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July 31, 2021
Hi Friend!
I hope this weekend update finds you enjoying a beautiful summer day with family and friends.
The news we're sharing this week can make for a pretty heavy read. And really, it's not even the news itself that's tough, because once you are informed you can begin to deal with it. I think what's toughest is to read all this stuff, to listen, to cuss and discuss, but rarely feel like progress is being made. Real, tangible, positive traction has been hard to find.
Then you look at a group like True the Vote. We are a small but capable lot. We have always drawn fire, but we've never left our post. No matter how fierce the battle, we've remained standing. And for the past many months, despite the swirl of headlines around all things elections, we have remained very quiet.
We are, in fact, making real traction across a number of fronts. And as soon as we can, we will begin the release of it all. Part of what we'll share will be new tools to help with cleaning up your local voter rolls and organizing and training for 2022. But another part has to do with the release of information we've been developing for a very long time.
Maybe it would be better to say nothing all all. Mercy knows we've all had our fill of hollow promises. I'm sharing this now only because ... even though I can't divulge details ... I can tell you what we have is real. We have a plan and we are executing against it, every day.
So when you read the rest of this, just know, all is not lost. Far from it. Think of these newsletters as necessary background to help you prepare for the journey ahead.
We're all in this together - and working together we really can true the vote.
Ever onward -
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MUST READS
No Retreat, No Surrender This week DOJ AG Merrick Garland issued a warning of criminal prosecution to any who undertake election-related efforts viewed as "voter intimidation". What's more, the DOJ issued two guidance documents telling states all kinds of things they're doing and planning to do regarding elections, including an admonition not assume that reverting to pre-pandemic voting procedures would be a safe harbor from potential legal challenges. We can all agree that laws should not be broken in the pursuit of election integrity. Let's hope that's what the DOJ meant to communicate. Further, let's hope that when the DOJ is presented with evidence of apparent criminal activity in elections, that they will enforce the law. Time will tell. Action: Read the DOJ's filing against the state of Georgia. Knowledge is power.
To Audit or Not to Audit? As True the Vote has cautioned for months, reliving the 2020 election via rolling nationwide audits is a dangerous addiction. This week, PA Sen Daniel Laughlin denounced the election audit in his state. It's a bittersweet read, but an important perspective to consider. The hard fact is that American elections are rife with unwieldy, outdated, and unregulated processes that enable all manner of evaporable grift. If the goal of an audit is to study and reform the process, that's worth it. If the goal is to replay the election, time would be better spent in preparation for 2022; in determining never again to sit on the sidelines. Action: Commit to working in support of your local elections. Volunteer with True the Vote to be part of upcoming projects. We are building training and tools to make us all stronger. The only way way to restore election integrity is to work together, stay focused, and never forget what is at stake.
Citizen Fluid This op-ed from the New York Times, rallying for non-citizen voting. In case it's behind a paywall, here's a summary from The Blaze: According to the Times, the essay is "part of a series exploring bold ideas to revitalize and renew the American experiment." Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, a New York-based progressive journalist and former senior editor of the Nation, claimed that "it's time for Democrats to radically expand the electorate." This isn't a new idea, mind you. The push for a borderless America has been in play for years - and in some local jurisdictions around the country, noncitizen voting is already allowed. Action: Call your local election office and ask for information on the legality of noncitizen voting in your local elections. It's a simple but helpful step in educating yourself about your local process. What you learn may surprise you.
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Eyes On | Information Operations and the Fight for Election Integrity
For more than twenty years, the United States military and militaries of countries around the world have used “Information Operations” or IO’s as a way to “capture the hearts and minds” of the adversary and influence the population of a target to win the war. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Ukraine, we do it and do it well.
The purpose of IO’s is not to provide a perspective, opinion, or layout of a policy. It is defined as the ability to make audiences “think and act” in a manner favorable to the mission objectives. To “take action.” This is done by applying perception management techniques that target the audience's emotions, motives, and reasoning.
The same type of IO is being run here, in the United States – except it’s a "non-partisan" IO designed to protect the establishment, and to smash insurgents and those who seek to expose the corruption and criminal activity such as vote trafficking.
What we are witnessing today, with the failure of federal judges to even allow for the merits of legal challenges alleging voter fraud to be heard (which to be honest, we have sometimes scratched our heads at as well) or the suppression of evidence concerning election integrity is unconscionable and anti-American. The blacklisting of the Hunter Biden story and the de-platforming of then President Donald Trump are the result of a seismic IO that has been applied politically to the country's population.
Who’s responsible? It's hard to say definitively but we get closer to exposing them every day.
It's important to remember - the techniques used in an IO are not meant to foster debate. They are built to overwhelm and change the target’s psyche. Using these techniques, information sources can be manipulated and those that write, speak, or think counter to the objective are relegated as propaganda, ill-informed, or irrelevant. And if they are too powerful, they are targeted and “taken out.”
Sound familiar? For years now, True the Vote and other leaders who have worked to restore America’s confidence in our electoral system and urge the public to act, have been targeted and smeared in a very sophisticated, strategic, and coordinated effort. (As part of the True the Vote family, you should feel good and wear the smears as a badge of honor! You and the thousands of volunteers who define True the Vote have been effective and the attacks are to be expected). The smears and attacks are part of a long-term IO designed to silence and delegitimize effective groups that our opponents dismiss.
Early on, one of True the Vote’s loudest critics and attack dogs was Color of Change co-founder, Van Jones, who now has his own show on CNN. Last week, after he landed his rocket, America's wealthiest man, Jeff Bezos, awarded Jones $100M for “courage and civility.” Less than a week later, billionaire George Soros made a $1M donation to Color of Change, who’s primary campaign is to “defund the police.”
To be fair, recently, Jones has done good work to unite Republicans and Democrats in support of criminal justice reform. But early on as founder of Color of Change, Jones was one of the most divisive forces around when it came to election integrity, attacking True the Vote and other effective leading organizations. And as an African American leader, he played a key role in the Information Operation by smearing the organization to associate the desire for election integrity as somehow being racist.
To optimized an IO, it must be integrated into all forms of society - government, media, Big Tech, Hollywood, our educational platforms, and the judiciary.
Just think about this for a moment. When you see FOX News, top Congressional leadership in the Republican party, the FBI, CIA, and others in the intelligence community, and Big Tech all colluding to vilify and dismiss all election integrity criticism or inquiries, you can be sure that an Information Operation has been effective. It’s the same thing as the hysterical push for vaccinations around COVID-19 and the blacklisting of early treatment and medications like Ivermectin and monoclonal antibodies (that Trump took to recover).
One more example? Hunter Biden’s laptop. Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who broke the mass government domestic spying story when Edward Snowden blew the whistle, resigned from the media outlet he co-founded, the Intercept, because his editors wouldn’t even let him report on Hunter Biden!
When Trayvon Martin was shot a few years ago which gave rise to Black Lives Matter, the movement and its actions were treated as straight up news. But today, you can rarely find one negative story concerning the BLM movement despite the destruction to physical property and defacing of monuments and statues – some of those statues being actual Civil Rights champions!
Across the board, because of the power of this IO, journalists are no longer journalists and have abandoned all objectivity. They are activists and tools of the establishment. Judges are too afraid to challenge anything that will go against the grain of the establishment narrative. No one can utter anything challenging that narrative on social media without getting de-platformed, and the media blacklists everything from WikiLeaks to Early Treatment for COVID and dismisses those fighting for election integrity as baseless or conspiracy theory oriented.
Four our part at True the Vote, we have a few surprises in store for you that we are positioning to blow the lid off the whole operation. From FOIAs, to investigations, to a soon-to-be-announced data set, the fireworks are about to launch.
One thing is clear, at the end of the day, if we are going to sustain change and truly have election integrity, we need you and everyone to raise your voices and become part of the counter-op. After all, we are up against an Information Operation designed to make a population “think and act” a certain way. Let’s push back with the truth. Push back and do not stop.
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