If you don't have time, read these lines
đConservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza develops the theory that election results were altered by âvote harvestersâ in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
đ The film, which has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, exposes that thanks to the alleged tracking of 2,000 mobile phones and several security cameras placed in voting centers, it shows how Democratic votes would have been placed at the polls. But it is not proven.
đElectoral authorities, technology experts and former Attorney General William Barr himself do not consider the geolocation system of the organization 'True the Vote', shown in the film, to be sufficiently valid to initiate an investigation into it.
Conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza has released 2000 slippers in United States, a film that denounces alleged irregularities during the 2020 presidential elections using misinformation and accusations without evidence.
The elections in the United States in 2020 and the victory of Joe Biden (Democratic Party) brought with them all kinds of theories without evidence that the votes had been rigged.
This idea was promoted by the previous president, Donald Trump (Republican Party), and supported by his followers and some members of his party; on the contrary, the accusations have been refuted in different courts and by the Trump administration's own attorney general, William Barr.
En Factchequedo we have seen the movie.
In about 90 minutes, D'Souza develops the theory that the election results were altered by thousands of so-called âvote collectorsâ and that this can be demonstrated thanks to the tracking of the geolocation of their mobile phones and several security cameras placed in voting centers.
These âcollectorsâ are people who are in charge of collect the tickets from third parties who cannot travel to the voting location and deliver them on their behalf.
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We tell you what we know about it
Third-party vote harvesting is legal in almost all states
The documentary is based on supposed figures of True The Vote, a Texas organization that claims to fight for âvoting integrity,â and whose origin, tracked by ProPublica, shows links to conservative organizations.
The group says it has obtained geolocation data from 2,000 cell phones used in specific areas by alleged illegal vote harvesters in counties belonging to swing states (hinge states without a fixed tradition of voting towards Democrats or Republicans), specifically in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
According to True the Vote, these people - whom they define as the '2,000 mules' - were âallegedly paid by Democratsâ to illegally introduce votes into ballot boxes.
They also analyzed 67,000 hours of videos taken by security cameras located in front of voting boxes.
They also have the testimony of two anonymous sources, whose images and voices have been modified, who claim to have witnessed these frauds.
However, they do not provide evidence to demonstrate this alleged electoral fraud.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), 26 states in addition to Washington DC allow âany voter to request and cast an absentee or mail-in ballot, without needing to provide justification.â
In eight other states elections are completely by mail, âmeaning voters do not need to request a vote as they instead receive it automatically.â
Finally, the NCSL points out that the remaining states ârequire that the voter provide justificationâ in order to participate in this way.
According to the data of the Ballotpedia, the Encyclopedia of American Politics that collects information on the voting system and politics of the United States, Ballot harvesting is a legal practice in many states.
As of May 2022, 25 of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and territories, allowed third parties (chosen by the voter) to return the votes of those who could not vote in person or by mail, with prior consent of the voter.
On the other hand, 11 other states allowed it, although limiting those third parties with the ability to return votes to family members, cohabitants and caregivers, among others. The rest of the states do not specify whether or not someone can return another person's vote except in one case, which expressly prohibits it, according to Ballotpedia.
Surveillance cameras and mailboxes: assumptions and lack of evidence in the film
In the film it is stated that what the collectors of votes in the recordings is âillegalâ, but no evidence is provided to prove it.
As mentioned before, in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, three of the places where the videos were taken, This practice is legal if the person delivering the votes does so on behalf of a family member or dependent.
In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, In turn, any person can deliver the vote with the permission of the issuer.
At no point in the film is it specified who the people recorded are, nor if the reason why they give out several tickets is known.
The author of the film acknowledges that there is not enough evidence to support the accusations
In a Interview with The Washington Post published on May 17, 2021, D'Souza himself acknowledges that there is not enough visual evidence of the accusations, since "many states do not place cameras in mailboxes, in others the images are cut off or there are others where it was recorded, but the camera is not placed where it should be."
That is why they base all their research on what they describe as a geolocation system.
Former President Trump often refers to the film to support his theory of electoral fraud, like the past May 7 at a rally in Pennsylvania:
âI hope you can watch the amazing new documentary from the genius of Dinesh D'Souza. It's called '2000 Mules,' and basically Biden didn't get the votes, but he did get the ballots, in a sense. But it is an incredible documentary (...) this exposes fraud like nothing else.â
On the contrary, the Trump administration's own attorney general, William Barr, said the following in a public commission:
âMy opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen and I have not seen anything after the election that would change my mind, including the movie 2,000 Mules.â
Geolocation not accurate enough, experts say
True The Vote claims to have recorded the location of those people whose cell phones had approached the electoral drop box areas more than 10 times and non-profit organizations located in the area more than 5 times between October 1, 2020 and election day (November 3), extending to January in the case of Georgia (due to the Senate elections, which were held that month).
This, according to the film, would make them suspected of being a âmule.â (a person illegally paid by the Democratic party to traffic in illegal votes).
However, the geolocation experts They assure that, although a specific area can be registered thanks to this system, It does not allow us to know the exact location or the intentions of the people who passed through the area..
In addition, they also claim that many of the mailboxes are placed in busy areas, such as universities, libraries, apartment complexes or offices, places where many people move throughout the day.
Gloves and masks, âsignsâ used for the accusation
Likewise, some voters appear wearing gloves, another âclue of fraudâ according to the organization.
These images were recorded in the fall-winter of 2020, the year of the coronavirus pandemic, Therefore, some of the people with latex gloves also wear masks, two protective garments widely used to prevent contagion in the first year of the pandemic.
In the Georgia recordings, it is also early January, and therefore it is common to find people wearing polar gloves in the recordings; which It doesn't show that they want to hide their fingerprints.
Photographs to mailboxes and anonymous sources
Later, True the Vote also states that a cyclist and a woman who are taking a photo of the mailbox after entering their votes do so to âsend the photo and thus demonstrate to the payer that they have complied with what was agreed uponâ.
However, the only evidence in this regard is the oral testimony of an unidentified source who made the first anonymous complaint and, according to the film's creators, was involved in this alleged illegal vote trafficking network. This source does not appear in the film.
Those that do appear are two other sources, a man with his back turned and a woman in a dark room who are unidentified.
These claim to have been eyewitnesses of the alleged electoral fraud, but do not provide evidence.
The investigations opened after the elections
In December 2020, the United States Department of Justice stated that there was no evidence of electoral fraud.
In October 2021, Stephen Fowler, a journalist for NPR public radio and GPB News, shared an official document on de Georgia Bureau of Investigation where you can read that this the geolocation system was not considered valid enough by True the Vote to start an investigation into the matter.
Later, in January 2022, Georgia recanted and announced that he was going to open an investigation to discover if, in fact, there was illegal vote harvesting during the elections.
To do this, True the Vote provided the personal data of the supposed 2000 mules registered by the geolocation system, but refused. to give the details of the first source who contacted them to the Georgian authorities âbecause I didn't want to be part of this,â according to confirmed D'Souza a The Washington Post.
Arizona Attorney General's Office posted a statement on June 2 in which it stated that one of the accused had pleaded guilty to illegal collection during the August 2020 primary elections.
In any case, it does not imply massive electoral fraud in the United States, as reported in the film.
In conclusion, the film 2000 slippers, specifically, does not prove the existence of massive electoral fraud in the feature film, since it does not provide sufficient data about the people recorded and bases its arguments on unsubstantiated assumptions.
Who is Dinesh D'Souza, the person behind 2,000 mules?
As collected the FBI in a 2014 press release, D'Souza was convicted of an electoral crime, although he was pardoned by Trump in 2018.
He has also been involved in various controversies over the years, such as the one in which he claimed that âthe cultural left is responsible for causing 11/XNUMX.â according to NPR.
In addition to D'Souza, another of the protagonists of the film's unproven accusations is Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote.
In statements collected by Propublica, Engelbrecht assures that his activity âhas absolutely nothing to do with race, creed, color, party or politics, it is about principles.â
However, the founder of the organization herself has publicly supported on its website: "Mr. âPresident, you have given America its heartbeat back,â he said.
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This is an article in alliance with Factchequeado, a means of verification that builds a Spanish-speaking community to counteract misinformation in Spanish in the United States.
