It's very disturbing to see so many people praising this film. Follow this link to read a comprehensive debunking of this complete false and very dangerous documentary by an extreme right wing director,
Here is a comprehensive debunking from The Associated Press
CLAIM: At least 2,000 "mules" were paid to illegally collect ballots and deliver them to drop boxes in key swing states ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
THE FACTS: True the Vote didn't prove this. The finding is based on false assumptions about the precision of cellphone tracking data and the reasons that someone might drop off multiple ballots, according to experts.
"Ballot harvesting" is a pejorative term for dropping off completed ballots for people besides yourself. The practice is legal in several states but largely illegal in the states True the Vote focused on, with some exceptions for family, household members and people with disabilities.
True the Vote has said it found some 2,000 ballot harvesters by purchasing $2 million worth of anonymized cellphone geolocation data - the "pings" that track a person's location based on app activity - in various swing counties across five states. Then, by drawing a virtual boundary around a county's ballot drop boxes and various unnamed nonprofits, it identified cellphones that repeatedly went near both ahead of the 2020 election.
If a cellphone went near a drop box more than 10 times and a nonprofit more than five times from Oct. 1 to Election Day, True the Vote assumed its owner was a "mule" - its name for someone engaged in an illegal ballot collection scheme in cahoots with a nonprofit.
The group's claims of a paid ballot harvesting scheme are supported in the film only by one unidentified whistleblower said to be from San Luis, Arizona, who said she saw people picking up what she "assumed" to be payments for ballot collection. The film contains no evidence of such payments in other states in 2020.
Plus, experts say cellphone location data, even at its most advanced, can only reliably track a smartphone within a few meters - not close enough to know whether someone actually dropped off a ballot or just walked or drove nearby.
"You could use cellular evidence to say this person was in that area, but to say they were at the ballot box, you're stretching it a lot," said Aaron Striegel, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame. "There's always a pretty healthy amount of uncertainty that comes with this." What's more, ballot drop boxes are often intentionally placed in busy areas, such as college campuses, libraries, government buildings and apartment complexes - increasing the likelihood that innocent citizens got caught in the group's dragnet, Striegel said.
Similarly, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone might be visiting both a nonprofit's office and one of those busy areas. Delivery drivers, postal workers, cab drivers, poll workers and elected officials all have legitimate reasons to cross paths with numerous drop boxes or nonprofits in a given day.
True the Vote has said it filtered out people whose "pattern of life" before the election season included frequenting nonprofit and drop box locations. But that strategy wouldn't filter out election workers who spend more time at drop boxes during the election season, cab drivers whose daily paths don't follow a pattern, or people whose routines recently changed.
In some states, in an attempt to bolster its claims, True the Vote also highlighted drop box surveillance footage that showed voters depositing multiple ballots into the boxes. However, there was no way to tell whether those voters were the same people as the ones whose cellphones were anonymously tracked.
A video of a voter dropping off a stack of ballots at a drop box is not itself proof of any wrongdoing, since most states have legal exceptions that let people drop off ballots on behalf of family members and household members.
For example, Larry Campbell, a voter in Michigan who was not featured in the film, told The Associated Press he legally dropped off six ballots in a local drop box in 2020 - one for himself, his wife, and his four adult children. And in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office investigated one of the surveillance videos circulated by True the Vote and said it found the man was dropping off ballots for himself and his family.
CLAIM: In Philadelphia alone, True the Vote identified 1,155 "mules" who illegally collected and dropped off ballots for money.
THE FACTS: No, it didn't. The group hasn't offered any evidence of any sort of paid ballot harvesting scheme in Philadelphia. And True the Vote did not get surveillance footage of drop boxes in Philadelphia, so the group based this claim solely on cellphone location data, its researcher Gregg Phillips said in March in testimony to Pennsylvania state senators.
Pennsylvania state Sen. Sharif Street, who was there for the group's testimony in March, told the AP he was confident he was counted as several of the group's 1,155 anonymous "mules," even though he didn't deposit anything into a drop box in that time period.
Street said he based his assessment on the fact that he carries a cellphone, a watch with a cellular connection, a tablet with a cellular connection and a mobile hotspot - four devices whose locations can be tracked by private companies. He also said he typically travels with a staffer who carries two devices, bringing the total on his person to six.
During the 2020 election season, Street said, he brought those devices on trips to nonprofit offices and drop box rallies. He also drove by one drop box up to seven or eight times a day when traveling between his two political offices.
"I did no ballot stuffing, but over the course of time, I literally probably account for hundreds and hundreds of their unique visits, even though I'm a single actor in a single vehicle moving back and forth in my ordinary course of business," Street said.
City election commission spokesman Nick Custodio said the allegations matched others that had been debunked or disproven after the 2020 election.
"The Trump campaign and others filed an unprecedented litany of cases challenging Philadelphia's election with dubious and unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, all of which were quickly and resoundingly rejected by both state and federal courts," Custodio said.
CLAIM: Some of the "mules" True the Vote identified in Georgia were also geolocated at violent antifa riots in Atlanta in the summer of 2020, showing they were violent far left actors.
THE FACTS: Setting aside the fact that the film doesn't prove these individuals were collecting ballots at all, it also can't prove their political affiliations.
The anonymized data True the Vote tracked doesn't explain why someone might have been present at a protest demanding justice for Black deaths at the hands of police officers. The individuals who were tracked there could have been violent rioters, but they also could have been peaceful protesters, police or firefighters responding to the protests, or business owners in the area.
CLAIM: Alleged ballot harvesters were captured on surveillance video wearing gloves because they didn't want to leave their fingerprints on the ballots.
THE FACTS: This is pure speculation. It ignores far more likely reasons for glove-wearing in the fall and winter of 2020 - cold weather or COVID-19.
True the Vote's researcher claimed in the movie that voters in Georgia started wearing gloves to prevent their fingerprints from touching ballot envelopes after two women in Yuma, Arizona, were indicted on Dec. 23, 2020 for alleged ballot harvesting in that state's primary election. But the Arizona indictment didn't mention anything about fingerprints.
Voting in Georgia's Jan. 5, 2021, Senate runoff election occurred during some of the coldest weeks of the year in the state, and when COVID-19 was surging.
In fact, the AP in 2020 documented multipleexamples of COVID-cautious voters wearing latex gloves and other personal protective equipment to vote.
In a similarly speculative allegation, the film claims its supposed "mules" took photographs of ballots before they dropped them into drop boxes in order to get paid. But across the U. S., voters frequently take photos of their ballot envelopes before submitting them
It's so sad that people would rather believe this kind of sensationalist conspiracy nonsense than the evidence of dedicated professional investigators in the FBI and local police authorities who have exhaustively investigated all these claims. Sadly, the growingly extremist right wing are using the lie of a stolen election as an excuse to mount a concerted challenge to the democratic system itself. Across the country districts are being gerrymandered, voter lists suppressed, and Republican-controlled state legislatures are passing laws that will enable them to overturn legitimate results of elections. This is the real conspiracy. If you truly love the USA , campaign vigorously to preserve a free and fair election system.
CLAIM: At least 2,000 "mules" were paid to illegally collect ballots and deliver them to drop boxes in key swing states ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
THE FACTS: True the Vote didn't prove this. The finding is based on false assumptions about the precision of cellphone tracking data and the reasons that someone might drop off multiple ballots, according to experts.
"Ballot harvesting" is a pejorative term for dropping off completed ballots for people besides yourself. The practice is legal in several states but largely illegal in the states True the Vote focused on, with some exceptions for family, household members and people with disabilities.
True the Vote has said it found some 2,000 ballot harvesters by purchasing $2 million worth of anonymized cellphone geolocation data - the "pings" that track a person's location based on app activity - in various swing counties across five states. Then, by drawing a virtual boundary around a county's ballot drop boxes and various unnamed nonprofits, it identified cellphones that repeatedly went near both ahead of the 2020 election.
If a cellphone went near a drop box more than 10 times and a nonprofit more than five times from Oct. 1 to Election Day, True the Vote assumed its owner was a "mule" - its name for someone engaged in an illegal ballot collection scheme in cahoots with a nonprofit.
The group's claims of a paid ballot harvesting scheme are supported in the film only by one unidentified whistleblower said to be from San Luis, Arizona, who said she saw people picking up what she "assumed" to be payments for ballot collection. The film contains no evidence of such payments in other states in 2020.
Plus, experts say cellphone location data, even at its most advanced, can only reliably track a smartphone within a few meters - not close enough to know whether someone actually dropped off a ballot or just walked or drove nearby.
"You could use cellular evidence to say this person was in that area, but to say they were at the ballot box, you're stretching it a lot," said Aaron Striegel, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame. "There's always a pretty healthy amount of uncertainty that comes with this." What's more, ballot drop boxes are often intentionally placed in busy areas, such as college campuses, libraries, government buildings and apartment complexes - increasing the likelihood that innocent citizens got caught in the group's dragnet, Striegel said.
Similarly, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone might be visiting both a nonprofit's office and one of those busy areas. Delivery drivers, postal workers, cab drivers, poll workers and elected officials all have legitimate reasons to cross paths with numerous drop boxes or nonprofits in a given day.
True the Vote has said it filtered out people whose "pattern of life" before the election season included frequenting nonprofit and drop box locations. But that strategy wouldn't filter out election workers who spend more time at drop boxes during the election season, cab drivers whose daily paths don't follow a pattern, or people whose routines recently changed.
In some states, in an attempt to bolster its claims, True the Vote also highlighted drop box surveillance footage that showed voters depositing multiple ballots into the boxes. However, there was no way to tell whether those voters were the same people as the ones whose cellphones were anonymously tracked.
A video of a voter dropping off a stack of ballots at a drop box is not itself proof of any wrongdoing, since most states have legal exceptions that let people drop off ballots on behalf of family members and household members.
For example, Larry Campbell, a voter in Michigan who was not featured in the film, told The Associated Press he legally dropped off six ballots in a local drop box in 2020 - one for himself, his wife, and his four adult children. And in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office investigated one of the surveillance videos circulated by True the Vote and said it found the man was dropping off ballots for himself and his family.
CLAIM: In Philadelphia alone, True the Vote identified 1,155 "mules" who illegally collected and dropped off ballots for money.
THE FACTS: No, it didn't. The group hasn't offered any evidence of any sort of paid ballot harvesting scheme in Philadelphia. And True the Vote did not get surveillance footage of drop boxes in Philadelphia, so the group based this claim solely on cellphone location data, its researcher Gregg Phillips said in March in testimony to Pennsylvania state senators.
Pennsylvania state Sen. Sharif Street, who was there for the group's testimony in March, told the AP he was confident he was counted as several of the group's 1,155 anonymous "mules," even though he didn't deposit anything into a drop box in that time period.
Street said he based his assessment on the fact that he carries a cellphone, a watch with a cellular connection, a tablet with a cellular connection and a mobile hotspot - four devices whose locations can be tracked by private companies. He also said he typically travels with a staffer who carries two devices, bringing the total on his person to six.
During the 2020 election season, Street said, he brought those devices on trips to nonprofit offices and drop box rallies. He also drove by one drop box up to seven or eight times a day when traveling between his two political offices.
"I did no ballot stuffing, but over the course of time, I literally probably account for hundreds and hundreds of their unique visits, even though I'm a single actor in a single vehicle moving back and forth in my ordinary course of business," Street said.
City election commission spokesman Nick Custodio said the allegations matched others that had been debunked or disproven after the 2020 election.
"The Trump campaign and others filed an unprecedented litany of cases challenging Philadelphia's election with dubious and unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, all of which were quickly and resoundingly rejected by both state and federal courts," Custodio said.
CLAIM: Some of the "mules" True the Vote identified in Georgia were also geolocated at violent antifa riots in Atlanta in the summer of 2020, showing they were violent far left actors.
THE FACTS: Setting aside the fact that the film doesn't prove these individuals were collecting ballots at all, it also can't prove their political affiliations.
The anonymized data True the Vote tracked doesn't explain why someone might have been present at a protest demanding justice for Black deaths at the hands of police officers. The individuals who were tracked there could have been violent rioters, but they also could have been peaceful protesters, police or firefighters responding to the protests, or business owners in the area.
CLAIM: Alleged ballot harvesters were captured on surveillance video wearing gloves because they didn't want to leave their fingerprints on the ballots.
THE FACTS: This is pure speculation. It ignores far more likely reasons for glove-wearing in the fall and winter of 2020 - cold weather or COVID-19.
True the Vote's researcher claimed in the movie that voters in Georgia started wearing gloves to prevent their fingerprints from touching ballot envelopes after two women in Yuma, Arizona, were indicted on Dec. 23, 2020 for alleged ballot harvesting in that state's primary election. But the Arizona indictment didn't mention anything about fingerprints.
Voting in Georgia's Jan. 5, 2021, Senate runoff election occurred during some of the coldest weeks of the year in the state, and when COVID-19 was surging.
In fact, the AP in 2020 documented multipleexamples of COVID-cautious voters wearing latex gloves and other personal protective equipment to vote.
In a similarly speculative allegation, the film claims its supposed "mules" took photographs of ballots before they dropped them into drop boxes in order to get paid. But across the U. S., voters frequently take photos of their ballot envelopes before submitting them
It's so sad that people would rather believe this kind of sensationalist conspiracy nonsense than the evidence of dedicated professional investigators in the FBI and local police authorities who have exhaustively investigated all these claims. Sadly, the growingly extremist right wing are using the lie of a stolen election as an excuse to mount a concerted challenge to the democratic system itself. Across the country districts are being gerrymandered, voter lists suppressed, and Republican-controlled state legislatures are passing laws that will enable them to overturn legitimate results of elections. This is the real conspiracy. If you truly love the USA , campaign vigorously to preserve a free and fair election system.