I talked to people in NH about what it felt like to find people on your doorstep, asking about the 2020 election and how they voted a year later.
“I was enraged. I am to this day offended at the whole notion that there was any widescale election fraud.” https://t.co/fWVzgFXZgr— Sarah Mimms (@mimms) December 14, 2021
I’m surprised that there haven’t been news stories about these mostly well-meaning, entirely deluded ‘citizen investigators’ being greeted with shotguns, frankly. From Sarah Mimms at Buzzfeed, “The Pro-Trump Conspiracy Internet Is Moving From Facebook To Your Doorstep”:
The man at the door said he was just there to verify some publicly available information.
In the home security video, he seems nervous and out of breath as he waits at the doorway, glancing frequently at his phone. Strangers don’t knock on doors much in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, a small ski town. For a decade, it had just 250 year-round residents, until the pandemic hit and a bunch of Massachusetts residents decided to cross state lines and turn their rural vacation spot into a home. But the man at the door wasn’t one of them. He said his name was Dean and he was with the New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group…
Around town that Saturday in early October, other people were knocking on doors — specific ones, the rare ones where people actually live year-round — asking about the 2020 election. They had information on the residents, their names, whether they voted and if they did so in-person or absentee. In response, two Waterville Valley residents called the cops, according to a police report.
Across the country, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory internet is manifesting itself into knocks at the door. Individual election deniers and grassroots groups are canvassing for election fraud in states lost or even won by former president Donald Trump in 2020, including New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, and Nebraska. Despite 60-plus court losses and countless official audits and recounts confirming the 2020 election results, many of Trump’s supporters are still so convinced of his lies that they’ve turned to this kind of vigilantism….
The New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group claims to be nonpartisan. Its founder, Marylyn Todd, a 37-year-old from Nashua, told BuzzFeed News in an interview that she is registered as an independent. Todd claimed in a Facebook message that “many” of their canvassers voted for President Joe Biden, but would not name them or connect them with BuzzFeed News. Todd also said that she has expanded canvassing across the state, focusing on towns where the group believes there is the most potential fraud, but she declined to name the towns they’ve visited. The group, she said, “is just trying to get to the bottom of the truth, nothing more, nothing less.”
Members of the group credit Dean, whose last name Todd declined to provide, with creating the app they use to track down voters. (Dean did not respond to questions messaged to his Telegram account nor to questions Todd said she shared with him via email.) The app is designed with a free site that Democrats have used in the past to canvass voters before an election. The app shows canvassers where to find nearby voters, as well as their addresses, whether they voted in 2020, if they voted in person or absentee, and whether they registered to vote same-day. The app asks canvassers to confirm that information and, if they find any discrepancies, to get voters to sign an affidavit and mail it to a P.O. box.
Todd said they are sharing those affidavits with members of the state legislature, “many” of whom are interested in their findings, but declined to provide names. She described affidavits the group collected from two households alleging election misconduct, but declined to share any names or details that could be fact-checked, citing the affiants’ privacy. The Trump campaign used affidavits as part of its failed legal strategy to challenge the 2020 election and held up the sworn statements to try to add some legitimacy to its bogus fraud claims, but, as the Washington Post noted at the time, many of those affidavits were never filed in court and the ones that were filed were often thrown out…
… Todd is new to all of this. She said she didn’t even know what a state representative was before February and that she “barely voted” before this year, but she now leads a group that has acquired the voting machine tapes and voter information for nearly every town in the state by filing a bunch of public information requests and going in-person to get their data. Todd is clearly passionate and believes her work as an auditor for an accounting firm gave her the experience to do her own audit of New Hampshire’s election. She took a leave of absence from that job in February to focus on what she calls their citizens audit. “Did I know that I was still going to be here almost a year later on a leave of absence?” she said, laughing. “No. But, you know, auditing a whole state isn’t as easy as I originally thought it was.”…
Todd told BuzzFeed News she was just crossing T’s on a new app where anyone can check 2020 voting data for themselves and their neighbors, making sure that it is identical to the public information they got from their right-to-know requests. “You know, my life has already been affected so much from this that I just don’t want it affected any more than it already is,” she said.
She said she has not enjoyed her first foray into politics, repeatedly calling it “dirty” and “gross.” But almost a year after she started all of this, Todd plans to keep going. “It’s important for me to keep America, America. And when I saw this much opportunity [for fraud], it made me nervous for the future generations,” she said.
If politics were less dirty, “if people were ethical,” she said, “I’d probably run for something.”
During the original Gilded Age, back in the days of William McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt, high-minded middle-class voters were enticed to become Goo-Goos, Good Government ‘reformers’ who strove to cleanse the ‘corrupt’ urban political enclaves where filthy immigrants in their teaming tenements were accused of trading their votes for city jobs — or for lesser gifts, like coal in the bitter winters or food for families of the unemployed. The ‘untrustworthy’ voters in those days spoke Italian / Gaelic / Polish, not Spanish / Creole / Hindi, but the impulse to ‘keep America, America’ from their depredations remains unchanged.
In theory, at least, those Goo-Goos were considered ‘progressives’, soft-handed liberals without the imagination or the experience to understand why a corrupt big-city ‘machine’ might look pretty good to new voters forever on the edge of eviction or starvation. In practice, the ‘reformers’ were shock troops for the small-town oligarchs whose private little baronies were at risk from a new form of post-Civil-War urban organization… which enticed their best young employees, and even their own grown children, into deserting their birthplaces, even as it enticed the new laborers pouring into the American heartland to meet the demand for more labor in the burgeoning industries and marketplaces.
Marylyn Todd is the spiritual descendant of Jay Gould’s and William Randolph Hearst’s publicly pious, privately self-interested crusades. And, unfortunately, she’s not the only willing cannon fodder out there…
it is almost impressive the gymnastics this piece needs to jam “feral insane Trumpers are trying to make the pandemic worse” into a Both Sides frame https://t.co/csQhInzOKX
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) December 27, 2021
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
When that meteor finally finishes humanity off, the last words spoken will be some asshole insisting TFG won
Brantl
So now they have a Gladys Kravitz Do-It-Your-Own-Self Kit. They think they’re going to pester their neighbors into voting the way they want them to. I hope her leave-of-absence lasts long enough to lose her house. What a dipshit. How can it not be clue enough for these people that a whole bunch of Stump-appointed judges found against them, many times? Not only many times, all times but one?
Mathguy
Please let one of those stupid yahoos show up to my front door questioning voting credentials (I live in one of the states where they are operating). I’m in a crappy mood today and need to unload on a deserving target.
New Deal democrat
I am just finishing Prof. Eric Foner’s tome, “Reconstruction.” The parallels go all the way back to the Great Depression of 1873, when middle class merchants and professionals allied with among other wealthy rail barons in abhorrence of working class strikes.
The protection of property was the paramount virtue, fear of (literally) ‘communism’ pace the Paris commune the primary panic, and restriction of voting rights (poll taxes and even proposals to re-apply minimum property requirements) to exercise the ‘privilege’ of voting, along with violent suppression of opponents the principal mechanisms.
realbtl
I wonder what happens when you ask them for their driver’s license to prove who they are? And then ask them to prove it’s not fake with another source of id?
Baud
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
SpaceUnit
Can’t we just whip up a big batch of Kool-Aid and arsenic and have Dr. Fauci condemn it as a covid cure?
Ken
@realbtl: Pro tip: Keep a hole punch by the door.
Mike in NC
A 37-year-old who “barely voted” before this year is the textbook definition of a gullible low information voter.
Betty Cracker
One of the batshit organizations doing this here is called “Defend Florida.” Against what, you might reasonably ask?
There’s just no reasoning with these deluded sore losers. One hopes they succumb to poison ivy and mosquito bites sooner rather than later.
Baud
@realbtl:
Ask for a birth certificate.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The first time I ever read about “goo-goos” was in a compilation of Mike Royko columns. He didn’t think much of them (and he was a national treasure).
Like him, I also see utility in old fashioned ward heeling and soft graft.
smith
It’s interesting how many of these Goobers try to claim they are politically independent. It’s almost as if they’re acknowledging that “Republican” = “Liar.”
Baud
@smith:
I think some is that is to fool actual independents.
frosty
@Baud: Long form, of course.
Kathleen
@New Deal democrat: Thank you for that. I always appreciate and enjoy historical context around current events. Do you read Heather Cox Richardson? I subscribe to her newsletter and follow her on Twitter. She’s a treasure.
West of the Rockies
@smith:
They have enough shame to not want to be known as Republican but not enough shame to actually stop voting Republican.
OGLiberal
That NYT about Enid could have been shortened to just this.
“In Enid, OK, white residents are angry and terrified because they were 94% of the population in 1980 but are now only 68% of the population.”
Really, that’s all you needed to know.
different-church-lady
@Mike in NC: We clearly need to put reruns of Schoolhouse Rock on every streaming service.
different-church-lady
@OGLiberal: Many of them are on-target to become 0% of the population, due to the fact that they’re more afraid of minorities than a virus.
Suzanne
@Mathguy:
Concur. I feel like fucking with someone today.
New Deal democrat
@Kathleen: Thanks for the compliment. I haven’t been reading Heather Cox Richardson, but I will start!
West of the Rockies
@different-church-lady:
We can hope.
cain
Hell, statistically – every person so far convicted of voter fraud was a Republican. Every one of them. Of course, there was one miscarriage of justice when one black woman accidentally voted outside her district and they try to jail her!
kindness
It’s a death of 1000 cuts thing. Republicans throwing everything they can against the wall to see what sticks, all trying to subvert trust in our elections. There is a reason for all this. Republicans are lowering the bar so that when they do try to steal the election in ’22 & ’24 they will point to this stuff as validations that elections can’t be trusted. Setting the board up for the next coup.
Suzanne
@OGLiberal: The best part is that everyone intelligent and capable in Enid, OK, will move out, and the shitty people will look around no wonder why their kids and grandkids won’t come visit and everything is closed.
patrick II
I would like to see documentaries made about how voting actually exists in this country; how names are added to the voting list, how they can cast their ballot, how the ballots are carefully kept and, when hand-counted, citizens of both parties count the votes. How the voting machines work. And walk through the recounts in each of the states that had them and all of the safety measures they took. I would spend some money on it and do it right, and then have it required to be shown on each cable and network television station.
Get very serious about putting correct information out there, otherwise, the anti-democratic voices are shouting into a quiet void and the sound of their lies fills it. Get serious about telling the integrity of vote counting so there is another very loud voice heard. Otherwise, for many easily lead, you lose by default.
Brachiator
This grassroots authoritarianism might continue to be just a nuisance, or it could degenerate into something more insidious and dangerous. I do not like the idea of these fruit loops being able to identify voters, and maybe match other information to target Democrats.
The problem here is that there is nothing that can be done to change the minds of hardcore Trump conspiracy cultists, nothing that can refute their belief that the election was stolen. And what adds to this insanity is how Fox News and the Republican Party continue to cultivate anger and resentment in these people.
The right wing wanna-be masters of the universe don’t see, or don’t care, how trying to manipulate these deluded fools could spiral out of control.
Mai Naem mobile
Maybe having these people go into the real world, out of their cult, might cause that first crack in their TFG cult. I really hope they’re aiming for regular middle class/working class whites with this because that would be a bigger shock for these cultists.
delk
Sounds astroturfy.
Kathleen
@New Deal democrat: I think you would enjoy her. She’s active on Twitter and does some lectures on Facebook Live. Her newsletter is Letters From An American.
Kathleen
@Mai Naem mobile: I was thinking that as well.
different-church-lady
@kindness:
I cite this point from Orwell a lot: the goal of the Ministry of Truth was not to get people to believe lies. The goal was to destroy the very idea that there was such a thing as objective truth, leaving the populace no choice but to blindly accept anything the government told them.
This is the stage we’re at with Trumpism. If you kill the idea that an election can be run fairly, then elections stop being democratic and start being spoils of physical battle. That’s the goal, and that’s why pointing out the lies as lies is having no effect.
Rusty
Having moved to NH because of a job loss and having found a new job, just as the pandemic cranked up, I suspect I am the kind of voter they are searching out. Newly registered in state, Dem, voted absentee to avoid Covid. I recently moved from that rental to a place we bought, so I will miss getting to answer the door to the truly delusional. NH has an abundance of the politically insane, sadly many of them elected officials. Really, they are all best avoided in person.
burnspbesq
These are the American equivalent of the East Germans who ratted their neighbors out to the Stasi.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@different-church-lady:
So what would have an effect?
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
That’s unfair to the East Germans. Part of the way the Stasi worked was to collect compromising information on people and then blackmail them into ratting out their neighbors. These people don’t have that excuse.
mrmoshpotato
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
“Some people say both the meteor and the Earth are equally to…” BAM!
smith
@Roger Moore: Another big difference is that unless they show up with their guns, their neighbors are not likely to be afraid of them. Hopefully, many will come away with edifying pieces of their neighbors’ minds.
Jinchi
That’s my take on the current Supreme Court, too.
Sure John Roberts may care about his reputation, but rightwing dogma for years has been that the courts can’t be trusted.
Having 5-6 conservative justices routinely rig the outcomes in favor of their partisan interests is part of the plan. They either succeed in rigging everything to their own desires, or they succeed in undermining belief in the rule of law.
Chris
@different-church-lady:
A decade ago, when my cousin with the Baptist seminary degree still had a blog, he wrote an entire post about how if “atheists” and those people are allowed to defend the value of reason by using nothing but reason, then a Christian should be allowed to defend the value of the Bible using nothing but the Bible.
For all the pissing and moaning about “moral relativism,” it’s impressive how postmodern they are.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@burnspbesq:
What’s fascinating to me is how they can still see themselves as defenders of American freedom while doing this Gestapo shit. How do they not see it? How can they wear their tricorner hats bleating about freedom while defending every little thing law enforcement (jack-booted thugs!) do?
I mean, I know it’s racism, but the contradiction is still bewildering sometimes
Roger Moore
@Jinchi:
John Roberts has been a committed opponent of voting rights since his days in the Reagan Administration. He may care about his legacy, but only to the extent that he’ll make sure the ruling taking away minorities right to vote is as well written and argued as possible. It absolutely will not change the conclusion.
Bex
@Kathleen: Have you seen Richardson’s FB conversation with Rebecca Solnit? It’s about Solnit’s book, Orwell’s Roses, a biography. He was a much more interesting person than I imagined.
Steeplejack
I wonder who is funding this woman’s “leave of absence.”
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It’s all about motivated reasoning. They start with what they want to be true and search for any tiny shred of evidence supporting it, happily ignoring any contrary evidence along the way. It’s exactly the way they can take the words of a man who condemned worldly wealth and threw the money changers out of the temple and use them to support the idea that God shows how much he loves you by showering you with money.
RSA
The New Hampshire legislature is notoriously huge: 400 state representatives, 24 state senators. It wouldn’t be surprising to find many members interested in any topic on the face of the Earth, given it’s also New Hampshire.
Kay
Give them bad information. Every single Democrat should just make it up. Tell them the address they’re using doesn’t exist, or that no one by that name lives there or has ever lived there, or that you’re a convicted felon or non citizen who might have voted- you can’t recall exactly.
Send them off with a bunch of absolute shit information which they’ll then chase “leads” and run to report to the Republicans in the statehouse.
Throw a wrench into it. No one is obligated to take orders from these people. Really you have a patriotic duty to screw up this nasty little authoritarian inquisition.
Brachiator
@Mai Naem mobile:
Probably not. Here is another example.
I recently watched a CNN video clip about Covid patients in hospitals getting combative with doctors, and other patients and families trying to sue hospitals for giving them the “wrong” treatment for the virus.
Later my sister told me about a cousin who had been in the hospital and who refused to believe the doctor when told that he had Covid. He recovered, but refuses to get vaccinated.
I struggled to comprehend why a person would go to and stay in the hospital if he or she believed that the doctors were committing malpractice. Isn’t this living within a contradiction? And yet the fact that you cannot go to an accredited hospital and get “alternative” Covid treatment does not make my cousin or other deniers re-examine their denial.
Conspiracy Trumpsters are similarly stuck in a self-reinforcing insanity loop.
bluegirlfromwyo
But when Republicans commit fraud, it’s mere silliness. That’s what Gooper gov-elect Youngkin told us about his 17 year-old’s two attempts to vote for daddy.
Brachiator
@New Deal democrat:
This is interesting stuff. Recently the podcast “You’re Wrong About…” had an episode about Reconstruction. The guest speaker talked about how the North and South sought to control and to exploit workers. I am not certain whether Foner was mentioned.
But I also realized that the little that we got in high school about Reconstruction focused solely on the South, and much of that was over simplified.
Frankensteinbeck
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Because the only freedom they care about is their freedom to be an asshole. Opposing cops murdering minorities minorly takes away from any conservative’s freedom to be an asshole, and thus is anti-freedom.
dopey-o
FIFY
lowtechcyclist
First woman I’ve heard of who spells her first name the way my late, blessed mother-in-law did, and she turns out to be a nutcase.
Swell. Just swell.
LiminalOwl
@Bex: Ooh, thanks for the reminder. I need to put in a request or a hold at the library. Love both writers.
ant
This Marylyn Todd, strikes me as likely having anti-social personality disorder. Two things stuck out to me from the blockquote above:
1. Never having voted until typhoid trump showed up in politics. The problem with these people is that they are universally opposed to collective action problem solving:
They litter. They cheat on taxes. They hate paying for insurance, or any debts really. They’re shitty drivers. They don’t like chlorine or fluoride in their tap water. They don’t like iodine in their salt. They don’t like their milk fortified with vitamin D, or pasteurized. They hate low flow toilets and shower heads, or water restrictions in the desert. They don’t like Social Security. They don’t like holding up their end of a monogamous relationship, family relationships, or long term friendships. THEY DON’T VOTE. At least they didn’t before they had one of their own possibly win the White House.
2. All the obvious lies.
At least to me, she doesn’t even sound like she is telling lies. She’s just giving her snake oil sales pitch. Running her con. It doesn’t matter to the used car salesman how well the Trucoat works. From their perspective, what matters is that you buy it. They’ll say anything. These people are the reason lie detector tests are inadmissible in a court of law. They don’t feel anything. Lying happens like breathing, they don’t even notice it. No lie is too preposterous in the telling if it furthers their interests. They drive through all triangles, including your moms.
Ruckus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
That’s why it often takes generations to accept change and or reality. Many/most people know the crap in their heads is the truth and will rationalize that till the day they die. An example would be racism in this country. It has lessened in the last 70 yrs but that change is not in any way universal or finished. I predict, and of course won’t be here to see it, that while it may/is likely to never be able to be considered 100% erased, it will likely be far better, 70 yrs from now. But even that is not a given, just a prediction base upon the changes I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Skepticat
I have a friend in Rye, New Hampshire, who is simply salivating at the prospect of having one of these people show up on her doorstep. What I’d give to be a fly in the wall.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
This. A few million times this.
gene108
Paul Weyrich railing against Goo Goo syndrome and voting rights
First time I heard the phrase Goo Goo was from this speech. I didn’t know the history behind it until now.
Kathleen
@Bex: I did not. Is that on Facebook Live or does she have a podcast also? I know nothing about Orwell but would like to learn about him.
smith
It occurred to me that this whole project may in fact be a push poll. They’ll start by asking reasonable sounding questions and then gradually steer the conversation to how the 2020 election was fer sure 100% STOLEN FROM THE RIGHTFUL TSAR!!
Soprano2
I read an interesting thread on Twitter from a man named Ethan Grey about how the right wing response to Covid can be explained through the lens of caste. It was interesting, but I don’t know how to link it on my phone. I found it through the last tweet in this post.
Gretchen
I’d like a chance to ask these idiots how they think the fraud was done. Have they ever seen a ballot? Those people in Detroit who were sure boxes of Chinese ballots were being smuggled in need to be asked how the Chinese knew who was running for water district and which voters get the choices for state rep in district 3. They seem to think that ballots just say Trump/Biden and you can write out however many you want.
I had a relative outraged that they were « handing out ballots in the park today » and urged everyone to run there and protest. Turns out the elections board was collecting ballots outside because pandemic. It didn’t occur to her that every time she voted she had to show ID and get checked off a list, but for some reason they were going to hand out ballots to anyone who wanted one.
Geminid
@bluegirlfromwyo: I think young Youngkin may have been emulating James O’Keefe, and trying to run a sting. He’s not saying, though, at least so far as I know.
Youngkin senior may have digitally grounded his son. Youngkin has a lot riding on a successful Governorship, and doesn’t want his son making trouble before he even starts.
Miss Bianca
@Soprano2: is it...this one?
dopey-o
Here’s a link to that story on Lawyers Guns & Money. Note there’s a link to the Twitter thread
Jim Appleton
@ant: The fact she’s in print points to bigger problems. She has editors and publishers who value what she says.
E.
@mrmoshpotato: I assume you have seen “Don’t Look Up?”
Soprano2
@Miss Bianca: Yes, that’s it! Thanks for linking it. There’s some great food for thought there. It tracks with the observation that the Trumpies quit caring about Covid when they found out in the beginning that it was mostly killing minorities in liberal cities. They thought it was beneath them and wouldn’t affect them. I can’t tell you how often I heard early on that Covid wouldn’t be bad in our area because we don’t live like people in big cities do! They truly believed that it was only “those people” in “those (dirty) cities” who would die from Covid.
Bex
@Kathleen: It’s a Zoom on her FB page. I just looked and it’s still there if you scroll down far enough,
tam1MI
@Rusty: Having moved to NH because of a job loss and having found a new job, just as the pandemic cranked up, I suspect I am the kind of voter they are searching out. Newly registered in state, Dem, voted absentee to avoid Covid. I recently moved from that rental to a place we bought, so I will miss getting to answer the door to the truly delusional. NH has an abundance of the politically insane, sadly many of them elected officials. Really, they are all best avoided in person.
Wasn’t New Hampshire the place where a bunch of crazy ass Libertarians took over a town and a bunch of citizens promptly got mauled by bears?
James E Powell
@Soprano2:
It’s apparently lost to history and willfully ignored by the press/media, but Trumpsters were defying & threatening violence against anti-COVID measures from very early.
Instead, they are portrayed as people who are just exhausted from all the efforts to reduce & end the pandemic.
Bleetnik
Long time juice lurker here. Please correct me if I’m wrong, as it’s been on my mind of late? I thought that party affiliation was public information. Is this federal, or by state?
Geminid
@Bleetnik: I think voter registration is public information, published by states. Some like Virginia and South Carolina do not register by party, but I think states that do make this item public. And it seems that states also record who votes (but not how they voted). I know that analysts are waiting for this information from Virginia’s fall election to drop in a few weeks.
Bleetnik
@Geminid: Thank you. Perhaps only a matter of time till voter intimidation based on registration spreads in states where this info is public.
Mallard Filmore
@Soprano2:
Simply copy and paste the link text. Most modern browsers will magically transform anything that looks like a link into a live link.
Soprano2
@James E Powell: They invaded the Michigan state capitol building in May 2020 because they wanted everything to reopen! So yes, almost immediately once they thought it wasn’t going to hurt or kill them.
Soprano2
@Mallard Filmore: I don’t know how to do it from the Twitter app. Where is the link there?
Mike G
@Betty Cracker:
She watched Invasion USA and thought it was a documentary, like Red Dawn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_U.S.A._(1985_film)
Chris T.
@Kay: Tell them that you (the person speaking) personally cast your vote for Trump plus 40,000 fraudulent votes for Trump?