A strange constellation has emerged through public records requests of coordination between progressive funders, federal authorities, corporations, state election officials, and leftist organizations.
Freedom of information requests have uncovered oddball and opaque relationships between some state election officials, federal officials, corporations, progressive activists, and those trying to influence the conduct of those same election officials. These relationships extend to junkets that include baseball games, travel, and even data exchanges between state officials and outside progressive groups.
The story begins with a series of freedom of information act requests aimed at a number of states to see if any election officials are tempted to apply for now-illegal money from the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life. Such grants and the wild expenditures of these funds altered the course of the 2020 election. (Read The Real Kraken, What Really Happened to Donald Trump in the 2020 Election at PJ Media.)
The FOIAs were submitted by the Public Interest Legal Foundation—with which I am associated—and were aimed broadly at election officials across the United States.
While no election official in a state that now prohibits private funding of elections has applied for new funding, something stranger, and more dangerous has emerged from the public information requests.
In one email, we find that the Democracy Fund—a hyper-funded progressive money source—is organizing state officials and third parties to discuss election administration.
Participants in this Democracy Fund effort include:
Commissioner Ben Hovland on the United States Election Assistance Commission
United States Election Assistance Commission employee Tina Barton
Ebony West, a Democracy Fund employee tasked with “Voter-Centric Election Adminstration [sic], which focuses on equipping local election officials with the data, tools, and connections needed to ensure voters’ voices are heard.”
John Keller, a criminal prosecutor at the United States Department of Justice Public Integrity Section who has gone after Republicans like Maricopa County Sherriff Joe Arpaio
Matt Masterson, a former staffer for John Boehner and now “Director of Information Integrity” at Microsoft and leading their “Democracy Forward” team
Katherine Reisner a militant progressive working for the vote-fraud denier organization States United Democracy Center.
Craig Latimer, the Hillsborough Florida Supervisor of Elections who told us that his office refuses to make any election crimes referrals to county prosecutors
Kammi Foote, sometime wilderness photographer and United States Election Assistance Commission employee
Andrea Abbate of the ZuckBucks Mother Ship, the Center for Technology and Civic Life
Lindsay Capodilupo, the “Election Crimes Coordinator” at the FBI
Tasmin Swanson formerly of the GOTV Baltimore Votes and Peace Corp volunteer in China, but now with the Soros-funded Center for Civic Design, a progressive group dedicated to infiltrating election offices with graphic design “help.”
Federal Department of Homeland Security official David Kuennen
Liz Howard, from another vote-fraud denier outfit, the progressive Brennan Center.
No conservative or right-of-center groups are invited.
This progressive courting of election officials evidenced in this email isn’t a one-off. I’ll have other products of our FOIA sweep that show a wide-ranging progressive push to establish working relationships between law enforcement, progressive philanthropy, election officials, corporations, progressive activists, and, ultimately, the people who run our elections.
Since Trump’s 2016 victory, this fluid consortium has built structures that match powerful funding—with fringe ideological activists, with government offices—in an effort to create a narrative that nothing was ever wrong with American elections. These structures also reorient the administration of elections in ways that benefit progressives, such as wide use of automatic mail voting.
Extraordinary efforts were made in 2020 to claim mail voting was problem-free despite the evidence and despite elections in New Jersey being overturned because of mail ballot fraud.
Note the invitations were sent to criminal prosecutors at both the FBI and Department of Justice.
If there was no voter fraud, as Brennan Center hacks claim, then why were the prosecutors invited to the party?
The Democracy Fund isn’t the only group creating a synergy with the leftists, government agencies, and state and local election officials, and our FOIA sweep is capturing a trove of documents showing more angles of progressive influence over election administration.
David Becker’s Center for Election Innovation & Research has emerged as the sidekick to the Electronic Research and Information Center (ERIC), a consortium of state election officials who use data exchanges with ERIC to clean voter rolls and register the unregistered to vote. (Read Care About Election Integrity, Let Me Introduce You to ERIC).
David Becker has emerged as the party planner for the strange mix of federal prosecutors, progressive activists, election officials, and ex-pats from the federal swamp who now work for corporate America.
Becker, the former California Bear drum major—including when the Cal band played Dixie—also matches progressive dollars, state and local election officials, and federal authorities at the United States Election Assistance Commission who have controlled the distribution of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
These federal dollars move through the EAC and end up in states. How they are used, and which officials and vendors get them, is a top priority for the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
Becker, an unabashed progressive, is also skilled at organizing junkets for state election officials.
One such confab occurred in May of 2019 in Denver, according to documents obtained in the Public Interest Legal Foundation’s FOIA.
State election officials from Nevada, Arizona, Minnesota, Georgia, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Michigan, Rhode Island, Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania met for the CEIR Voter Registration Data Working group.
They also watched the Colorado Rockies beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 11-10. Becker played concierge for all the fun according to the emails obtained through public records requests:
“May 30 Baseball Game: For those attending the ballgame (there are 22 of us!) we’ll be meeting in the lobby of the Hotel Born to walk over to the ballpark…. If you cannot make it by 12:15 let me know and I’ll arrange to leave your ticket at will call. Your rooms will likely not be ready by that time, but you should be able to store your luggage.”
After the game? Becker had that covered:
“I’m guessing there will be a group of us going out. If you are not coming to the game and want to join us, please text me and we’ll make sure to include you.”
The next day, May 31, Becker’s state election official confab shifted to work:
“7:30 Breakfast. 8:00 am meeting begins, please be on time because we plan to end no later than 4pm. . . . There will also be two breaks, and as usual, the food will be excellent.”
The emails do not reveal what the previous “as usual” other dining experiences were. Nor do they reveal who paid for the lodging at the Hotel Born, with rates that routinely top $450 a night.
The emails do, however, reveal the agenda for the day:
“For those of you familiar with the meetings I’ve facilitated for ERIC, this will be similar. The general topic is centered around the structure of states’ voter registration databases, and the voter data within. We will spend most of the time at this meeting (which I expect will be the first of several) discussing the following: Voter Registration Databases, Structure, Interconnectivity With Other Databases Such as DMV…. Compatibility With Eric, Batch vs Real Time, Security and Privacy of Data.”
Again, no conservative election administration groups or conservatives were invited to the Colorado confab.
Some of the participants at the Colorado confab were from states that opposed President Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (on which I served) and refused to provide that commission information about the same database details they happily shared with David Becker’s progressive organization.
All of this is just a first taste at understanding the behind-the-curtain relationships developing between progressive deep pockets, leftist activists, vote fraud deniers, federal officials with prosecutorial power, and state and local election officials.
This effort started after the 2016 election, and notably focused on many of the bluish swing states that Donald Trump won in 2016 but lost in 2020. Whether that was the plan or just a side benefit of the Denver confab and Democracy Fund plans remains to be seen.
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