The NPR Politics Podcast - Election Conspiracy Theorists Are Canvasing The Country, Searching For Fraud

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

The effort has further taxed local election officials, who have fielded worried calls from voters who believed that the canvassers were affiliated with the government.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, voting reporter Miles Parks, and Colorado Public Radio reporter Bente Birkeland.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter..Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Liz Gaffran and Marnie the Beagle in Berlin, Pennsylvania. This podcast was recorded at... Yesterday, I requested an Aroo, and today we got one, and clearly there is a Beagle Week theme this week. It is 3.47 Eastern on Tuesday, July 19th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but Marnie the Beagle will still be trying to get a treat. Okay, here's the show. He deserves a treat. Give him a treat. Give Marnie the Beagle a treat. That's a good boy. Yeah, yeah. Could be a girl. Could be a girl. Marnie? I thought I heard Marnie. Oh, this is

a discrepancy. A good Beagle regardless. Yes, indeed. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm former Beagle owner Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And Benta Berkland of Colorado Public Radio is here again. Hello. Hi, Scott. And you would probably guess from a Benta-Miles joint that we are once again getting into election conspiracy reporting. Miles, I bet that you just wrapped up a wild investigation into people who are going door-to-door all across the country trying to audit the 2020 election.

We're doing a border verification project. I'm working off the system very well. I'm not just asking people's questions about the 2020 vote. I'm hanging. Miles, what was going on there? So what you're hearing there is sound from a front door camera, a ring camera from a woman named Michelle Garcia, who lives in Pueblo County, Colorado. And people came up to her door last year, knocked on her door, made it clear that they felt like the 2020 election was stolen in some way and wanted to ask her questions about her voting record. And what were they asking her?

So things like, you know, did you vote by mail? How many times have you voted? She says that these people asked her specifically who she voted for. But what we've seen and what Benta and I's story has uncovered is that this is an effort that is happening all over the country, kind of spurred on by Donald Trump's election lies. People in their individual communities and neighborhoods are feeling so motivated right now by this idea that our democracy is being stolen from us by voter fraud that has never been found to exist, that they're going door to door to kind of audit the results themselves.

And what do we know about this effort? Is this centrally organized? Is this coordinated? Is this just happening organically? plan. And to be clear, this is not an organization that is any way tied to the U.S. government. And basically, it just seems like there's been a number of these efforts popping up all over the country to kind of push the same idea that local election officials are not to be trusted and that the results need to be verified. Betta, is this legal? You know, I think there's a legal gray area here. It's a somewhat nuanced and complicated answer. There was an open letter last year referencing an election review in Arizona. And the U.S. Department of Justice warned in this letter that certain types of canvassing could be voter intimidation and that could violate the Federal Voting Rights Act. We may get a legal answer at some point because several voting rights groups have filed a lawsuit to stop these sorts of campuses from continuing in Colorado after the midterm elections. And so these groups allege that it is a type of voter intimidation and that it will

negatively impact communities of color, especially, and also impact other groups that are doing voter outreach. Just because somebody knocking on your door and saying, hey, and also impact other groups that are doing voter outreach. Just because somebody knocking on your door and saying, hey, I have questions for you about how you voted can be threatening. I mean, even if there's no actual threat attached to it. Yes, that's exactly what the allegations are. And just to say this once again, the election wasn't stolen. I mean, Colorado wasn't even an especially close state. But these efforts, even the act of trying to, quote, get to the bottom of something,

seems to be, you know, a political organizing tool in itself, right? Yes, that's right. And I think what we've seen, at least in Colorado, a lot of the people who have been cabezine have been conservative, and they believe that the election is stolen. What we've heard from election experts in Colorado, though, believe that the election is stolen. What we've heard from election experts in Colorado, though, is that the data they've collected is not considered reliable and it's raising these various concerns. And we did talk to some people who did canvassing, including a woman named Rebecca Kelty. She was a Republican congressional candidate and last year she was going door to door at an apartment building in Southern Colorado.

And she said that the canvassers did have some training. They were given sheets of voting records, and that's a person's name and address, how it's in person or by mail. And all of this is public information in Colorado. We still don't know why canvassers went to certain locations and neighborhoods and not others. She talked a little bit about what motivated her to participate in this effort. When the puzzle pieces don't fit together, it makes you wonder. And if it's important to you, you'll look into it. Miles, does it say something about the continued strength of this lie as an enduring political fact that this is happening in a state like Colorado that, again, wasn't especially close and was never really on that top tier list people are really motivated by the idea that the election was stolen. So they're going to go knock on doors, create reports with methodology that election experts say is flawed. Those reports are then

going to be used as, quote unquote, evidence to get people more motivated, more riled up to stay involved and keep pushing for whatever sort of truth that they seem to be pushing for. All right. We are going to take a quick break. More on this investigative reporting for Miles and Benta after the break. We are back. And Miles, how did the U.S. election integrity plan, how did they respond to your story And what's next for this group? So we still haven't heard any response from the group, despite, you know, emails, phone calls, messages to the group's website. I think it's very clear just from looking at the planning

documents that we were able to see online and talking to election officials who are in a lot of these communities, that this is a part of running an election going forward, that the election officials in Colorado that we spoke to said, yes, we are expecting to see these sorts of canvases after the 2022 election, potentially after the 2024 presidential election, that it's going to be incumbent on local election officials to kind of prove their work even more than they have before, because there are lots of people going out in their communities trying to kind of find the fraud in this way. Though when they do prove their work, when they do show results and recounts of those results, it doesn't often seem to settle the question.

No. And I think that's been really frustrating for the local election officials. Benta and I talked to in Colorado that they feel like not only is there kind of good information not getting there, but they're asking questions of groups like this. A big part of this story is the fact that this group is alleging fraud in these counties. And the county administrators are saying, gosh, we would love to know about that if that's the case. Can you show us where you found this or who you talked to? And they won't turn over that underlying data. You bet. Tell me about your broader conversations with election administrators about all of this. Well, like Miles mentioned, that was one frustration that they couldn't get the underlying data to research it themselves. But it's impacting election officials in

Colorado on multiple levels. First off, they are facing increasing threats and pressures just for doing their jobs. And Colorado has tried to address this and passed a new law that increases the penalties for threatening election officials and then makes it illegal to publish their personal information. So that's doxing. But another thing is it's spreading misinformation. We've heard from clerks that some of the canvassers are telling voters their vote didn't count when it actually did. And we talked to a clerk in northern Colorado. Her name's Carly Coppas. She's a Republican.

And she said one thing she heard from a lot of people in her region was that they thought the canvassers were from her office. So they thought the canvassers were from the government. We started getting calls saying, what in the heck is going on? Like, why did these people come to my door? Why are they asking me about this? And they said they were given the perception that they were with your office. And if you're giving that perception that you are a government official, it almost equates to the same as you saying that you're a police officer when you're not. So to be clear, Scott, none of the canvassers we talked to for this story said that they represented themselves as government officials or with administrators saying, you know what, this is trails, considered the gold standard of elections.

And so clerks across the state, for the most part, there's a few exceptions, really stand by the system and view it under attack and see their job right now as combating this disinformation and really trying to be transparent about what the election process is like and counter these false claims they're dealing with on a daily basis. I will say, too, I think it was really interesting when we were talking to Rebecca Kelty, I asked her specifically, are you worried about this issue, that these sorts of canvassing efforts could lead to kind of pressure and increased threats on election officials? And, you know, here's a clip of our exchange. I hope it's under the tightest microscope you can possibly put it under. Is there a part of you that worries about, there's a lot of election workers who are

quitting right now because the pressure is just so great and they're like worried about their safety because they're getting threats in a way they never were before. Do you worry about that microscope kind of furthering that problem? No, I don't think so. I think if there is pressure and if there are threats, then that right there tells you that something, they're trying to get away with something. So it's not really, you can kind of hear it there. It's not a symptom of these sorts of reports. It's kind of the point. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just take a big step back here because Miles, especially you've been covering this story for a year and a half now. And to me, I hear this reporting, you know,

this is just the latest indication to me that the wildfire that Donald Trump set off by denying the 2020 election and then sticking to that and getting so many other people to go along with him just continues to spread and spread and spread. And even the more it's disproven, the more powerful it seems to be as just a staying force in American politics. Yeah. And I think what this effort kind of shows, too, is how exploitative these sorts of efforts are of the gray areas. And as Benta mentioned earlier, the canvassing, not 100 percent illegal unless it's done in all these different ways. And yet it kind of pushes this false narrative that's really potentially really harmful for democracy forward.

I would say in a state like Colorado, which is blue right now, I think there is a limit to how much these type of election conspiracies galvanize a wide swath of voters. We recently had our Republican primary and the candidates for secretary of state and U.S. Senate, who are big backers of these false claims, did not win their primaries. That's a good point. Benta Birkeland of Colorado Public Radio, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. Thanks for having me. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

Thank you for listening to the In Fair Politics Podcast.