State police raided the offices of Indiana’s largest voter registration operation Tuesday morning, a dramatic step in a fast-developing investigation that police say is about voter fraud and election activists say amounts to a Republican-backed attack on access to the ballot in the Hoosier state.
According to organizers, nearly a dozen police entered the Indianapolis offices of the Indiana Voter Registration Project with a search warrant and seized multiple computers, the personal cellphones of employees, and paperwork relating to the group’s get-out-the-vote operations in the state.
The group alleges that police told a worker she was not allowed to film the raid and attempted to block workers from access to counsel, said Jeff Macey, the attorney representing the IVRP. He called me from his car parked across the street from the voting offices he said he was unable to enter.
With its headquarters stripped of essential equipment, the registration drive’s future is suddenly uncertain.
The Washington, D.C.-based liberal-leaning Patriot Majority oversees the Indiana voting drive. “At the end of the day, when they find that the organization has done nothing wrong,” said Patriot Majority head Craig Varoga, “they will still have killed the ability of this organization to register voters.”
The state’s investigation into the IVRP went public in mid-September when Indiana’s Republican Secretary of State Connie Lawson announced that at least 10 of the group’s voter registration applications had been forged. In a letter referring to the IVRP that Lawson sent to elections administrators in all of the state’s 92 counties, she warned that “nefarious actors are operating here in Indiana,” and instructed them to “please contact the Indiana State Police Special Investigations” if they receive registration forms submitted by the liberal-backed group.
The group retorted that it had already submitted tens of thousands of registrations in Indiana this year and that by zeroing in on just a handful of problematic applications the state appeared to be criminalizing a basic feature of voter registration itself, which inevitably involves submitting paperwork that contains imperfections.
Varoga said that in Indiana, members of a voter registration drive cannot legally choose to discard applications; even if something appears faulty, the group must submit the application for the state to review. In recent years, Patriot Majority has conducted registration drives in 12 states, said Varoga, who asserted that it is a matter of routine practice for elections administrators to work with get-out-the-vote activists to discuss and solve problems with faulty applications.
According to the Indiana State Police, which is leading the investigation into IVRP, the irregularities in the group’s applications do not appear to be innocent errors. “From what we found in the initial 10 that we looked at, and the reason we’re continuing to look, is that we found instances of totally fictitious information,” Dave Bursten, the chief public information officer for the Indiana State Police, told me last week. “People that didn’t exist with addresses that didn’t exist. On others, real people have had their registration cards updated with incorrect information, which would potentially disenfranchise them from being able to cast their vote.”
Bursten denied Tuesday that police had blocked IVRP lawyer Macey from witnessing the police’s evidence gathering. “Our detective told him that clearly he had the right to be in there and remain there,” Bursten said, adding that the lead investigator at the site told Macey that if he did want to exercise his right to witness the raid, he himself might become part of the investigation and thus hampered from most effectively representing his clients. “The decision was entirely that attorney’s,” Bursten said.
Macey disputed that version of events. “The trooper informed me that I was not allowed into the office during the raid,” Macey said in an email. “He did mention that I would be a witness as well, but that was in addition to informing me I was not allowed in.”
As for the allegations that police prevented one employee from filming the police and another from calling Macey, Bursten said that the police had come to collect cellphones and did not want to give targets of the investigation time to delete evidence that might be contained within the devices.
The state’s investigation covers nine counties. Last Thursday it was reported that state police copied more than 250 suspicious registrations from an IVRP office in central Indiana. In a statement released on Tuesday, state police said they believe the number of suspicious IVRF registrations could reach into the hundreds and underscored the nuanced nature of their investigation, urging people to not expect immediate answers.
“An investigation of this nature is complex, time consuming and is expected to continue for several more weeks or months,” said the police statement.
Varoga said that the investigation has already stifled the activity of his group. He said the Patriot Majority would file a complaint with the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division against the state for voting rights violations. “They’re violating all manner of legal standards,” said Varoga. “I have certainly never seen anything like this.”
Top photo: Demonstration of a voting machine in Virginia.
This story should be an excellent lesson to people who equivocate about cops killing unarmed Black people by saying it’s just a few bad apples. As this story shows, cops as a whole are bad. Cops operate at the behest of the worst elements and people in our society. I don’t have an immediate solution for this problem except to say that it’s just another of the many problems caused by overpopulation.
I can understand the fictitious applications, and I bet it was NOT the fault of the agency. When I was a student at Indiana University (Bloomington), 1969-1975, there were groups on campus who had registration tables at various events, and if we filled out a voter registration form, we had a chance to enjoy pizza and music. Some of the people there filled out registration forms for Mickey Mouse and Clark Kent.
I’m sure the agency knew that some of our forms were false, but they have to turn all the forms over in order to be in compliance with the law.
Sounds like some overzealous persecution, and like an effort to reduce the number of registrations from real potential voters.
I’m from Indiana & while this looks like politicization of something that wasn’t in the past around here between the Republicans & Democrats, there’s something odd about this whole thing that just feels weird to those of us observing it here in Indiana. Here’s a story about it from the Indianapolis Star back in mid-September: http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/15/state-police-investigating-voter-registration-fraud/90407438/
I think BOTH sides in this are hiding what they’re up to in this case because this whole thing stinks all the way around. Sure, we need to ask questions of the authorities about why they’re flipping out about what seems initially like a small number of discrepancies among a slew of voter registration forms, which happens when you pay people to canvass areas looking to register voters–which wouldn’t be necessary if we had universal voter registration–but the Indiana Voter Registration Project has questions I’d like answered, too, most notably, “What’s with all the cloak-&-dagger secrecy when all you’re supposedly doing is registering voters?”
I’m tellin’ ya. This whole thing stinks to high heaven.
(Full Disclosure: I’m supporting Dr. Jill Stein in the Presidential race.)
Millions of illegal aliens coached to vote by the democrats will try to help Hillary Clinton steal the election.
Yes, many lower-class (but legal) potential voters will be prevented from voting all to prevent one or two alleged illegal voters from voting. Funny, when we ask the GOP to point to actual evidence that these false registrations lead to false voters, they have trouble. I remember a friend at IU-Blmtn who regularly went to those registration parties to fill out voter registration applications to get the free food and music. To the best of my knowledge, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck never voted, even though they filled out voter registration applications.
Now, look at the record in Florida, where they have proved that actual voter fraud was committed by the Republicans who sent stooges in to nursing homes to ask them to vote by absentee, but when the person asked for help filling out the ballots, the funny thing was how often the wrong circle was marked.
I don’t see the Mystery here…The Article tells s what the Police FOUND… The Police are NOT the Criminals… and once the Left realize they WILL be held accountable for Voter Fraud, they may start to take it Seriously. Thanks Indiana Police Dept..
The republicans are going to use every play, in their playbook because they know they are losing with Trump as their leader. This is going to be a very, very ugly election.
How easy would it be to manufacture “fraudulent” applications by sending agents provocateurs with dodgy paperwork, and then slam the organization?
That would be par for the course for the men in blue…
Agree ‘Cat Food.’ I was just thinking the same… As dirty as people on the right are, will not surprise me. They change districts to allow Republicans to out vote Democrats, then suppress the vote, then close polling stations making people wait hours and hours and hours….sometime well over 8 hours.. And yes, they can play that dirty to send in people to submit fraudulent papers then raid..
weak points of the story: what city? what county? what is lawyer Macey’s first name? what’s the name of the judge signing search warrant? the political lizards that run Indiana [and have since Klan days] are correctly suspected of being criminal themselves. I’d bet that this is in an area of significant minority [i.e. non-white population] whereas similar clerical errors don’t result in police raids in non-significant minority areas. Indiana has a long, long, long history of racial and anti-foreign [i.e. non-white prot] bigotry.
Is it true that the official uniform of the Indiana State Police is a white sheet and hood?
Indianapolis (second sentence of article).
Marion County (not specified, but there’s no argument: Indianapolis is the county seat as well as the state capital).
Jeff (third sentence).
The search warrant, the supporting affidavit and the results of the search are under seal so it’s a bit difficult to answer your final question.
Republican Secret Police will be “looking into” a lot of voter fraud situations if Donald Trump wins, I have a feeling. If you thought your vote didn’t matter, you sure as hell can see that it does from the lengths the Republicans are going to massively stifle voting and disenfranchise new voters and African American voters this cycle. Mainstream media won’t report on the voter ID issues accurately because it shows that the GOP is openly racist, openly willing to disenfranchise, and willing to activate the police (that are often beholden to their “extreme law and order” ideas) in order to accomplish their disenfranchisement goals.
This goes hand in hand with the mass incarceration we are currently seeing. Check out how many Americans are disenfranchised from voting, it might surprise you: http://www.sentencingproject.org/
If Trump gets elected, we will be calling them Trumps Dark Suits.
Dems cheat nothing new….been doing it since LBJ he admitted it. Dems don’t want voter ID LIKE MOST Nations do, because then it would be much harder to CHEAT.
A survey done by the Shrub administration on voter fraud says you are full of shit.
Well it would seem that the only people who have been convicted of voter fraud would be republicans and that happened in the state of Indiana. Or dont you know how to read Hoosier?
There was also election fraud in MD committed by republicans. They were rob-calling democratic voters, telling them the democratic candidate had won, and that there was no reason for them to vote. They were convicted.
Imaginary democratic voter fraud doesn’t compare to actual republican election fraud.
In an effective democracy, all the eligible citizens are registered to vote, inform themselves on the issues, and cast their ballots. The US is ineffective according to all three criteria. It is sad that the republican wing of the Party accepts the fallacious notion that reducing voter turnout is good for the country. But at the same time it is also shameful that the media do not live up to their responsibilities to help the voters inform themselves. The Intercept, for instance, at the moment this is being written, has two pieces on the so-called Vice Presidential Debate, in which the Party’s two candidates were given publicity at the expense of the other two candidates.
It is difficult for me to share TI’s sense of outrage over the behavior of the Indiana Pigs when they are themselves part of the conspiracy of silence.
The klan humping GOP trash of the Indiana State Police set it up – they submit forms with bogus names that the STATE requires the registering group turn in – then blame the registering group for following the law.
When a cop dies – who is put in charge of beating his wife and kids?
yep. This is definitely weird in every way. America’s descent into hell continues. Just a guess, there will be more where that came from – whatever that is.
Wow. The right wing is really brazen in places where it holds power.
They know the courts aren’t going to uphold this outrageous assault on democracy, but they don’t care; by the time judicial process can unfold, they will have already (probably have now already) disrupted the registration and GOTV effort beyond recovery.
State has to review all the registration forms before it adds them to the voter rolls and assign each registrant to a voting precinct. It would be up to the state to verify the authenticity of the paper work. It would seem like the sate would pull the suspicious applications and wait for the whole process to be completed at the end of registration do the instigation. The questionable registrants would not be able to vote. But this way the suspicion covers all the people registered by this organization.
It seems quite suspicious to have the state police raid the offices and shut them down. In the end the organization has to submit all registration forms to the state and any fraudulent forms would be pulled and would be evidence if criminal fraud did occur.
I want to know how any organization registering votes can be held responsible to verify the accuracy, is that their job or the states?
This seems to be an excuse purge voters because all the people who were registered by this organization may not be able vote till the investigation is over which as the one officer said the investigation will take a long time.
Even if there are hundreds of fraudulent registrations that might benefit the democrats, 10,000 democrats will lose the ability to vote because of this partisan action.
This is the type of massive voter suppression that can change the outcome of an election. Something like this happened in 2000 in Florida, tens of thousands of democratic voters lost the right to vote when the were mistaken purged from the voter rolls by the office of secretary of state Katharine Harris who surprise, happened to be the leader of the George Bush campaign in Florida. Bush won the state by less than 600 votes it made him president.
If this sounds weird it is weird, this is the same thing they did during Jim Crow any excuse to get those undesirables not to vote. No law was broken here, if they had thrown out fraudulent forms the group could be held criminally for doing so. So in this instance its damn if you do and damn if you dont.
I just want to make sure I’ve got this straight. Virginia law requires this group to fill out and submit every application, even if it comes from someone wearing a ‘Make America Great’ hat, a tee shirt with crosshairs over an unflattering picture of Hillary, giving their name as ‘Mickey Mouse’ and an address of 666 Republican Way. But submitting an application like that is also grounds for shutting down the group for an investigation, if the Republican Secretary of State says so.
The irony is that if this sort of thing were to happen in any of the designated nondemocracies that have contested elections, it would be cited as evidence justifying the American government declaring them to not be democracies.
It’s Indiana, but other than that, you seem to have it exactly right.
Rather Kafkaesque, ain’t it?
A Freudian slip, perhaps. Also here in Vagina.
Even before Putin hacked the DNC and exposed the Clintonite dirty tricks aimed at Sanders there were already legal actions against local DNC groups across the country for voter registration manipulation/fraud.
It’s good to see this search reported and explained because it is very difficult to police these many local Clintonite cabals carrying out what the democrats were long known for, election fraud.
hacking what system? microsoft windows? China outlawed windows systems for government use. Only frikkin morons would advocate use of crapware.
google – us govt hacked systems are microsoft windows
smarter people dont set themselves up for failure
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-china-idUSBREA4J07Q20140520
But let’s face reality, the corporat criminals on wallstreet sell America crap then charge Americans for the damage it results in. ONE BIG SCAM BY ORGANISED CRIME, the USG.
And you are full of it, this is the first BS story i have heard about, tell me what do you have against people using their right to vote? You are insane, but hey what can one expect from Trumpite.
How in the hell can the police just come in a take everyone’s cellphone?
Indiana has strict voter ID laws already so I’m confused. How would all these people with their bogus addresses vote? If they have to show a picture ID with all correct pertinent info on it as it is, wouldn’t that take care of the problem? Am I missing something? I think this is just one more instance of a Republican controlled state using dirty tricks to prevent people from voting. Voter ID laws targeting minorities, students and the poor isn’t enough. That horrid crosscheck that targets the same groups isn’t. Now this. Mike Pence should be ashamed. Republicans everywhere should be ashamed. Democrats too for they don’t seem to be doing nearly enough to stop this.
Exactly.
The Klan in Indiana used to use less subtle forms of intimidation and terror.
I don’t know, but this seems some bloodY karmic payback to the democrats. After the 2000 election, the democratic party establishment came to blame Nader for Gore’s loss instead of republican voter and voting shenanigans. It seemed to me the democratic party establishment went to sleep while the gop sent the next decade and a half perfecting and thinking of new ways to screw our voting system. And the dems stupidly helped defame and destroy ACORN which was registering African American voters. Good job democrats.
And now? PUTIN!!! I thought that this fear mongering over Putin would simply divert media and party attention away from what the republicans were doing. And yup it did.
No foreign power can change or fix our elections–the American voting system is too decentralized with every sort of way of voting invented by humans. The only people who can cheat the system are other Americans. The only people who can cheat and suppress are NOT some fantasy hacker in Moscow, but the members from both major political parties. And guess what, they will even chat fellow party members as happened to Bernie Sanders.
But but but PUTIN!!!! I suspect the gop will have a field day this coming election.
Why are there any voter registration groups? If the ” potential voters” are not aware enough of the issues, should they vote? Like some groups bringing in Alzheimers nursing patients by the busload. If they were aware enough, they could absentee vote.
Voter registration groups are con men, trying to fleece the unaware.
The US is built on the backs of slaves, illiterates and those who just don’t know what’s going on. To now deny the vote to those who are uninformed or unwell is truly un-American.
I believe that in the future voter registration records will be used against those who registered as members of the party that lost an election in the US.
No. I love how wrong you are.
Voter registration groups exist because some people can’t get around to the proper offices to register. They don’t have cars, or work nights, or two jobs.
I do love how the assumption is that if you have to reach out to someone they shouldn’t vote. It’s the people that are deciding to vote for right wingers that are the problem.
Obviously, this country needs to have W0X0F decide who is smart and informed enough to vote.