Vigilantes Inc.: America's New Vote Suppression Hitmen is an American documentary film that premiered on YouTube in October 2024. [1] The film was produced by Martin Sheen. [2] [3]
Led by investigative journalist Greg Palast, the film documents voter suppression in the United States by "vigilante" challenges of self-appointed electoral fraud hunters, not government officials, who are targeting well over one million people to challenge and block the counting of their ballots. The majority of the vigilantes' targets are young voters and minorities. Currently, the Donald Trump-sponsored group True the Vote has gone from 88 vigilantes to over 40,000 “volunteers” in 43 US states.
Ramón Gerard Antonio Estévez, known professionally as Martin Sheen, is an American actor. In a career spanning six decades he has received numerous accolades including three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Gregory Allyn Palast is an author and a freelance journalist who has often worked for the BBC and The Guardian. His work frequently focuses on corporate malfeasance but he has also worked with labour unions and consumer advocacy groups.
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: An Investigative Reporter Exposes the Truth about Globalization, Corporate Cons, and High Finance Fraudsters is a 2002 book by investigative journalist Greg Palast. It is about corporate corruption, global capitalism, environmental destruction, third world exploitation, freedom of speech and political corruption, and the United States presidential election of 2000. Palast used the book as the basis for his 2004 documentary film Bush Family Fortunes.
Elections in Georgia are held to fill various state and federal seats. Regular elections are held every even year. The positions being decided each year varies, as the terms of office varies. The State Senate, State House and U.S. House will typically be up for election, as all of those positions have two-year terms. Special elections are held to fill vacated offices. Georgia is one of seven states that require a run-off election if no candidate receives a majority of the vote in a primary election and one of only two states that require a run-off election for state and congressional offices if no candidate wins a majority of the vote in a general election; Louisiana has a similar requirement, but it operates under a different election system.
Voter caging is a colloquial term used in the United States referring to a campaign activity used to remove, or attempt to remove, targeted voters from official lists of registered voters. It occurs when a non-governmental organization, such as a political party or a campaign, sends first-class mail to registered voters, in order to compile a so-called "challenge list" of the names of those whose letters are returned undelivered. The fact that the mail was returned as undeliverable may be seen as either proof, or strong evidence of, the person no longer residing at the address on their voter registration. The challenge list is presented to election officials with the suggestion that the officials should purge these names from the voter registration rolls or to challenge voters' eligibility to vote on the grounds that the voters no longer reside at their registered addresses.
Brian Porter Kemp is an American politician serving since 2019 as the 83rd governor of Georgia. A member of the Republican Party, Kemp served as the state's 27th Secretary of State from 2010 to 2018, and as a member of the Georgia State Senate from 2003 to 2007.
Stacey Yvonne Abrams is an American politician, lawyer, voting rights activist, and author who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017, serving as minority leader from 2011 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Abrams founded Fair Fight Action, an organization to address voter suppression, in 2018. Her efforts have been widely credited with boosting voter turnout in Georgia, including in the 2020 presidential election, when Joe Biden narrowly won the state, and in Georgia's 2020–21 regularly scheduled and special U.S. Senate elections, which gave Democrats control of the Senate.
True the Vote (TTV) is a conservative vote-monitoring organization based in Houston, Texas, whose stated objective is stopping voter fraud. The organization supports voter ID laws and trains volunteers to be election monitors and to spot and bring attention to suspicious voter registrations that its volunteers believe delegitimize voter eligibility. The organization's founder is Catherine Engelbrecht.
Cleta B. Deatherage Mitchell is an American lawyer, former politician, and Republican elections activist. Elected in 1976, Mitchell served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives until 1984, representing District 44 as a member of the Democratic Party. In 1996, she registered as a Republican. Since then, she has worked as a Republican lawyer and activist focused on elections, asserting, without evidence, that Democrats win elections only by cheating.
Voter suppression in the United States consists of various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote. Such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Voter suppression has historically been used for racial, economic, gender, age and disability discrimination. After the American Civil War, all African-American men were granted voting rights, but poll taxes or language tests were used to limit and suppress the ability to register or cast a ballot. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 improved voting access. Since the beginning of voter suppression efforts, proponents of these laws have cited concerns over electoral integrity as a justification for various restrictions and requirements, while opponents argue that these constitute bad faith given the lack of voter fraud evidence in the United States.
"Make America Great Again" is an American political slogan and political movement most recently popularized by Donald Trump during his successful presidential campaigns in 2016 and in 2024. "MAGA" is also used to refer to Trump's political base, or to an individual or group of individuals from within that base. The slogan became a pop culture phenomenon, seeing widespread use and spawning numerous variants in the arts, entertainment and politics, being used by both supporters and opponents of Trump's presidency. Originally used by Ronald Reagan as a campaign slogan in his 1980 presidential campaign, it has since been described as a loaded phrase. Multiple scholars, journalists, and commentators have called the slogan racist, regarding it as dog-whistle politics and coded language.
In the United States, electoral fraud, or voter fraud, involves illegal voting in or manipulation of United States elections. Types of fraud include voter impersonation or in-person voter fraud, mail-in or absentee ballot fraud, illegal voting by noncitizens, and double voting. The United States government defines voter or ballot fraud as one of three broad categories of federal election crimes, the other two being campaign finance crimes and civil rights violations.
The 2016 Arizona Republican presidential primary took place on March 22 in the U.S. state of Arizona as one of the Republican Party's primaries ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Despite a late challenge by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Donald Trump won the primary and netted all 58 delegates in the winner-take-all contest. On the same day were held Democratic and Green primaries in Arizona, as well as Republican and Democratic caucuses in Utah and Idaho Democratic caucus, so the day was dubbed "Western Tuesday" by media.
The 2020 United States presidential election in Georgia was held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Georgia voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump of Florida, and running mate Vice President Mike Pence of Indiana against Democratic Party nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden of Delaware, and his running mate Senator Kamala Harris of California. Georgia has 16 electoral votes in the Electoral College.
The 2020 United States presidential election in Texas was held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Texas voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump, and running mate, Vice President Mike Pence, against the Democratic Party's nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris. The state of Texas had 38 electoral votes in the Electoral College.
The Democratic Coalition, formerly known as the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, is an American Super PAC founded in 2016 by Nathan Lerner, Scott Dworkin, and Jon Cooper for the purpose of opposing Donald Trump, with a fundraising goal of $20 million by Election Day. It was originally known as the Keep America Great PAC.
Following the 2020 United States presidential election and the unsuccessful attempts by Donald Trump and various other Republican officials to overturn it, Republican lawmakers initiated a sweeping effort to make voting laws more restrictive within several states across the country. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of October 4, 2021, more than 425 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states—with 33 of these bills enacted across 19 states so far. The bills are largely centered around limiting mail-in voting, strengthening voter ID laws, shortening early voting, eliminating automatic and same-day voter registration, curbing the use of ballot drop boxes, and allowing for increased purging of voter rolls. Republicans in at least eight states have also introduced bills that would give lawmakers greater power over election administration after they were unsuccessful in their attempts to overturn election results in swing states won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The efforts garnered press attention and public outrage from Democrats, and by 2023 Republicans had adopted a more "under the radar" approach to achieve their goals.
The 2024 United States presidential election in Georgia took place on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, as part of the 2024 United States elections in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Georgia voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote. The state of Georgia has 16 electoral votes in the Electoral College, following reapportionment due to the 2020 United States census in which it neither gained nor lost a seat. Georgia was considered to be a crucial swing state in 2024.
The 2024 United States presidential election in Pennsylvania took place on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, as part of the 2024 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Pennsylvania voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote. The state of Pennsylvania has 19 electoral votes in the Electoral College, following reapportionment due to the 2020 United States census in which the state lost a seat.
Republican Party's efforts to disrupt the 2024 United States presidential election involve a series of coordinated actions intended to influence election outcomes at both federal and state levels. These efforts, which were preceded by Republican efforts to restrict voting following the 2020 presidential election, are characterized by legislative, legal, and administrative strategies that seeked to affect voter access, election oversight, and post-election certification processes. This initiative grew out of widespread claims within certain Republican Party circles about election integrity, many of which trace back to the 2020 United States presidential election and Trump's false claims of a stolen election, including the election denial movement in the United States, despite a lack of substantial evidence supporting these allegations.