Election truthers admit in court they don't have evidence for Georgia voter fraud: report

True the Vote, the right-wing group whose alleged data formed the basis of the election conspiracy theorist documentary "2,000 Mules," told a court it doesn't have any records to support its claims of extensive voter fraud in Georgia, reportedThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday.

"True the Vote said in a recent court filing that it doesn’t know the identity of its own anonymous source who told a story of a 'ballot trafficking' scheme allegedly organized by a network of unnamed groups paying $10 per ballot delivered," reported Mark Niesse. "True the Vote also told the court it doesn’t have documents about illegal ballot collection, the name of its purported informant or confidentiality agreements it previously said existed. The records were subpoenaed by the State Election Board in 2022."

"It just doesn't make sense," said Matt Mashburn, a Republican who previously served as acting chair of the State Election Board. “It’s odd to have someone make an allegation and then fight so hard to hold onto the truth of that allegation.”

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True the Vote, a group based in Texas known for pushing restrictions on ballot access, was the primary source for "2,000 Mules," directed by provocateur documentarian Dinesh D'Souza. According to that film, which has been widely discredited by election experts, groups in several states engaged in illegal "ballot harvesting" by collecting ballots from other people to drop them off.

Ballot harvesting is not inherently illegal in every state; many states broadly outlaw the practice, but make exceptions in certain circumstances. Furthermore, True the Vote's evidence was largely based off of cell phone ping data that showed certain people repeatedly in the vicinity of certain ballot boxes, which doesn't actually prove they were harvesting ballots at those sites.

When the book version of "2,000 Mules" was published, it actually had to be recalled by the publisher to scrub out further unsupportable claims that specific, named nonprofits were involved in illegal ballot harvesting, and that the operation had ties to "antifa" activists and Black Lives Matter.