went to Acres Homes, one of the majority black polling locations where True the Vote sent poll watchers. While there’s no reason to think the two volunteers there weren’t well-intentioned, the polling place was crowded and they peered over a balcony above the floor and wondered amidst the cramped machines. For a community that remembers disenfranchisement, it was easy to see how some voters could feel threatened. Just hearing about a million such volunteers might leave some voters, particularly those of color, nervous about heading to the polls.
However, there’s little to indicate the numbers will be that big. Keough told me the Missouri Precinct Project has 100 volunteers, while Trauernicht said Election Integrity Maryland has 90. While Facebook and social media have been significant tools in Tea Party organizing, only two groups have more than 1,000 Facebook “likes,” and one of those, Verify the Recall, focused largely on an election months ago. Of the other groups, few had over 100. The Virginia Voter Alliance currently has 12.
Furthermore, not all groups are concerned with poll watching. At the Missouri Precinct Project, Keough said she was encouraging people to be trained as election workers, a state training, and that she hoped for one Democrat and one Republican at each precinct.
There are of course, other groups that may jump in on the poll watching. Poll watchers are generally appointed by parties or candidates and many Tea Party groups are interested in the effort. But with so many different groups doing different things, the coordinated True the Vote poll watching army may not be as big a threat as some fear. Meanwhile the discussions on voter roll accuracy may become an increasingly relevant discussion.
This is part one of a three part series on True the Vote. The next piece will focus on the group’s concern with voter roll maintenance and purges.
