At the Grassroots Election Protection (GREEP) zoom yesterday (May 19), Greg Palast joined other key election protection activists to discuss Election 2026 and how to combat the GOP's project to once again disenfranchise millions of likely Democratic voters.
Palast predicts 5 million illegal voter purges this year. In 2024 in Georgia hundreds of thousands of votes were purged and this year Georgia's secretary of state announced that .5 million voters will be purged in anticipation of Election 2026.
Palast's film Vigilantes Inc., which is still streaming on YouTube for free (visit gregpalast.com), was used as compelling evidence in the lawsuit Fair Fight v. True the Vote, but the film was ruled inadmissible and the suit was thrown out. It is now under appeal, with little press coverage. Previous legal action by Palast resulted in hundreds of thousands of voters being added back to the rolls in Georgia.
Replacing burning crosses and lynchings, methods of corrupting voter registration rolls, caging, and many other devices ushered in James Crow Esq. to replace Jim Crow years ago. A new blockade is called voter challenging. Initiated in Georgia by True the Vote, it allows anyone to challenge a registered voter's right to vote-- requiring the victim to prove that they're a US citizen and live at the address reported on the relevant registration record. This involves an in-person visit to official locations with proof, which may consist of a birth certificate or passport, both of which a sizable percentage of voters lack for many reasons, poverty prominent among them.
Voter challenging has spread all over the country from Georgia. Often voters don't even know they've been challenged until Election Day, when it's too late for them to do anything but go home in disgust, disenfranchised.
One challenged voter, Major Gamaliel Turner, who stars in Vigilantes Inc., was present at yesterday's zoom. He told us that, while stationed in California, he never received an absentee ballot to vote in his home state, Georgia, and found out after inquiring three days before Election Day that he had been challenged. With the help of election integrity attorney and activist Marc Elias of Washington state, he flew back to Georgia, where he had lived for at least thirty years and voted most recently in six out os seven elections, to prove his "legitimacy."
(Major Turner's father worked with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC] in 1957.)
Turner, now retired, said that when Vigilantes Inc. had its debut screening in Hollywood, it played to a packed house but that he was the youngest person there. To move forward, we need young people to continue the fight. He noted that most of us present at the zoom were of the two oldest generations. "Once were are gone," he said, "our democracy will be lost. Voting shouldn't be an issue. We're too great of a nation.... We must get youth involved."
Ray McClendon, former Political Action Chair of Georgia's NAACP and a frequent, highly respected presence at the Grassroots Election Protection zoom, said that the law is on the side of the Vigilantes and that election boards within the state are "adopting tactics to help [them] and make it difficult for residents [read: people of color and college students] to reject voter challenges." But county boards of election are more sympathetic and may even provide lists of those who are challenged.
It is imperative to reach "low-information voters," those unaware of possible challenges, and make sure all people in the targeted categories check and check again, on official websites, that they are registered and act quickly if they've been challenged. Many of those victimized don't live near official election centers, which are purposely situated inconveniently far from their neighborhoods, and hours open are limited, requiring time off from work, which many can't afford.
Donald Whitehead, Executive Director of the National Commission for the Homeless, who spearheads the "You Don't Need a Home to Vote" campaign, warned that an even worse development is the new constituency of the Department of Justice, where the civil rights division has been decimated and lawsuits relevant to election corruption consequently eliminated. We must mobilize and organize now, because the right candidates are running.
Harvey Wasserman, host of GREEP along with the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), recalled that, speaking of corruption, all seven swing states were said to have chosen Trump by the same percentage of votes. He reminded us how DT told supporters that going further they won't have to vote anymore. Wasserman also said that one thing we know about the Democrats (pace PDA) is that they'll let us down, as did candidates Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004, Clinton in 2016, and Harris most recently, who all "disappeared" once initial results were posted, without challenging results that were in all cases proved highly disputable [read: corrupted].
To end this portion of the zoom, Mike Hersh of PDA exhorted us to build from the grassroots up. Many have [justifiably] given up on voting. We must re-energize them.
"TIME IS NOT OUR FRIEND," said Turner repeatedly. Don't trust the system. Educate the people to cure their ballot."
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