John,

The New York Times just reported on one of the more insidious threats to our democracy to date: Cleta Mitchell and her Election Integrity Network.

As founder of the Election Integrity Network (EIN), Mitchell has been a central operative in taking Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election and advancing it to try to undermine the 2024 election. She has declared that noncitizens are voting in droves and that the EIN is the vehicle to “save our country from the radical left,” establishing chapters in 30 states. She has organized activists determined to purge voter rolls under false claims of voter fraud and she has helped to appoint them as election board members and poll watchers. The EIN has collected names of people they falsely allege are voting illegally, particularly those with “ethnic names,” for activists to use if and when they challenge the results of the November election.

Mitchell’s work will extend beyond the November election. The Election Integrity Network, in partnership with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), has already drafted legislation fueled by unfounded claims of noncitizen voting.

Free Speech For People was instrumental in Mitchell’s removal from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s National Advisory Board, where she had been appointed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. 

In two letters to the US Commission on Civil Rights, we argued, with our partner Generation Vote, that Mitchell’s repeated efforts to undermine voting rights and to promote the false claim of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, as well as her testimony before the congressional January 6th Committee in 2022 where she claimed that no one in the American public has a constitutional right to vote for President of the United States, were deeply incompatible with the purpose and mandate of both commissions.  

A special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia unanimously recommended that Mitchell be indicted for her role in conspiring with Trump and others to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Should Cleta Mitchell’s efforts to attack the right to vote and our elections continue, Free Speech For People will remain committed to challenging her and her network, along with other anti-democratic forces engaged in voter suppression and voter intimidation. Our democracy depends on it.

Onward,
Free Speech For People