Wednesday, April 15

The far-right activists who prodded Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to seize 650,000 ballots were trained by the national anti-voting group Unite4Freedom, which has filed scores of lawsuits promoting false conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud. Also in this week’s Eye On The Right: Select poems from some of our favorite election deniers in honor of National Poetry Month, and more.

As always, thanks for reading.

Matt Cohen, Senior Reporter

The national anti-voting group that inspired the California ballot seizure conspiracies

Newly unsealed search warrants shed light on the anti-voting activists who pushed Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to seize 650,000 ballots from the state’s 2025 redistricting election. Key figures from the group whose flawed, conspiracy-driven data led to Bianco’s ballot seizure were trained by Unite4Freedom, a national anti-voting group that has gained attention by filing scores of lawsuits promoting false conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud.

Bianco’s ballot seizure was based on flawed data compiled by the Riverside Election Integrity Team — a local anti-voting group. Two of its members, Shelby Bunch and Greg Langworthy, are also volunteers with Unite4Freedom.
Throughout the 2024 election, the group — then operating under the name United Sovereign Citizens — filed lawsuits alleging major inaccuracies in state voter rolls. But they fundamentally misunderstood the election data they obtained. One analysis called their methodology “the Big Lie dressed up as data science.”
The connection between the California ballot seizure and Unite4Freedom underscores how the national anti-voting group has trained an army of election skeptics who are working within their communities to sow doubts over voting.

Eye On The Right presents: election denier poetry slam

April is National Poetry Month! So it seemed fitting to celebrate by highlighting some of my favorite poetry and prose composed by election deniers that I’ve stumbled upon while covering this beat. These folks may be trying to thwart democracy by pushing anti-voting policies and debunked conspiracy theories but they also, uh, have a way with words — sometimes.

The winner, without a doubt, is conservative attorney and Trump ally Peter Ticktin, who is pushing Trump to sign an executive order taking over voting. Ticktin has a whole page on his law firm’s website dedicated to his poetry. Hard to pick just one poem to showcase, but this one is my favorite:

THE TOWER OF TORONTO

They built the thing
Eighteen Hundred Feet tall,
But all it really is
Is a place for men to fall.

Our runner-up is Ed Martin, the far-right lawyer and President Donald Trump ally who’s currently serving as the DOJ’s pardon attorney. Back in December, he posted this poem, called “The Snake,” about a “tender-hearted woman” who takes in a snake that then bites her. The world is dangerous, and showing compassion is for the foolish and naive, seems to be the MAGA-friendly message.
And finally, there’s Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who posted this haiku earlier this month to welcome spring:

Cortisol spiking
Amidst tumult, nature calms
Tulips welcome spring

I don’t know if that will help her get the promotion she’s so shamelessly gunning for, but it can’t hurt!

Notes from the Twilight Zone

Election denier and Arizona state Sen. Mark Finchem (R) is running for reelection, and his primary fundraising pitch appears to be based solely on a conspiracy theory involving China infiltrating voting machines.
CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski asked Trump about FEMA official and former True the Vote leader Gregg Phillips’ claims that he once teleported to a Waffle House, to which the president said: “What does teleport mean?” and “Was he kidding?”
Anti-voting activist Seth Keshel said in a podcast interview that none of his fellow election deniers “can seem to agree which country stole [American] elections electronically," and added that half of those conspiracy theories "are pea-brained anyway."