Democrats Want Their Private Security Looking Over GOP Poll Watchers’ Shoulders
BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | AUGUST 18, 2023
Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/18/democrats-want-their-private-security-looking-over-gop-poll-watchers-shoulders/
SHAWN FLEETWOOD
VISIT ON TWITTER@SHAWNFLEETWOOD
A Democrat group is launching a multi-million-dollar initiative to provide election offices with private security ahead of the 2024 elections and police so-called “disinformation,” according to a new report.
On Tuesday, The New York Times revealed the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) is gearing up to launch Value the Vote, a new nonprofit organization purportedly designed to pay “for private security for election officials of both parties, register[ing] new voters,” and fighting what the group claims to be “disinformation.” The $10 million initiative is reportedly aiming its “initial[]” focus at five key battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
The venture has already raised $2.5 million, according to DASS Executive Director Travis Brimm.
As indicated by The Times, the founding of Value the Vote is based on the debunked lie that there is a growing, widespread problem of Republicans threatening election workers across the country. Of course, the lack of evidence to support such an assertion hasn’t stopped legacy media from regurgitating their Democrat allies’ phony narratives in order to paint Republican voters as extremists and dissuade conservatives from partaking in legitimate forms of electoral oversight.
In their remarks to The Times, Brimm and DASS officials claimed Value the Vote “will provide equal funding opportunities to both Democratic and Republican election officials, but how the distribution will work in practice is unclear.” Brimm also indicated “election officials could request grants to pay for private security themselves and that Values the Vote would also proactively offer private security.”
According to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the group’s issuance of private grants to election offices could very well be unlawful. “Most states make it illegal for anyone to be stationed in a polling place except for election officials and designated poll watchers, and that ban would include ‘private’ security guards,” von Spakovsky told The Federalist.
Von Spakovsky further contended the stationing of private security guards at election offices and polling sites could constitute a violation of section 11(b) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which states that no one “shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce,” any individual who is “voting or attempting to vote” or “urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote.”
“The presence of such private law enforcement could scare individuals attempting to vote and deter them from asking election officials questions. This would particularly be the case if those guards were armed,” von Spakovsky said.
Value the Vote’s issuance of grants and services to election offices may also conflict with existing statutes in 25 states prohibiting or restricting election officials’ use of private money to conduct elections. These laws, which election integrity advocates often refer to as “Zuckbucks” bans, were passed in response to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s actions in the 2020 election.
During that contest, Zuckerberg gave hundreds of millions of dollars to nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which in turn poured these “Zuckbucks” into local election offices in battleground states around the country to change how elections were administered. The funds were ultimately used to expand unsupervised election protocols like mail-in voting and using ballot drop boxes. To make matters worse, these grants were heavily skewed toward Democrat-majority counties, essentially making it a massive, privately funded Democrat get-out-the-vote operation.
As detailed by Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway in her national bestseller, “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections,” Zuckerberg “didn’t just help Democrats by censoring their political opponents,” his financing of “liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations” was “the means by which [Democrat] activists achieved their ‘revolution’ and changed the course of the 2020 election.”
“It was a genius plan,” Hemingway wrote. “And because no one ever imagined that a coordinated operation could pull off the privatization of the election system, laws were not built to combat it.”
In addition to financing private security for election offices, Value the Vote is also purportedly planning to confront so-called “election misinformation” through the use of “paid digital advertising,” as well as engage in voter registration efforts that favor Democrats. While federal law prohibits nonprofits from engaging in partisan voter registration, The Times reported that Value the Vote’s registration plans “align with typical Democratic efforts, focusing heavily on Black and Latino communities.”
As The Federalist previously reported, left-wing nonprofits have regularly abused their nonprofit status by aiming their registration efforts at demographics favorable to Democrats.
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