In 2020, Donald Trump and his backers tossed out an array of false election interference allegations. Republicans now have a sharper focus.
The “big lie” of the 2024 election is being workshopped on Webex.
In tiny boxes, hundreds of people, most of them white, meet weekly in online video conferences to share specious evidence of a problem that doesn’t exist: a leftist plot to “get the illegals to become voters,” as Jeff Vega, a conservative Latino activist in Michigan, put it at a meeting in August.
The participants, who have reportedly included a Wisconsin state lawmaker, a former Trump administration official and a U.S. congressman, bat around ideas for how to combat this supposed threat, from reviewing lists of noncitizens with driver’s licenses to scanning the voter rolls for “ethnic” names. They urge one another to go as far as they can within the bounds of the law.
These meetings are run by the Election Integrity Network, a coalition of conservatives “dedicated to securing the legality of every American vote,” and dozens of statewide partners. Reporters are prohibited, but recordings have leaked to media outlets including NBC News.
Hope not. Get out and vote!