Legal action was recently filed in hopes of stopping ostensible surveillance of drop boxes for mail-in ballots in at least two counties in Arizona, including its largest (by population), Maricopa.
There remains no real-world evidence of a systematic plot to drop off fraudulent ballots, and there is no indication that any much, much more limited threats that do emerge are somehow too much for the security systems, including cameras, already in place. These largely imaginary fraudsters don’t have invisibility cloaks, after all. What those monitoring drop boxes are really doing amounts in a substantive sense to little more than intimidating voters. Among those participating in the efforts have been individuals armed and wearing tactical gear, and state authorities at the office of Secretary of State Katie Hobbs have already received multiple complaints chronicling incidents of intimidation.
One recent federal lawsuit filed over the issue had the Protect Democracy Project, a non-profit organization, representing the League of Women Voters of Arizona, and it targeted groups including the Arizona arm of the Oath Keepers and two others called the Lions of Liberty and Clean Elections USA. The lawsuit accused those involved in these schemes of violating the Voting Rights Act and Ku Klux Klan Act, the latter of which prohibits conspiracies to impede individual voters from exercising key civil rights and which has come up in litigation against Trump related to his involvement in inciting the Capitol riot. The Lions of Liberty, which is apparently based in Arizona’s Yavapai County, abruptly announced its withdrawal from surveilling the drop boxes following the filing of federal litigation. Jack Healy, a reporter with The New York Times, obtained a copy of an email notice sent to volunteers with the group.
“We The lions of liberty have been named in a federal lawsuit,” the group said Thursday. “Unfortunately, we were named with other organizations with whom we have no association, and whose desire for law and order is much less than ours. Due to this fact and a possible restraining order, we are stepping down our sponsorship of Operation Drop Box.” Clean Elections USA, whose leader Melody Jennings recently spoke on Trump’s alternative social media site Truth Social about doxxing supposed ballot “mules,” is also targeted in another legal challenge from the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and Voto Latino. Based on what she said, it sounds like surveillance of drop boxes could take place elsewhere. Ballot “trafficking mules are about to be completely doxxed and put on blast at every drop box across America starting VERY SOON!” she declared.
A right-wing propaganda film called “2000 Mules,” which outlines claims of people referred to as “mules” who ferried fraudulent ballots to drop boxes during the 2020 elections, has widely circulated among Trump’s most extremist supporters. Trump and others close to him still push the claim that the 2020 election was rigged by some imagined force, somewhere — and this year, Trump has pushed for the invalidation of the 2020 result, through some authority declaring him the winner, holding a new election, or undoing Wisconsin’s results specifically.
An Oath Keeper-affiliated group staking out ballot drop boxes in Arizona got sued, and now says it's retreating pic.twitter.com/i6eaATJdft
— jack healy (@jackhealyNYT) October 27, 2022
