'I was pretty pissed off': Man finds his voter registration is challenged by nonprofit

Dailymotion Dramas

'I was pretty pissed off': Man finds his voter registration is challenged by nonprofit Challenges to voter rolls inspired by a conservative Texas-based nonprofit group called True the Vote has some election officials worried. CNN's Kyung Lah reports. #CNN #news   Want to stay up to date on the day's top stories? Sign up for CNN's 5 Things newsletter, and we'll give you the 5 biggest stories you need to know, videos people are watching, and more! Sign up here: https://www.cnn.com/newsletters/5-thi...

Transcript

00:00I've lived in Denton for over 24 years.

00:06I have been voting here for two decades.

00:09As we can see, I am real.

00:10I am here.

00:11I am talking to you.

00:12If you're wondering why Daniel Moss is defending his existence, it's because of this list.

00:18That's my first name.

00:20That's my last name.

00:21Of thousands of voter registrations in Denton County being challenged as ineligible.

00:27Finding out that I'm on some sort of hit list of people who shouldn't be voting.

00:30I was pretty pissed off.

00:32How did Moss, a legally registered American voter in the state of Texas and a university

00:37administrator, end up having his voter registration challenged?

00:41Because of the efforts of one group.

00:43Hi there.

00:44I'm Katherine Engelbrecht with True the Vote.

00:46True the Vote, a right-wing organization fueled by the MAGA movement.

00:50All of a sudden in certain states they found all these votes, a totally rigged election.

00:55And the lies that the 2020 election was stolen with illegal ballots.

01:00Welcome to the IV3 project.

01:02You have arrived in the nick of time.

01:04This is the group's online training session for IV3, a user-friendly app pushed by True

01:10the Vote, recruiting and training thousands of private citizens on how to submit challenges

01:15to local election offices.

01:18We've got to report what we can and get it as accurate as we can.

01:21And it is making an enormous impact.

01:24Adding up to about 700,000 challenges to voters across the country so far.

01:30Documents obtained by CNN show many of them use the exact same language.

01:36Daniel Moss' challenge came from someone he doesn't even know.

01:40I want to say it was Nancy.

01:44Nancy lives in the same county.

01:48And single-handedly sent in thousands of challenges this year.

01:52We asked around for her.

01:54I'm trying to talk to Nancy.

01:56But she did not come to the door.

01:58Nancy sends me something every day.

01:59Frank Phillips is Zetton County's elections administrator.

02:02As November looms, it's not just Nancy sending in challenges now.

02:06There have been days where I've received a couple of thousand names.

02:11Isn't it overwhelming to get thousands of names every day?

02:16It can be.

02:17I've had to look each of those voters up one by one.

02:21Roughly 75 to 80 percent of the names they give me, we have already dealt with.

02:25And the rest of the names?

02:27Well, you would catch them anyway.

02:30There's safeguards built into the whole system for any issue you can dream of.

02:36Meaning any of these questionable voters, like the people who have moved away, the system

02:40would eventually catch them anyway.

02:43More than a dozen election officials CNN spoke with say they're getting the same challenges.

02:48users when there's already a system in place that prevents fraud.

02:53But that's not stopping the leader from claiming this.

02:56In the space of elections, you know, the fraud has been institutionalized.

03:01True the Vote is based in Texas.

03:03First, we went to try and find True the Vote's office location, the one it lists on its website

03:09as well as federal tax forms.

03:12But we didn't find a brick and mortar office.

03:14Instead, we ended up here at a post office with a bunch of P.O. boxes.

03:20Next, we came here to this strip mall that the state of Texas lists as the current address

03:27for True the Vote.

03:29But it looks like it's a business that files income taxes and it's a functioning office,

03:39but no True the Vote.

03:42These mass voter challenges are definitely a page out of the election denial playbook.

03:49There is a bigger picture impact on our democracy, which is that weakening trust in elections

03:53and creating an environment where you can cast out or question the results of an election

03:58after the fact.

04:01Back in Denton County, Daniel Moss will be allowed to vote.

04:05Elections Administrator Frank Phillips found the challenge was wrong.

04:09For the people who are making all these endless challenges, he's chosen patience and education.

04:15In their mind, they think, hey, you've got thousands of people on your rolls that shouldn't

04:20be there, which turns out not to be the case.

04:23They come in with a preconceived notion.

04:25My job is to explain reality.

04:31Ken joins us now.

04:32So, Ken, we saw that you never actually found the True the Vote office.

04:36Did you ever manage to reach anyone there?

04:40We did reach them electronically, and they did send us a statement.

04:44And it says about his app, quote, it has developed a specialized processes, technologies and

04:49methodologies that have been affirmed by experts and courts.

04:54But they wouldn't specify who those experts and courts are, nor would they answer specific

04:58questions from CNN.

05:00We did speak with election administrators across this country who say a lot of the challenges

05:05coming from this app are just repetitive and sometimes, as you saw in our story, Anderson,

05:09flat out wrong.

05:11Despite all this, the 2020 election and all of the information and misinformation surrounding

05:16it has been a cash windfall for True the Vote.

05:18In the last three years of publicly available records, True the Vote has pulled in some

05:2312 million dollars, despite having, as you saw, no offices and only a handful of staff.

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