Smurfs - Unexplained Funding in our Elections

Are elder citizens being exploited in illicit campaign donation scam? Plus updates from OR, WA, CO, GA, AZ and around the US.

I first became aware of smurfs in March of this year via this article in the Epoch Times. Apparently, thousands of people are having campaign donations made in their name and without their knowledge. I decided to check it out for myself using my own zip code and the publicly available tool at FEC.gov, which allows citizens to query for campaign donations made in federal elections.

I found 8 people in my zip code who each had over 400 donations attributed to them, including one woman in her 70s who had over 14,000 donations totaling more than $165,000.

I alerted my county clerk who put me in touch with a person in the Secretary of State’s office who was already looking into it. We met and scratched our heads, wondering what to make of it.

The story triggered efforts within other state election integrity groups, and soon everyone was finding ‘smurfs’ in their states as well. The initial story was about transactions tagged to the group ActBlue, a non-profit that helps Democrats and left leaning groups to raise money. But the same also exists with its Republican counterpart, WinRed. The top smurf in my zip code was all WinRed transactions.

One researcher in Rhode Island has done stellar work investigating the FEC data, which can be quite vague and inconsistent. The volume of transactions is not necessarily a concern, he discovered, because either of these groups can break up unspecified donations and spread them across multiple campaigns according to an algorithm. This can also explain the large number of negative donations seen as a sort of ‘load balancing’. These groups may pull money back from one campaign and route it to another that might be in more need of the funds.

We also learned that neither ActBlue nor WinRed actually processes the financial transactions. They are merely a type of broker through which the credit card information and money flow. However, if something nefarious is going on, it begs the question of whether they are complicit.

Are these donations legit? Many of these supposed donors have been contacted and interviewed. Consistently, they are over 65 years old and while they typically have made some donations, they are nowhere near the number and amounts that show on FEC data. James O’Keefe, famous for creating Project Veritas, has recorded a number of these interactions. It seems their names have been used but the money came from somewhere else, raising concerns not only of identity theft but potential money laundering.

I bring the story up now because of this article that appeared this week. The most expensive judicial campaign in history took place in April that saw Janet Protasiewicz defeat Dan Kelly to win the deciding seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Citizen researcher Peter Bernegger recently posted the FEC data showing smurfing activity provided over half of her funds in that campaign. He was interviewed recently on this podcast (click the one labeled smurfing - starts about 5 minutes in). Bernegger’s group, ElectionWatch, is pursuing litigation and allege also that the source of the money is from overseas, including China.

Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) have both questioned the FEC but have met with resistance. Rubio is pushing for legislation to require tighter controls on how these fund-raising companies vet donations.

What can be done about this? Please contact your US Representative and US Senators to make sure they are aware of this matter. At the very least, this smurf money is worthy of investigation and if any of the allegations above are true, it shows significant, illegal interference in our elections from foreign actors.

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US: Trump to Provide Classified Info in Court? - The filing made by Trump attorneys on Friday indicated the intent of Trump’s legal team to present documentation that would show attempts by foreign actors to impact the 2016 and 2020 elections. The information would supposedly show Trump was acting in good faith and according to his duties in protecting elections. Read more here.

CO: Another Trump Trial Begins - Disqualification from Ballot - Citing the 14th Amendment and claiming Trump incited an insurrection on January 6th, 2021, the trial kicked off Monday seeking to remove Trump from the ballot in Colorado. A similar argument in New Mexico saw a county commissioner (Couy Griffin) removed from office for his role on January 6th. Trump and his allies claim this is more election interference to hamper his campaign for President, which polls show him leading President Biden. Read more here.

NJ: State AG Files Mail-In Ballot Fraud Charges - A city council candidate and a mayoral candidate were each charged by the Attorney General of New Jersey for mail-in ballot fraud stemming from elections in 2020 and 2021. In the first case, the candidate is charged with illegally collecting mail-in ballots and substituting real ballots for fake ones. In the second case, the candidate ran an operation to falsely register nearly 1000 people by having workers fill in blank applications. The charges lend credence to this NY Post column from August 2020 where a whistleblower talked of such tactics in preparation for the 2020 election. Read more here.

US: Supreme Court will hear Biden v Missouri - In July, a US District Judge barred the Biden White House and other departments of the federal government from contacting social media companies to censor posts. The 5th Circuit Appeals court put a hold on enforcement until the matter could be thoroughly reviewed, and now, the US Supreme Court has opted to hear the case. Read more here.

OR/WA: AI Company Tapped to Monitor Election Disinformation - Both Washington and Oregon have issued Request for Proposals (RFP) to provide monitoring of social media in order to counter mis/dis/mal information (MDM) surrounding elections. The UK based company ‘Logically’, who has provided fact checking services to Facebook UK, has been reported to have won the Oregon contract.

GA: Abrams Lawsuit vs True the Vote - Former Georgia Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams filed a lawsuit against election watchdog group True the Vote claiming their challenge of over 300,000 voters in the 2020 election amounted to voter intimidation. True the Vote research was the source of data portrayed in the Dinesh D’Souza movie ‘2000 Mules’. The suit kicked off this past Thursday. Read more here.

AZ: New Laws for 2024 Election? - Governer Katie Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, both Democrats, have been at work trying to implement laws that would address voter intimidation at drop boxes, prohibit hand counting, require testing and certification of on demand ballot printers, and fixing ballot counting errors discovered in Pinal County in 2022. The changes would require legislative support, which being under Republican control, poses some challenges that any of this could get implemented before the 2024 election. Read more here.