NPR’s All Things Considered ran a disturbing story June 30, 2022:
On a quiet Tuesday night in Howard County, Md., dozens of people gather in a community center and listen to Seth Keshel's 10-point plan.
"Captain K," as he's known in election fraud circles, is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, and he is walking through his go-to presentation: comparisons of vote totals from the past few election cycles, which he falsely claims prove President Biden's win in 2020 was illegitimate. His 10-point plan to "true election integrity" includes banning all early voting and requiring all American voters to re-register.
The next night, more than a thousand miles away in Minneapolis, in a small building across from a popular garden shop, roughly 60 people wait for David Clements to take the stage.
Clements, professorial in a tan blazer with a graying beard and unruly curly hair, begins his presentation with a prayer. Then he goes to the slideshow.
The audience, which appears to be all white and mostly middle-aged, occasionally gasps as he shows charts and graphs, which he claims contain evidence of widespread election fraud.
NPR has been investigating this grassroots effort which has been going under the radar. Along with Keshel and Clements, they also looked at Mike (My Pillow) Lindell and Douglas Frank. There’s a map at the link which shows sessions they’ve been holding across America from January 6, 2021 to June 30, 2022.
NPR tracked Keshel and Clements, as well as Douglas Frank, who misleadingly claims to have discovered a secret algorithm that swings vote totals across the U.S. (his methodology has been widely debunked by voting experts), and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
The scale of their movements paints a portrait of an election denial movement that has evolved into a nationwide force, beyond just swing states — and despite the Jan. 6 Committee's investigation and efforts by voting officials at every level to combat disinformation. NPR's investigation is the first such effort to document the scope of these influencers.
"It's an existential threat to American democracy," said Franita Tolson, an elections expert at the University of Southern California. "If the numbers get big enough, it's unclear whether we will survive it."
Their efforts are not limited to proselytizing the general public:
NPR found that over the past year and a half, the men met or appeared with at least 78 elected officials at the federal, state and local levels — many of whom will have a role in how future elections are run and certified.
At least two secretaries of state, two U.S. senators, 10 U.S. representatives, two state attorneys general and two lieutenant governors met or appeared with the figures NPR tracked. More than three dozen members of state legislatures, many of whom have introduced legislation in their states that would affect how Americans cast ballots, have also appeared at events with them.
NPR reports that their efforts are taking a toll on election officials. It is leading to threats and general paranoia about elections among hundreds of thousands of people who have absorbed their messaging. Efforts to counter it are difficult to implement. As Terry Pratchett noted in “The Truth”, a Lie can go halfway around the world while the Truth is still putting on its boots.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, says they're using election fraud as a vehicle to advance themselves.
"There's no shortage of ability to access the truth about our election system, yet there seems to be a proliferation of people willing to lie about it," Benson said. "I think it's logical to conclude that they know better. And that they're knowingly spreading misinformation ... to win elections, to raise money, to gain attention and celebrity."
The NPR investigation has been following this for some time:
Monika Evstatieva, Barbara Van Woerkom, Barrie Hardymon and Meg Anderson of NPR's Investigations team contributed reporting to this story. NPR's Nick Underwood contributed to the data visualizations.
You can listen to the original broadcast version at the link: it takes about 8 minutes. The intro isn’t included in the transcript, and provides context. It’s also worth listening to hear the emotional overtones that the transcript doesn’t convey, while the pictures at the link flesh out the verbal descriptions.