(Chuck Muth) – Well, the cat’s outta the bag and the horse has left the barn.
Far-left “election fraud deniers” have discovered our Pigpen Project to help clean up Nevada’s voter rolls and are none too happy about it. But before I get to that, here’s some good news…
First, on Tuesday we submitted lists of names to ten Nevada counties which were pulled from the official Nevada voter registration database and matched against the post office’s official change-of-address database of voters currently registered in Nevada who have moved to another state.
Not only do official governmental records show they’ve moved, but they show the voter has also re-registered to vote in their new state AND has voted in their new state. They’re referred to as “MRV’s” – moved, registered and voted.
Yesterday, just two days later, I received a very nice email from one of the county Clerks who wrote…
“Good afternoon. I appreciate that you have sent me this information. I am happy to report that all but one of the voters on this list has already been placed in the NVRA process for us to send a confirmation card to. … Any and all feedback on list maintenance is always appreciated, so keep it coming! I appreciate your support in this!”
The one voter had already submitted a recent change of address with the county.
This is great news. It demonstrates that the data we’re using is reliable and that working with election officials need not be contentious in trying to achieve what we all should want to achieve…
The cleanest, most accurate voter registration lists possible.
Now, you’ll notice I didn’t say which county acted so quickly. There’s a reason for that, which I’ll get to in a minute.
But first, reporter Mark Robison of the Reno Gazette-Journal saw my email on the MRV’s and wrote a fair, objective, fact-based article on the Pigpen Project that was published this morning.
As the article explains, we’re not claiming the various election departments aren’t complying with existing law. They are.
But by doing only the minimum required to be in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), thousands of moved voters have fallen through the cracks and remain on Nevada’s active voter registration rolls.
“At this point, we’re not critical of them (election officials) at all,” Muth said. “This is a new problem that we’ve brought to their attention. And if they address it, great. Everybody’s going to be happy. The voter files will be cleaned up better, faster, quicker, easier, and everybody can have a better sense of security that the voter files are clean.”
Mr. Robison included a statement from the Secretary of State’s office that “Nevada law provides two paths for canceling a voter’s registration based on third-party information related to address changes.”
But that misunderstands what we’ve asked for. As Mr. Robison notes…
“(Muth’s) group is not asking election departments to remove anyone from the voter rolls. Instead, he said, it’s asking election officials to send out a verification postcard that the voter must return to confirm their registration.”
And if they fail to return the postcard, their registration isn’t “cancelled.” It’s simply moved from “active” to “inactive” so ballots won’t automatically be mailed to them in the fall election – which minimizes the potential for voting fraud and saves taxpayers a significant amount of money.
Which brings me to a second article published yesterday by Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket with this nakedly biased and totally misleading headline: “Right-Wing Group Attempts to Purge More Than a Thousand Nevada Voters.”
We don’t use the word “purge.” That’s a scare-word the left uses to try to discredit legitimate work to clean up the voter rolls. We use the same term election officials use: List maintenance.
But regardless of which term you use, the fact is these folks have permanently moved from the address where they’re registered and to another state. Who wouldn’t want that information corrected?
Mark Elias, that’s who.
He’s the Democrat lawyer who took advantage of COVID and successfully got election laws changed all around the country – including here in Nevada where automatic mail-in voting was approved by the Legislature.
According to Democracy Docket’s website, Elias co-hosts the news blog’s podcast.
Mr. Elias is also known for filing lawsuits and pressuring election officials to not work with responsible, independent outside groups such as ours. Which is why I’m protecting the name of the county Clerk who was happy to receive our information.
Our county clerks/registrars have enough to do without being harassed or threatened by Elias & Company.
Back to Mr. Cohen’s factually-challenged column. He wrote…
“Earlier this week the Pigpen Project — a right-wing group in Nevada attempting to eliminate over a thousand eligible voters across the state — claimed to have identified 364 ineligible voters on Washoe County’s voter registration rolls, and submitted them to the county’s registrar for removal.”
First, if those voters have, indeed, moved to another state, registered to vote in another state, and have actually voted in another state, they are, by law, NOT “eligible” voters in Nevada.
And it doesn’t matter if it’s one, one hundred, one thousand, or one hundred thousand.
Secondly, as noted earlier, we’re not asking election officials to “remove” the voter based on our submissions; only that they follow the established procedures for verifying our information via the postcard mailing and then take the appropriate action.
Mr. Cohen goes on to write…
“Under Nevada law, anyone is able to gain access to the Statewide Voter Registration List (SVRL). But state law prohibits third parties, like the Pigpen Project, from using information gained from the SVRL for any purpose not related to an election.”
But, um, we ARE using the information for the purpose of an election. So no violation of the law is taking place despite the false suggestion.
Mr. Cohen continues…
“Furthermore, while it’s not illegal for a group like the Pigpen Project to comb through the publicly available data from the SVRL and try to conduct their own list maintenance to submit to a county registrar, state law says that clerks can’t solely rely on external, ‘non-governmental sources of information’ and need to independently confirm if a voter should be removed from a county’s voter registration roll.”
Well, um…duh.
As noted above, we’re not asking the county clerks/registrars to “solely rely” on the information we’re providing. We’re simply asking them to follow the established procedures to “independently confirm” that the information we submit is reliable and accurate.
Mr. Cohen then goes on to falsely claim we’re using “unreliable databases like VoterRef.”
100% totally not true. We’re only using official governmental voter registration databases and the official NCOA database provided by the United States Postal Service.
Mr. Cohen again…
“But the Pigpen Project is engaging in another method to verify voter data — one that is both inaccurate and may violate federal law: going door-to-door to verify people’s voter registration.”
He then goes on to suggest we “may” be violating the “federal Ku Klux Klan Act, by intimidating voters.”
What a load of crap. And what a cheap shot trying to compare us to the Ku Klux Klan. These people are absolutely shameless.
Our grassroots volunteers – who will be back on the street tomorrow in Las Vegas in triple-digit temperatures – simply go to the door and ask if the suspicious voter identified by our research lives there.
If not, we ask the actual resident to sign an official affidavit provided by the election department asserting they have first-hand personal knowledge that the questionable voter does not, in fact, live there.
We don’t “intimidate” anyone. The vast majority of folks we’ve met are happy to sign the form to stop ballots for someone who doesn’t live there anymore from being delivered there.
But even these reports don’t result in the voter being removed from the active voter registration list. They only trigger the residency confirmation postcards to verify the reports.
Now, I’m no “conspiracy theorist” when it comes to this issue, but you have to ask yourself…
If the thousands of voters we’ve identified have, in fact, permanently moved to another state and are, therefore, no longer eligible to vote in Nevada, why wouldn’t Mr. Elias and the Democracy Docket want those voters removed from the voter rolls?
It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
In any event, we’re operating within the law. We’re operating reasonably and responsibly. We’re operating in a uniform, non-discriminatory, non-partisan manner. And we’re using reliable data that’s now available thanks to new technology that hasn’t been available in the past.
As such, we won’t be intimidated by fake news misinformation being put out by the likes of the Democracy Docket in its effort to smear our volunteers and undermine our cooperative work with Nevada election officials.
This is OUR state. These are OUR elections.
And we’re going to protect both of them from outside agitators.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“The Secretary of State’s office, at the bottom line, is a technology company. We use technology to drive corporate and business filings. We use technology to do our securities investigations. It’s also using technology in the election space to increase accuracy, and making sure we’re doing what we need to do and giving the voter that best experience to have trust in the system.” – Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, Las Vegas Sun, 6/12/24
Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views and blogs at MuthsTruths.com. His views are his own.
Left-Wing “Reporter” Compares Nevada Voter File Cleanup Project to the KKK
