Throughout the 2024 election season, a host of right-wing anti-voting groups worked tirelessly to disenfranchise voters. The groups spread disinformation about noncitizen voting, rehashed familiar conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud and pressured election officials to purge registered voters from the rolls and otherwise tighten voting rules.
With the SAVE Act facing an uphill battle in the Senate and much of President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-voting order temporarily blocked by a judge, anti-voting groups are reemerging to continue their grassroots efforts to disenfranchise voters. Also in this week’s Eye On The Right: The White House once again targets election security, and why Ed Martin Jr.’s new job might allow him to do more damage than he would have as a U.S. attorney.
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— Matt Cohen, Senior Reporter
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Right-Wing Groups Are Reigniting Their Anti-Voting Efforts
Throughout the 2024 election season, a host of right-wing anti-voting groups worked tirelessly to disenfranchise voters. The groups spread disinformation about noncitizen voting, rehashed familiar conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud and pressured election officials to purge registered voters from the rolls, and otherwise tighten voting rules.
After Trump’s election victory in November, these groups mostly went dark — their guy won, so why would they continue screaming conspiracy theories about voter fraud?
But now some of the most egregious groups are reigniting their anti-voting efforts, laying the groundwork to spread more election disinformation as voters start to look toward the 2026 midterms.
Last week, the anti-voting group True The Vote (TTV) announced that it relaunched IV3, its mass voter challenge platform riddled with errors and inaccurate data. According to a release, the group has relaunched IV3 in 11 states — Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Montana and Connecticut — with plans to roll out the app in all 50 states.
TTV rolled out IV3 in 2021 as a web app that flags potential voter fraud by pulling voter data files from various databases and comparing them to USPS data. But the data it uses is either incomplete or flat-out wrong, meaning lawfully registered voters are being flagged as ineligible through the app, leading to mass voter challenges of eligible voters.
The group used IV3 to challenge some 364,000 registered voters in the 2021 Georgia Senate runoff election, leading to a lawsuit accusing the group of voter intimidation.
Two days after TTV relaunched IV3, the Cleta Mitchell-led Election Integrity Network (EIN) announced “the next phase in its mission.” Mitchell is a well-known anti-voting lawyer with a long history of spreading election conspiracy theories and trying to disenfranchise voters, including working closely with Trump on his bid to overturn the 2020 election. Through EIN, she’s been an influential voice among conservative lawmakers, often working behind the scenes to help states introduce and pass anti-voting bills, and playing a role in getting the SAVE Act passed in the U.S. House. EIN also led efforts to recruit election deniers as poll workers ahead of the 2022 midterms.
In a release, EIN announced a “U.S. Citizens Elections Bill of Rights,” which includes partnering with lawmakers and election officials to help “craft model legislation and advocate for reform.” Among the biggest issues EIN is working to push: strict voter ID, proof of citizenship and transparent vote counting. Pretty much all the issues outlined in the SAVE Act.
It's no coincidence that these notorious and influential anti-voting groups are just now relaunching their efforts. With the SAVE Act facing a tough road in the Senate and much of Trump’s sweeping anti-voting executive order blocked (for now) by a federal judge, these groups are going to the states to try and disenfranchise voters at ground level.
Trump Administration Proposes More Drastic Election Security Cuts
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is once again under attack by the Trump administration.
At the beginning of the month, the White House proposed cutting nearly $500 million from the nation’s top cybersecurity agency that’s responsible for protecting elections from hacking and other cyber threats. The discretionary budget proposal sent to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chair of the appropriations committee, outlined the fiscal year 2026 budget and shaved off nearly a third of CISA's funding, without much explanation.
“The Budget refocuses CISA on its core mission — Federal network defense and enhancing the security and resilience of critical infrastructure — while eliminating weaponization and waste,” the White House’s proposal reads in a brief paragraph justifying a $491 million cut to CISA’s budget.
“The Budget eliminates programs focused on so-called misinformation and propaganda as well as external engagement offices such as international affairs. These programs and offices were used as a hub in the Censorship Industrial Complex to violate the First Amendment, target Americans for protected speech, and target the President.”
Lawmakers weren’t having it.
In a joint statement, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, and Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, blasted the Trump administration over the proposed cuts.
“The President’s budget plan fails to provide the critical funding we need for election infrastructure, security, and administration,” the statement reads.
“Every state will feel the cuts, but smaller, rural, and lower-resourced elections offices would be disproportionately hurt. To make matters worse, these cuts are in addition to the Administration’s previous actions to terminate staff and programs to counter election misinformation and disinformation and defend against foreign interference in our elections.”
CISA is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), responsible for the nation’s cybersecurity and protecting critical infrastructure from digital threats. One of its most crucial functions is its work with state and local election officials to help prevent and address election cyberthreats from foreign and domestic adversaries — including voting dis- and misinformation.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem already cut $10 million from CISA’s current fiscal year operating budget, which included shutting down its Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC).
This week, lawmakers grilled Noem and CISA Director Bridgett Bean on the proposed CISA cuts. Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) called Noem’s cuts to EI-ISAC “unacceptable and unconstitutional” and warned that further cuts to CISA would “let Russia, China, and Iran steal our top secrets and Americans’ personal data.”
Trump Withdraws Ed Martin’s U.S. Attorney Nomination
“Eagle” Ed Martin Jr., Trump’s original nominee for U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., is out. Trump announced late last week that he was withdrawing Martin — who’d been serving as the interim U.S. attorney — as his pick after it became clear that he wouldn’t clear a key Senate vote. Trump tapped Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney to replace Martin.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said last week that he wouldn’t be supporting Martin’s nomination, due to Martin’s long history of downplaying the Jan. 6 attack and his extremist ties.
Martin — a longtime attorney and former chair of the Missouri Republican Party — was a prominent voice in the 2020 Stop the Steal movement before the Jan. 6 attack, and went on to defend three rioters, including a member of the Proud Boys. He’s repeatedly downplayed the Capitol riot, and has spread conspiracy theories about who really caused it. Since becoming interim D.C. attorney, Martin has fired and launched investigations into scores of Jan. 6 prosecutors — even calling for some prosecutors to be jailed. Most recently, Martin attempted to downplay his ties to an alleged Nazi sympathizer — who he previously called “extraordinary” at an awards ceremony last year at Trump’s New Jersey golf club.
But Martin isn’t out of the Trump administration — and his new job may put him in a position to cause even more damage. Trump has now given him a job in the Justice Department, as the new director of the “weaponization working group,” and associate deputy attorney general and pardon attorney.
The weaponization working group is a new Trump administration initiative aimed at rooting out “abuses of the criminal justice process.” But some former FBI and DOJ officials recently told the New York Times that the group’s goal is formed to punish and prosecute Trump’s political opponents.
As pardon attorney, Martin would be the chief official responsible for recommending pardons or sentence commutations to the president. Quite simply, Martin’s new position will be to help the DOJ punish Trump’s enemies and pardon those loyal to the president. A fitting job for a guy who played such a prominent role in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot.
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