David vs. Goliath – an NAACP Faction Faces Off Against Grassroots Canvassers in an Election Case Few Know About
By Brian Lupo Jul. 16, 2024 10:45 am33
from The Gateway Pundit
Photo :From left to right: Defendants Ashe Epp, Col. Shawn Smith, Holly Kasun – photo courtesy of Matt Struck
After the 2020 Presidential election, millions upon millions of Americans saw something they’d never seen before. Counting shut down in the middle of the night in key parts of imperative swing states. Edison data zeroed out in the middle of the night. And when we all woke up in the morning, Joe Biden had overcome insurmountable leads in most of those locations, and closed the gap in the others.
Counting would go on for several days, during which time Biden was able to close on differences of just under a million votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin combined. Arizona flipped blue for the first time since 1996 and just the second time since 1948.
After four days of counting (which continued for much longer in actuality), the Mockingbird Media took to their self-appointed soapboxes to declare Joe Biden the winner.
The unprecedented changes to election laws, often unconstitutionally, led to claims of widespread election fraud as all but two states allowed some form of no-excuse absentee voting by mail. This motivated grassroots organizations across the country to network at the local level and try to figure out what happened.
Conservative grassroots canvassing movements, as a result, began popping up all over the country. From Liz Harris’s operation in Maricopa County, Arizona, to AuditTheVotePA in Pennsylvania, conservatives and populists across the country were doing something the Democrats had a monopoly on for decades: community organizing.
In Colorado, through a series of random events, retired US Air Force Colonel Shawn Smith, Holly Kasun, and Ashe Epp would lay the groundwork for what would become the US Election Integrity Plan. Their mission is to “Connect…Find the Truth…Share the Truth…Restore Election Integrity.” In doing so, the trio set out with a growing group of fellow citizen volunteers to begin a widescale canvass of several counties in Colorado.
For a grassroots initiative, it was well-organized but, of course, underfunded. There were no corporations reaching out to fund election integrity the way they do the very organizations that create election vulnerabilities through ‘Get Out the Vote’ campaigns. There wasn’t PAC money, ACTBlue, or WINRed funding organizations to make sure the election was conducted lawfully and accurately. News outlets weren’t telling voters to check and make sure their vote was counted and the method was accurately reflected.
They only support the front end of elections. The ‘glitz and glam.’ The back end is grossly ignored.
Yet the USEIP persisted with a battalion of concerned citizens united to seek the truth. The group developed a plan by utilizing their own special skills with some help from former corporate trainers and developers.
The goal was to ask non-partisan questions of willing participants. After determining which areas to canvass based on Secretary of State data, the citizen canvasser began to go door-to-door and ask fellow citizens non-partisan questions, such as “Did you vote in the 2020 election and if so, by what method? Mail-in ballot? Dropbox? In-person?” If the resident didn’t want to engage, the canvassers simply said “Thank you” and walked away.
But, of course, they would end up getting sued for this canvass by a faction of one of the most prominent “civil rights” organizations in the country: the NAACP.
After a lengthy pre-trial effort by counsel representing the Colorado NAACP, League of Women Voters, and Mi Familia Vota to extract a settlement that included a consent decree barring future canvassing by the defendants, the trial began today in the Federal Courthouse in Denver, CO.
The accusation being levied is that the Defendants intimidated voters with their canvass by violating section 11b of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Ku Klux Klan Act.
Opening statements in CO, MT, WY State Area Conference of the NAACP v Shawn Smith et al. began this morning. After statements from the NAACP counsel, each defendant’s counsel, including Ashe Epp, a firebrand pro se defendant (meaning she is representing herself). In her open, she stated:
“Canvassing is a long-protected First Amendment activity with a well-litigated history in our great nation. The courts have repeatedly upheld the People’s right to canvass. Canvassing is, as the Supreme Court determined in Meyer v. Grant in 1988, “the type of interactive communication concerning political change that is appropriately described as ‘core political speech.'”In the current matter, Plaintiffs are asking the court to provide injunctive relief that amounts to a content-based restriction on the Defendant’s core political speech.…I have been the target of vitriol from the left. I was targeted by Colorado media outlets, many of whom published provable lies about me without ever reaching out for comment. Local journalists put me on lists. They fantasized about my whereabouts, published those fantasies, and were later forced to publicly retract their reporting. They assassinated my character repeatedly and, as a female journalist with a minority political viewpoint in a triple majority state, I have been dehumanized to such an extent that the most well-respected Civil Rights organization in the nation, and possibly the world, feel justified in attempting to separate me from my rights – entirely based on my core political speech…The internet is forever and, because of Plaintiffs, my name is forever attached to the KKK.
The plaintiffs called two witnesses today: Colonel Shawn Smith and Ashe Epp. Col. Smith began by outlining his devoted decades-long service to our country, including some of the secure posts in our military, including an ICMB launch officer and a penetration tester for critical weapons systems.
Col. Smith took a barrage of passive-aggressive questions about his research as a computer-based systems expert into our electronic voting infrastructure. He said that he was “certain’ that then-CISA director Chris Krebs and DHS’s Chad Wolfe, based on their credentials and the data they had available at the time, participated in a “narrative roll-out” when Krebs stated 2020 was “the most secure election in our history.”
Throughout his testimony, Col. Smith was steadfast in his personal beliefs and professional analysis of vast amounts of data, procedures, and manuals which led him to conclude the 2020 election winner cannot be determined.
Questioning revolved around a “playbook” that was published by Col. Smith and the USEIP after their canvassing had been completed. The playbook insisted that canvassers be polite, courteous, and professional and respect the voter’s right to refuse to talk to them. No information was sought that would identify who the voter voted for, but rather simply by what method they voted.
The canvass also would reveal numerous discrepancies with the voter rolls that resulted in voters being registered at storage warehouses, fast-food restaurants, wholesale shopping stores, and vacant lots.
When asked how canvassers could be sure a voter was who they say they were when talking with them, Col. Smith responded that they would fill out affidavits and USEIP would submit them to the attorney general and district attorneys for further investigation.
Counsel then asked passive-aggressively if that meant he wanted someone else to do the investigative work for him. Col. Smith responded, you mean the sworn elected official responsible for doing so? Yes. (paraphrased)
Counsel for the NAACP faction would be scolded by the judge as he deviated into unrelated issues to the “voter intimidation” accusation by bringing up Col. Smith attending the January 6th protest in Washington DC. This would become a recurring theme.
The next witness called was Ashe Epp, the pro se defendant. Almost immediately, counsel began to question her about her blogging and podcasting from her blog, Ashe In America. Epp only mentioned USEIP in one of her blog posts, and it was a citation directly from the organization, not herself.
At one point, Epp was asked about calling remarks made about their canvassing by the Executive Director of the CO County Clerks Association, Matt Crane, as “defamatory and libelous.” Epp explained to the court that the quotes in the article plaintiffs were referring to did not portray the USEIP canvass, but rather another organization. And another remark calling their canvass efforts and report “amateur” was made by Crane before the report was even released.
Once again, plaintiff counsel began to attempt to paint the Defendants in a negative light because of their attendance at the Jan 6 protest, despite Epp having a degree in journalism and writing independently about the historic day. No one with USEIP was ever charged for any crimes on Jan 6.
The judge seemed to grow irritated with the counsel for these questions and urged him to tie it into voter intimidation from the canvassing. She gave him a “short rope.”
An hour later, he was still pulling that rope before the judge finally called a sidebar conversation. After the sidebar, the Jan 6 questions ceased.
Until, in a last-ditch effort, counsel tried to compare federal authorities visiting Epp’s home with the canvassing. This was immediately objected to, sustained, and counsel rested and retreated.
Day 2 convenes tomorrow. Follow @CannConActual on X for live-tweeting and stay tuned for a follow up on The Gateway Pundit.
LKY: Here is the Announcement on the Canvassing report that is the subject of this Lawsuit: Posted March 10, 2022
From USEIP.ORG:
ONE IN EVERY TEN COLORADO VOTERS IMPACTED: MASSIVE IRREGULARITIES IN THE 2020 ELECTION CONFIRMED BY CITIZEN-LED CANVASSING EFFORT
Generated after months of volunteer voter canvassing to verify state public election records, The USEIP Colorado Canvassing Report exposes massive irregularities, anomalies, and numerous law violations.
[Denver, Colorado, March 10, 2022] – A report published today by the U.S. Election Integrity Plan (USEIP) found that hundreds of thousands of Colorado voters were impacted by election irregularities and anomalies in the 2020 elections. The report analyzed canvassing records from multiple Colorado Counties. Volunteers went door-to-door verifying public voting records. The election data that was verified is public, maintained by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold.
Professional statisticians, mathematicians, retired military officers, software engineers, and corporate training specialists came together on a completely volunteer basis to design the canvassing program from start to finish. The peer-reviewed, statistical sampling method used for the canvassing was designed so that results can hold up in court. This strict and rigorous approach produced statistical significance in the canvassed counties. More importantly, it allows for statistically sound assertions on voting irregularities to be made for the state as whole. Those assertions are stunning. Extrapolating the canvassed county findings to the entire state, the number of impacted voters in Colorado is between 210,091 and 462,201.
The USEIP report exposes shocking types of widespread problems with the Colorado election system. A sample of the top irregularities in the report include:
Fake voters. The voter did not cast a ballot, but County Clerk and Recorder and Secretary of State managed records show a ballot was cast in the voter’s name.
Lost votes. The voter did cast a ballot but records show no ballot was cast.
Illegal votes. The voter did not live at the address indicated at the time of the 2020 election.
Voter data manipulation. The voter’s party affiliation changed without their authorization.
Voter database manipulation. The voter did not reside at the documented address in the voter database at the time of canvassing, but months after canvassing the voter was registered at the same address in the voter registration database.
Explaining or rationalizing these anomalies and irregularities will be extremely difficult for elected officials. It’s anticipated that county clerks, commissioners, and Secretary of State Jena Griswold will dismiss the Colorado canvassing report with flimsy excuses like the anomalies are not widespread, or no election is completely without some irregularities, or clerical errors can happen due to data and record transferring between databases.
Unfortunately, the data is overwhelming in USEIP’s Colorado Canvassing Report. The findings obliterate tired excuses historically used for dismissing objective evidence and dodging responsibility.
It’s anticipated election officials will shift blame to the public, claiming voters don’t understand how elections work, to dismiss legitimate public concerns. In fact, Secretary Griswold is joined by Executive Director of the Colorado County Clerks Association Matt Crane, numerous Colorado clerks, including Carly Koppes (Weld), and Chuck Broerman (El Paso), in parroting the tired and inaccurate trope, “Colorado’s elections are the gold standard!”
Clerk Broerman went so far as proudly claiming his voter rolls in El Paso are “pristine” after the 2021 local elections. In that same election, in cooperation with Secretary Griswold, El Paso’s election results were manually changed after a discrepancy was discovered between the state and county-reported results. The Colorado Canvassing Report exposes El Paso County as having an anomaly / irregularitity rate ranging from 7.5% to 13.5%. This translates to a range of 54,359 to 69,829 El Paso County voters.
“The 2020 voter data told a story. We found patterns in the data which signaled the results in Colorado’s 2020 election had serious, unexplained problems. The only way to unequivocally verify what we saw was to manually verify the publicly available information from the voters themselves. What this report proves is shocking. Every voter and elected official needs to immediately take action to investigate in order to understand how to fix our obviously broken election system.” States Jeff Young, the chief author of the report.
Given the slim margins deciding local races and measures, numerous elected officials and counties in the state have been impacted. There are many legal cases that serve as precedent for remedying illegal elections. In fact, it’s surprisingly common to have elected officials removed from office even after they’ve taken office, and after more than a year has passed since the certification of the race.
This should give Colorado voters confidence that they do not have to live with election results that have not been verified to their satisfaction to be error-free and legitimately run. Election officials have balked in the face of concerns presented by voters since election day 2020, claiming elections passed the required Risk Limiting Audit. The Risk Limiting Audit is only capable of verifying the electronic voting systems ability to count the paper ballots. By design The Risk Limiting Audit is incapable of detecting fake votes, lost votes, illegal votes, or voter database manipulation exposed in the CO Canvassing Report – along with other ballot and data anomalies.
USEIP’s canvassing program has been distributed as a model for numerous states in the nation. USEIP continues working on restoring free and fair elections in Colorado. A media contact for USEIP stated, “Elections belong to the people. We will not stop finding and exposing the truth until we restore free and fair elections for the people of Colorado and the United States of America.”
You can read/download this Colorado Canvassing Report at USEIP.ORG
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