Tuesday, Aug. 20

There are less than 100 days until the election, which means the right-wing ecosystem is kicking into overdrive to try and disenfranchise as many voters as it can. My latest feature looks at the relatively nascent cottage industry of grassroots right-wing groups using incomplete data to try and purge voters in their communities.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats want the DOJ to ramp up action to combat the threats and harassment of election officials, Arizona and Michigan’s secretaries of state are leading the fight against generative AI disinformation in elections and I dig into how the Trump-linked America First Policy Institute is trying to disenfranchise voters.

Welcome to the second edition of Eye On The Right, a newsletter that explores the vast ecosystem of right-wing groups and figures attacking voting rights and democracy. I’ll be sending this out every other week, now, so if you’d like to opt out, you can do so here.

As always, thanks for reading.

—Matt Cohen, Senior Staff Writer

Meet the Right-Wing Groups Trying to Purge Voters in Your Community

The Pigpen Project in Nevada. North of 29 in Wisconsin. Soles to the Rolls in Michigan. You might have heard of one of these groups. If you live in one of those states, you may have even seen the name pop up in a community forum or Facebook group. These are just a sampling of the many different grassroots right-wing groups to pop up in the last few years, with the explicit goal of trying to purge millions of registered voters across the country.

These groups make up what’s essentially a new cottage industry in the election denial movement. They’re run by small armies of volunteer activists who style themselves as “election investigators,” without any real background or training to assess voter registration data. And they’re using faulty, incomplete data culled from software programs developed and championed by national right-wing groups like Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network and True the Vote.

My latest feature looks at a handful of these local voter purge groups and how they’re working to purge tens of thousands of voters in their communities, spreading misinformation about voter registration and creating headaches for state and local officials. “Election officials already have processes in place to make sure their voter roll lists are accurate,” Lizzie Ulmer, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Communications at the States United Democracy Center, told me about the problem with these groups. “These anti-democracy groups are abusing the system and wasting time and resources of local officials—-all based on unreliable data and election lies.”

What the Threat to Election Officials Actually Looks Like

You’ve seen the headlines. You’ve probably read the statistics. Election officials and workers are facing a sharp rise of threats and harassment as we enter the thick of election season. There’s no shortage of media coverage pointing out this alarming trend — and what’s being done about it — but I noticed there isn’t a lot of coverage of what threats and harassment actually look like.

It’s not unusual for election officials and workers in some of the country’s most contentious swing states to get harassing messages over voicemail and social media platforms, often threatening them with violence and worse. But it’s not always just that. Recently, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) were victims of swatting incidents — the practice of calling a 911 call on a targeted person with a false claim to elicit a major police response, like sending in a SWAT team. The Maine swatting incident happened late last year, the day after Bellows removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s ballot citing the Constitution’s insurrection clause. Benson’s Michigan home was swatted twice in two days earlier this month.

“Swatting is a form of political violence that is horrific, dangerous and intended to terrify its victims,” Benson wrote on X after the incidents. “These threats never have and never will deter me from my job: ensuring Michigan citizens can have confidence in their secure, fair, accurate elections.”

I’ve been covering the rise of right-wing extremism for a while now and there’s no doubt that political violence has increased since Trump first ran for president in 2016. But one point many extremism researchers and experts I’ve spoken to emphasize: elections in the U.S. are still very safe and people shouldn’t feel intimidated or scared for their safety when voting.

Still, the fact is the climate for political violence has shifted — especially in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and that means authorities need to continue to evolve in their handling of such a climate. Recently Senate Democrats sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) urging the agency to take better action to protect election officials and workers from threats of violence and harassment.

With less than 100 days to the election — one that’s already cemented its place as one of the most important and contentious in U.S. history — the DOJ will need to divert all of its resources to ensuring everyone involved in administering a free and fair election is protected.

Assessing the Threat of AI in Elections

Speaking of evolving election threats, I recently spoke with Benson, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) and Debbie Cox Bultan, the CEO of the NewDEAL Forum about the growing threat of generative AI in elections.

You might have heard about an incident in New Hampshire earlier this year in which thousands of voters received a robocall that simulated the voice of President Joe Biden, urging them not to vote in the state’s primary election. That’s just one example of the myriad ways that AI has evolved to more effectively spread disinformation — and states like Arizona and Michigan are leading the effort to fight the growing threat.

Both Fontes and Benson told me all about the training and exercises their offices regularly lead to adequately prepare election officials and workers to not only spot malicious AI attacks but properly address them. “We’re focused on making sure that our adversaries can’t use this to turbocharge misinformation that we anticipate will already be a big part of our election cycle,” Benson told me. “And we’re proactively trying to prepare citizens to not be fooled by misinformation that is turbocharged through AI, knowing how to spot deepfakes and the like.”

You can watch my full interview with Benson, Fontes and Bultan below:

America First Policy Institute: The Trump-Linked Think Tank Waging a Legal War on Elections

Over the past several months I’ve been digging into the various right-wing groups using the courts to try to undermine democracy and roll back voting rights. It’s important work because it not only exposes who these groups are — the people behind them and their various connections to the wider right-wing ecosystem — but how, exactly, they manipulate the court system to threaten democracy and spread disinformation about elections.

My latest exposé in this series looks at America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a conservative legal think tank founded in 2021 by a handful of former Trump administration officials. AFPI’s roster is really a who’s who of Trump allies: former Small Business Administration head Linda McMahon, former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, and former White House Spiritual Advisor Paula White-Cain.

While the group’s primary function in its three years of existence has mainly been to challenge Biden’s policies in the courts, the group is engaged in a legal assault on voting rights through a handful of lawsuits in key states. Namely, leading a multistate legal effort to overturn a pro-voting Biden executive order that expands voting access, two lawsuits in Arizona and representing the rogue Georgia elections board member who refused to certify her county’s primary election results.