Check My Vote and Others in the Crosshairs
December 2, 2024
The founder of a voter roll clean-up program is responding to a parade of lawyers and activists testifying in support of legislation that could limit how citizen volunteers participate in the election process.
On Wednesday, November 13, during the Michigan legislature’s lame duck session, the Senate’s Elections and Ethics Committee heard testimony regarding two election-related bills -- SB 707 and SB 1068 -- that target election "disinformation" and voter registration challenges
Phani Mantravadi, founder of Check My Vote, called much of the testimony “inaccurate and misleading.” The data and IT professional with 25 years’ experience objected to the statement from Alice Clapman, who accused Mantravadi’s company, Check My Vote, of abusing the system. Clapman, a Yale Law School-trained attorney, is a senior counsel for the Voting Rights and Elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice, based at New York University.
Her testimony was so inaccurate and misleading, Mantravadi said, that he felt compelled to create a video refuting her claims point-by-point.
For one, Clapman stated that SB 1068 would clarify and codify "important protections against interference in list maintenance by third parties." She alleged that election officials across the country had faced a coordinated "barrage of baseless mass voter challenges in the months and weeks leading up the elections.” She said, “These mass challenges were premised on conspiracy theories about voter fraud and misconceptions about the diligent work election officials already do to maintain updated voter rolls.”
Mantravadi's response
Mantravadi responded to Clapman’s video commentary with written comments outlined in red. "There is NO evidence that voter rolls are clean here in Michigan,” he wrote, “That is the reason why systems like EagleAI and CheckMyVote are gaining popularity."
Patrice Johnson, founder and chair of Pure Integrity Michigan Elections, agreed. “Here in Michigan, 106.13% of voting-aged population is registered to vote. This is an impossible number." She said other states average about 69% of registrants to voting-aged population. (See https://x.com/DeluxePsypher/status/1848090968270180364.)
“Citizen involvement may feel inconvenient and uncomfortable to elected officials and appointed bureaucrats,” she added. “The true ‘diligent’ government workers referenced in Clapman's statement realize they are paid public servants. They are humbled at the privilege of serving the people and don’t start acting like kings.”
CheckMyVote.org’s data comes directly from the state’s official voter rolls, and it allows its website’s visitors to “Audit My Address” at no charge. The company, which began in Michigan, now serves Tennessee and Ohio as well.
Fact finding or intimidation?
Clapman claimed that SB 1068 would protect eligible voters from wrongful removal of from the rolls and it would protect voters and elections workers from “harassment and intimidation.”
Johnson grinned when asked to comment on Clapman’s concerns about the potential for a registrant’s “wrongful removal” from the voter rolls. “Someone should tell Attorney Clapman that Michigan has same day registration. If one of these 110- or 120-year-olds is mistakenly removed from the rolls, he or she can re-register online for an absentee ballot or come in and vote in person during any of 10 election days.” Johnson emphasized that PIME’s Soles to Rolls volunteers double and triple check the CMV data, researching obituaries and photographing cemetery headstones. She added, “This unsubstantiated song and dance about ‘harassment and intimidation’ is sounding tired.” She cited the FBI website that listed only one incident in Michigan.
CMV’s Scorecard rates each county's election integrity as green, yellow, or code red. The website invites individual citizens to check registrations listed in their home addresses. It also monitors undeliverable addresses, out of state movers, non-residential addresses, ancient registration dates, registrants aged 90 or more, and registrations whose home addressees are listed as a U.S. Post Office. As of December, Checkmyvote.org’s website reported these anomalies:
How BAD is Michigan Nov. 2024? Source: https://www.checkmyvote.org
Clapman, whose resume promotes her litigation experience in reproductive rights cases and her policy work for Planned Parenthood, offered her organization’s “full support” of SB 1068.
Mantravadi’s video challenged Clapman’s statements, starting with her opening claim that the Brennan Center is non-partisan. He emphasized that people should know she was not presenting unbiased testimony.
Quoting Wikipedia, which is itself considered left-leaning, Mantravadi tells his audience the Brennan Center is a “a liberal or progressive nonprofit law and public policy institute.”
Influence Watch agrees with Wikipedia and Mantravadi, writing that the Brennan Center is a “self-described ‘liberal’ legal advocacy organization that focuses its policy activism on advancing left-of-center policy priorities on election-related, criminal justice, racial, and political institutional change.”
Clapman is one of 130 attorneys working for the Brennan Center, an organization with a 2021 budget of $101 million.
Stanford Law graduate Erica Peresman, senior advisor at Promote the Vote Michigan testified in support of SB1068 and made claims similar to Clapman's. He also referenced groups that “appear to be part of a national movement to cast doubt on the accuracy of our voter rolls.”
Kyle Zawacki, Michigan ACLU’s legislative director, testified on behalf of SB 707 along with Erin Schor, the legislative policy director for Jocelyn Benson’s Department of State.
Senator Mary Cavanaugh (D-6th District), the sponsor of SB 707, introduced the new legislation, saying, “We worked hand-in-hand with the ACLU, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, municipal governments and advocacy groups.”
Checks and balances
“When one party controls the legislature and the governor’s seat, there is often little effort to act in a bipartisan manner on behalf of the public. Both SB 707 and SB 1068 were written in consultation with some of the nation’s most extreme, cash-flush organizations,” Johnson said.
The Michigan Senate may vote on SB 707 and SB 1068 as early as Tuesday, December 3. However, according to House Speaker Protempore Rep. Rachelle Smit, (R- 43rd House District) “There are no equivalent bills to SB 707 and 1068 in the House.” If passed by the Senate, she said, the bills would "have to be passed by both chambers before going to the governor's desk." Smit thought the House was unlikely to approve them, "if the R's stick together."
“The vote on Tuesday is the Democrat-controlled legislature’s Hail Mary attempt to push through this kind of radical legislation before January when Republicans will control the House,” Johnson said. Rumor is that Governor Whitmer (D) is pushing current House and Senate majority leaders to pass these election-integrity-killing bills during the lame duck session.
"We need to remain vigilant during lame duck as extremists on the left try to pass more legislation to strip away integrity from our elections,” said State Senator Ruth Johnson (R-Senate District 24). “These bills would make it easier for non-residents to vote in Michigan and would try to put restrictive new laws on poll challengers that have been pushed by the secretary of state.”
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