A Reading Guide to True the Vote, the Controversial Voter Fraud Watchdog

As Nov. 6 approaches, the efforts of True the Vote, a Texas anti-voter
fraud group recently profiled
by the New York Times, are gaining national attention.    

Despite scant evidence
of voter fraud, the group is laser-focused on weeding it out. It has pushed
for voter-ID laws, voter roll purges and other controversial voting-related
measures in a host of states. (Here is our guide
to the voter ID controversy, where we note that evidence on both sides of the
issue is lacking.)

True the Vote also has promised to deliver 1 million
volunteer poll watchers on Election Day, though its resources appear to be quite
modest.

Given its annual summits featuring conservative speakers
and its hand in spurring voter integrity projects
around the country, we thought we’d take a closer look at this activist group.

The basics

True the Vote is a grassroots initiative spun out of a
Houston, Texas-based Tea Party organization called King Street Patriots. Its
focus is on training volunteers to serve as poll watchers on Election Day and inspecting
voter registration rolls for hints of inconsistency to flag
to elections officials.

The group believes
that citizen vigilance is necessary to protect elections from corruption and
fraud.

Its leader, Catherine Engelbrecht, a former poll worker and
suburban Texas mom, has repeatedly emphasized
the group’s nonpartisanship. “This has absolutely nothing to do with race or
creed or color or party or politics, it’s about principle,” Engelbrecht
said earlier this year in an
interview to NRA News, a channel of the National Rifle Association.

But many of the group’s tactics have come under fire
for intimidating
would-be voters and raising the specter of voter
suppression. True the Vote has been backed mainly by Republican lawmakers and
opposed by voting advocates that warn of minority
disenfranchisement.

True the Vote did not respond to ProPublica’s request for
comment about these allegations.

Last year, True the Vote and King Street Patriots
jointly released a blueprint
for legislation to change voter registration rules. The guide’s recommendations
included requiring photo ID to vote, increasing penalties for forged or
otherwise fraudulent voter registration applications, prohibiting same-day
voter registration, allowing recording devices inside polling precincts and
designating English as the “official language of Texas and the only language
used on ballots.”

What about funding?

So far, there hasn’t been much. According to True the Vote’s
tax
forms, the group raised $65,000 in 2010 and $137,000 in 2011.

While much of the money has come from anonymous
donors, the New York Times reported that True the Vote received a $35,000
donation in 2011 from the Lynde and
Harry Bradley Foundation, a Wisconsin-based organization known to award grants
to conservative groups.

According to the Times, True the Vote had to return
the donation because it was given on the condition that the group’s application
for tax-exempt status was approved by the
IRS, which has not happened yet. We’ve asked True the Vote about this donation
and it didn’t respond to a request for comment.

It’s really
going to have 1 million volunteers on Election Day?

That is the goal,
says Engelbrecht, the organization’s chief: To “train, mobilize, and merge a
million new election workers into the 2012 process,” according to remarks she made
last August during a panel hosted by the conservative group Judicial Watch.

But it’s unclear how many volunteers True the Vote
actually has.

While True the Vote initially focused on Harris
County, Texas – the nation’s third-largest voting district – they say
they’ve since expanded into 35 states.

Michael Power, a True the Vote volunteer in Alabama contacted
by ProPublica from a Tea Party Patriots group web
page, said that his work involves looking out for “voters who are
registered at non-residential properties, vacant lots, those types of things,”
or reporting fellow poll workers “who might be improperly influencing a
person’s ballot.”

According to Power, voter rolls are purchased from the
state, but also from “various companies that assemble records from the state,”
a strategy outlined here in this profile
by ColorLines Magazine.

In interviews, Engelbrecht often discusses
her observations as a poll worker during the 2008 election as her “Eureka”
moment. In that year, ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now, became caught up in a controversy
over collecting phony voter registration applications.

In recent months, True the Vote has taken up the mantle of Section 8 of the
National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires states to maintain their
voter registration rolls by removing the deceased, convicted felons or
otherwise ineligible voters from their lists. (In February, a Pew Center on the
States report
found that 1.8 million dead people are still included on voter rolls while 2.75
million people are registered in more than one state.)

True the Vote has sent letters to 160 counties around the
country alleging they have failed to update their voter rolls, according to “Bullies
at the Ballot Box,” a report by liberal groups Common Cause and Demos that is
critical of True the Vote’s methods.

Through its attorneys, True the Vote has demanded
a correction and retraction of the report, which it says contains “misleading
information” and “false and defamatory statements.”

Partnerships

True the Vote has helped get out its name by partnering with
larger, more prominent organizations. It has co-sponsored
events with Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group backed by the billionaire
Koch brothers and collaborated with other nonprofits such as Tea Party Patriots in places from Colorado
to Alabama
to host “Election Integrity” fundraisers and recruitment events.

Its mission also strongly resembles that of Republican-led
political action committee Madison
Project’s Code
Red USA, which works on “participating in election integrity efforts,
and/or participating in cross community engagement.”

Engelbrecht told
the New York Times that her group has no connection to Code Red USA.

Connections to the Tea
Party King Street Patriots

True the Vote is often referred to as an offshoot
of King Street Patriots. The two share leadership: Catherine Engelbrecht, her
husband, Bryan Engelbrecht, and a person named Dianne Josephs are all listed as
directors on both groups’ tax forms. But a True the Vote spokesman told us that
despite these connections, the group keeps separate accounting structures and staff
from King Street Patriots.

That is relevant because True the
Vote is seeking tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, which is for charitable
or educational organizations that can only engage in a limited amount of
lobbying and can’t support or oppose candidates for elected office.

King Street Patriots, by contrast, is a 501(c)(4)
social welfare group, meaning it can engage in an unlimited amount of political
lobbying, as long as that is not its primary purpose (the definition of which
is extremely murky, as ProPublica’s recent investigation
into dark money groups detailed).

While it’s common for c4 groups to have separate charitable
arms—The Sierra Club and National Rifle Association are examples of this—they
must keep their financial accounting separate, said Lloyd Mayer, a law
professor specializing in nonprofits and election law at Notre Dame Law School.

“It can even share a name, but it has to have its own money.
That’s the key thing,” Mayer said.

According to a tax
filing King Street Patriots provided to ProPublica, the group received $140,722
in donations in 2010. It’s received an extension on its 2011 tax filing.

‘Verify the Recall’

Earlier this year, thousands of True the Vote volunteers got
involved in the Wisconsin
recall election through an initiative, “Verify
the Recall,” that sought to identify
illegitimate signatures on a petition to remove Republican Gov. Scott Walker
from office.

Using its own methodology,
True the Vote concluded that more than 63,000 signatures were ineligible.
It also identified 2,590 names that were “potentially
false” based on a predetermined list of names the group believed would be
used fraudulently on the petition. Organizers declined to share this list with
state officials.

The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, a
non-partisan state regulatory agency consisting of six former state judge
appointees, later discounted
much of the group’s findings and methodology, concluding they were
“significantly less accurate, complete, and reliable than the review and
analysis completed by the G.A.B.” and that they “would not have survived legal
challenge.”

True the Vote’s Lawsuits

Earlier this year, True the Vote teamed up with Judicial
Watch to sue elections officials in Ohio
and Indiana
for their alleged failure to clean up their voter rolls.

In June, the group filed a motion
for intervention in a lawsuit
brought by the Department of Justice to halt the Florida voter
purge. Should the purge stop, the group argued, “registered voter members
may have their votes cancelled out or diluted by unlawful ballots cast in the
names of unlawfully present aliens.”

Florida elections officials originally identified
up to 2,600 non-citizens registered to vote in the state. But it turns out the
number was actually a lot smaller.
Recently, the state reached a partial
agreement with voting rights groups, agreeing to notify these flagged
voters that they’ll remain eligible to vote in November.

2010 election
controversy

In 2010, the Department of Justice launched
a probe of alleged voter
intimidation efforts by True the Vote poll watchers during the midterm
elections in districts near Houston.

That year, a national voter hotline received
more than 200 calls alleging voter intimidation – as well as other
election snafus – from several states, Texas included. It’s unclear to
what extent True the Vote was responsible for those complaints.

The Justice Department investigation didn’t proceed any
further. True the Vote didn’t respond to our questions about the episode.

Update 11/6: True the Vote won’t be watching the polls in Franklin County, Ohio, during today’s election. The group was denied status as official poll watchers after the local board of elections determined they had misused candidates’ signatures on their application to be election-watchers.

Ohio law says five candidates must endorse a poll-watching effort. According to the Columbus Dispatch, “at least most” of the six candidates whose signatures True the Vote had obtained withdrew their support. One Democratic candidate for judge told MSNBC that she had been misled about the group’s intentions when she initially signed their application. She sent a withdrawal letter to the board of elections on Oct. 1.

But True the Vote submitted another application with the same signatures. Local elections officials have said they will investigate whether forms were intentionally falsified. True the Vote released a statement saying that they filled out the forms according to instructions and that neither the group nor any of its volunteers did anything “that was illegal or unethical.”