In order to prove voter fraud, they’re committing it.
According to a Reuters investigation, a number of MAGA diehards dedicated to Donald Trump’s election lies have improperly accessed voting machines and voting records in the hope of discovering evidence that the 2020 election was rigged. (It wasn’t).
Reuters reports that Dallas Schroeder, an election official in Colorado’s Elbert County, created hard drives full of voter data and handed them over to a lawyer associated with conspiracy theorist and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Reuters writes:
The episode is among eight known attempts to gain unauthorized access to voting systems in five U.S. states since the 2020 election. All involved local Republican officeholders or party activists who have advanced Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods or conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, according to a Reuters examination of the incidents. Some of the breaches, including the one in Elbert County, were inspired in part by the false belief that state-ordered voting-system upgrades or maintenance would erase evidence of alleged fraud in the 2020 election. In fact, state election officials say, those processes have no impact on the voting systems’ ability to save data from past elections.
Multiple election experts told Reuters that the extent of the breaches is “unprecedented in modern U.S. elections.” Reuters uncovered examples in Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
“At least five of the cases are under investigation by local or federal law enforcement, with three arrests and one conviction, according to state and local officials. Four of the breaches forced election officials to decertify or replace voting equipment that was no longer secure,” the outlet reports.
Reuters adds that Lindell is a central figure in the scheme:
Some of the people and groups involved in the vigilante election-investigator movement are drawing financial support from Lindell, the My Pillow Inc chief executive and one of the most visible backers of Trump’s false fraud claims. Lindell said he hired four top members of one group, the U.S. Election Integrity Plan, or USEIP. The group got Lindell’s backing about three months after its co-founder advised Elbert County Clerk Schroeder in his effort to copy and leak voting data. In all, Lindell told Reuters he has spent about $30 million and hired up to 70 people, including lawyers and “cyber people,” partly in support of Cause of America, a right-wing network of election activists.
Lindell, who said he hasn’t been involved in any data breaches, said his quest aims to prove fraud in the 2020 vote and to reshape American elections by getting rid of electronic voting machines and returning to paper ballots. The Trump ally said his fraud claims will eventually be vindicated in spite of what he described as ridicule from the media.
“We’ve got to get rid of the machines!” Lindell said. “We need to melt them down and use them for prison bars and put everyone in prison that was involved with them.”
Reuters adds:
The rise of what election-security officials describe as “insider threats” – officeholders who leak confidential election data or sabotage voting machines – coincides with the national pressure campaign by Lindell-backed groups and other Trump allies who are traveling the country and lobbying local officials to replace electronic voting systems with hand-counted paper ballots. The push comes ahead of the November midterm elections that will decide control of the U.S. Congress, now narrowly held by Democrats, and the 2024 presidential election, in which Trump has indicated he could seek a second White House term.
We encourage you to read Reuters’s full investigation, which can be accessed here.
