Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips of True the Vote (TTV) believe they have the goods to prove that "Trump was right" about the 2020 election in Georgia. Their work concerning the state's voter rolls allegedly proves that at the time of Raffensperger's Nov. 20, 2020 certification, there were, according to Engelbrecht, "364,000 ineligible voter records," of which approximately 67,000 actually voted in the 2020 election. UncoverDC spent some time this week talking with Engelbrecht about TTV's investigation of Georgia's voter rolls.
Engelbrecht and Phillips both unequivocally believe Trump was justified in questioning Georgia's results during his Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Raffensperger and others. Ironically, Engelbrecht and Phillips appeared in court on Thursday in Fulton County to request the dismissal of their 2000 Mules lawsuit with the Georgia State Election Board (SEB) blocks away from where Trump would turn himself in because of his alleged "election interference" case.
Few people know more about how elections are run or stolen than Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote. Since 2010, her organization has been at the forefront of addressing proper election administration in all its forms, with a longstanding focus on maintaining and cleaning voter rolls.
According to Engelbrecht, what happened between 2019 and 2021 in Georgia should be particularly worrisome to the state's voters and contributed mightily to the chaos in the 2020 election. She told UncoverDC that "voter roll maintenance during that timeframe was non-existent" because of a Fair Fight lawsuit brought by Mark Elias and Stacy Abrams. According to Engelbrecht, Fair Fight sued the state of Georgia "to prevent the state from cleaning its rolls."
Engelbrecht and Phillips appeared on Wednesday's War Room to explain that "the case went on in federal court through the spring of 2021. During that entire period of time, the state did not clean its voter rolls." After the General Election, True the Vote was "inundated with calls from citizens before the January runoff," asking what they could do to "ensure there was a better process in the runoff" than during the General Election.
Responsive to calls from citizens, TTV "dove into Georgia law" and found a provision in the state code that allowed her organization to "partner with Georgians" to put forward an "elector challenge." Alarmingly, while looking at the state's voter rolls, TTV found "67,284 votes were cast from ineligible voter registrations in Georgia's 2020 election based on invalid residency." Nevertheless, Secretary Raffensperger went ahead with certification, most likely knowing full well his voter rolls did not accurately represent the state's eligible voters.
Open.Ink's Georgia Collection: "The Aftermath"
Engelbrecht and Phillips have completed their robust website Open.Ink., after months of tweaking to ensure it could not be easily attacked. The site contains troves of election data and other vital issues and investigations. They created the site to store and protect sensitive content amassed because of their numerous investigations and lawsuits. Engelbrecht and Phillips created the site as an "open source" repository of information for people looking at the source material, evidence, and news relevant to important events and investigations in the U.S. The website verifies its users "to avoid bad actors" and requires a login and a password to access its contents.
Open.Ink houses, among many other things, what Engelbrecht calls "The Georgia Collection." Within the Georgia collection is a document named "The Aftermath." Using Georgia as an example, "The Aftermath" provides a concise summary that illustrates how non-existent voter roll maintenance in Georgia materially affected the election results. Biden narrowly "won" Georgia in 2020 by approximately 12,000 votes, but around 67,000 votes in the state were illegally cast.
According to The Aftermath document, of the 67,284 ineligible votes cast in the 2020 election, "19,077 votes were assigned to records of voters who no longer lived in Georgia. 48,207 votes were assigned to voters who had moved to a different county within Georgia. Of the 19,077 votes, 16,986 were mail-in ballots. Of the 16,986 mail ballots, 8,984 were inactive according to state data."
The Aftermath/TTV/Open.Ink
At the bottom of this Open.Ink page, Engelbrecht has documented an essential timeline of events proving Raffensperger knew the voter rolls were materially inaccurate when he spoke with Trump on Jan. 2, even though he told Trump all was well.
One of the more critical events on the timeline is Engelbrecht's meeting with SOS Raffensperger and staff on Dec. 16 to discuss her findings on the state's voter rolls. She says Raffensperger acknowledged and confirmed her findings during the meeting. Engelbrecht told Bannon on Wednesday:
"I'll never forget it; Secretary Raffensperger pulled out a piece of paper, kind of back of the napkin, did a little bit of quick math, and said, 'yeah, 364,000, about 14% of Americans move every year. We haven't been able to clean the rolls because of this lawsuit. So yeah, that sounds about right. That's about how many ineligible records there are.'"
Notably, the timeline also includes Trump's request for a recount on Nov. 22, 2020, after the Nov. 20 certification, as allowed by Georgia Law.
On Dec. 17, True the Vote announced its "coordinated challenge" to "help ensure only legal, eligible votes [would be] counted in the Jan. 5 runoff elections." Georgia law requires Elector Challenges be filed before a vote is cast because, according to Engelbrecht, "once a vote has been cast, or in the case of absentee ballots, once the ballot has been removed from its signed envelope, there is no way to identify which ballot belongs to the ineligible party."
The TTV announcement states, "An Elector Challenge does not remove voter names from the registry. Voters who have been challenged will have the opportunity via GA. CODE ANN. § 21-2-230 to prove eligibility and still have their vote counted in the upcoming runoff election." The statement from Raffensperger below indicates he supported the challenge initiated by TTV on behalf of Georgians.
RaffenspergerElectorChallenge/TTV announcement
Exploitation of Election Processes
In their 52-minute video, Engelbrecht and Phillips speak about how the system as it currently stands works against effective election fraud remedies. There is very little time between an election and certification. And the only way to put forward an Elector Challenge is before the election. Poorly maintained and bloated voter rolls taint election results. Yet, voters often lack the knowledge or the resources to question and investigate voter rolls. Engelbrecht says, "It is a shocking truth that voter rolls are so poorly maintained." Engelbrecht told Bannon:
"As of Mar. 1, 2021, only eleven states had made their rolls public to confirm who had voted in 2020. It's why we had to drop our lawsuits because there was no available data. So this whole idea that you can do hand recounts is ridiculous if you don't know who voted."
The courts, added Engelbrecht, were rightly demanding to "know who voted and what were the ineligible votes. The courts didn't want statistics. They didn't care about machines." But no one had the answers the courts needed and requested.
"So in essence," continued Engelbrecht, "Raffensberger certified it. And he didn't even know the answer" at the time of certification. Furthermore, Engelbrecht says problems with voter rolls in Georgia well preceded the 2020 election. "This problem did not come overnight," Engelbrecht continued, "Kemp was the Secretary of State for eight years. That's why you see he's got no motivation to get to the bottom of it. Raffensperger certified and never said a word to anyone. Why is it so bad to have accurate voter rolls? And the answer is that if you know where the sleeper cells are, you can easily subvert a process because our certification is set up so that no one ever checks."
Engelbrecht also mentioned the vicious lawfare accompanying challenges like those brought by TTV. TTV is "headed to trial in October with Fair Fight" because of TTV's actions on behalf of Georgians. Engelbrecht explains:
"Mark Elias, when we went and announced that we were going to file those 364,000 challenges, he sent a letter from Perkins Coie at the time to every county in Georgia saying if you take up through the votes challenges, we will sue you. So we followed up with a letter to every county saying if you get sued, we will defend you. And here we are now in court, these many years later."
In a video posted on Open.Ink, Engelbrecht, and Phillips speak about why they continue fighting for lawful processes during elections. They describe the extraordinary rule changes that took place in 2020, such as the "mass" mail[-in ballots] during the pandemic" and Zuckerberg's funding of the largely unmonitored dropboxes. They mention the fact that the "voter rolls had not been cleaned by the Secretary of State's office in two years." Phillips states, "The consequences were that all the ingredients were there to ensure that the crime could happen." Engelbrecht adds, "The exploitation was in place. The chaos was absolutely attainable."
While they believe Trump is correct in his assessment of the 2020 election, Engelbrecht says TTV "would have done the research whether or not Donald Trump would have been at issue [or not]. Because we recognize the exploitation of process and through the votes. TTV's history shows that our interest is in uncovering the subversion of the process that can be easily exploited and manipulated [for] the gain of those who know. They know where the skeletons are hidden." Engelbrecht emphasizes that TTV would have done the work regardless of the candidate involved.
We would have done this anyway coming out of the 2020 election, the 2021 runoff in Georgia, because we knew as a practical matter that the process was at risk. What has happened since then? It is something that, one day, the history books will see in full context. The attempt to target and silence one individual. We happen to be caught up in that crossfire and intend to remain standing. Our work is solid, it is true, and we look forward to sharing it all with you."
