Election Conspiracy-Mongers’ ‘Election Integrity’ App Flaw Reveals Voter Suppression Plan (Along With User Data)

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the voter-suppression-in-the-guise-of-voter-integrity dept

Here’s a final election day story. This time, it’s about an “election integrity” app being used by MAGA folks to spread absolute nonsense about the election, but also to confess their own illegal voter suppression schemes. And thanks to their crap security, it’s now being reported.

At a time when the facts-optional GOP likes to flip everything on its head (calling legitimate reporting they dislike “fake news,” or basic editorial decision making “election interference”), they’re now using “election integrity” as the term to mean “here’s how we best violate free and fair elections.”

The group True the Vote, which has been behind a ton of election conspiracy theories, created an “election integrity app” called “VoteAlert” that they encouraged the MAGA faithful to use to report any fraudulent election activity they came across. True the Vote is the group behind the ridiculously stupid “2000 Mules” conspiracy theory film (you know, the one widely promoted by Trump loyalists, but which its very MAGA publishing company later felt the need to retract, remove, and apologize for?)

Yet, as Wired points out in an article today, the app’s security was so piss poor that it exposed all sorts of private info of those using the app, including emails and the submitted comments by users. That allowed Wired’s excellent security reporter Dhruv Mehrotra to take a look at what people were using the app for, and apparently, “committing actual voter fraud” was on the list:

In a since-deleted VoteAlert post reviewed by WIRED, a user wrote: “I’m probably going to be fired for this but I was hired by the Riverside County Registrar of Voters as an Election Officer in Hemet, CA. Since I’m in charge at this polling center, I’m asking for citizenship ID of anyone that looks suspiciously like they’re not here legally.”

The post went on to suggest that the Riverside County Sheriff’s office wouldn’t intervene in her scheme. “It’s just a drop in the bucket but I’m going to do my part to stop election fraud,” she wrote. “Wish me luck🙏”

WIRED traced the email associated with the post to a California woman who describes herself as a person who is “FED UP with all the bullsh*t,” according to one app profile. “You’re only getting the hard, smack-your-face TRUTH from me.”

That is all very much illegal. You can argue over voter ID laws, but the fact is that California does not have one and it’s against the law to check citizenship status in California. And, no, this does not mean that non-citizens are voting. There are other systems that root that out, and what non-citizen is going to risk their presence in the country to vote?

Once again, it seems that every time we hear about claims of “voter fraud,” they seem to be coming from the MAGA world, accusing the Democrats of engaging in it. However, the very, very, very minimal number of cases of actual voter fraud being discovered almost always show it actually being conducted by MAGA folks who have been lied to and misled by Trump and others into believing the Democrats are doing it, thereby justifying their own illegal activities.

Filed Under: data breach, elections, voter integrity, voter suppression
Companies: true the vote