With President Trump’s poll numbers slipping, a group of the president’s former campaign aides is beginning an effort to encourage new voters in parts of the country that supported him in the election, and to stop what they contend are illegal votes in Democratic areas.
The former aides are starting a group called Look Ahead America to identify “disaffected” rural and working-class Americans who either do not vote or are not on the voter rolls, in order to register and mobilize them ahead of future elections, according to a prospectus being distributed to possible donors.
Look Ahead America also seeks to discourage or invalidate “fraudulent” votes by deploying poll watchers with cameras, and through what it called a forensic voter fraud investigation to identify “votes cast in the names of the deceased, by illegal immigrants or non-citizens,” according to the prospectus, which was shared with The New York Times.
The group is the brainchild of two people who initially helped run the data team for Mr. Trump’s campaign, Matt Braynard and Witold Chrabaszcz….
Mr. Braynard stressed that the effort to clamp down on alleged illegal voting is secondary.
But it could attract criticism from voting rights advocates. They say there’s little evidence of widespread voter fraud, and contend that the real goal of conservative efforts to fight illegal voting — including the Trump administration’s investigation of alleged voter fraud — is to purge Democratic-leaning African-American and Hispanic voters from the voter rolls.
And this statement is stunning:
Mr. Braynard said the idea is to create “the Acorn of the right” — a reference to the liberal community organizing juggernaut that was largely dissolved after a 2009 scandal sparked by a conservative provocateur’s sting videos.