“True the Vote” Conservatives Organize on Truth Social
“True the Vote” activity on alt-tech platforms has increased ahead of the 2024 election. Notably, it has targeted Spanish speakers.
TLDR
- True the Vote is a conservative group pushing the “big lie” narrative concerning non-citizens voting in federal elections.
- True the Vote is active on the alt-tech platform Truth Social, where they have received some public attention from Donald Trump.
- A Spanish-language sister account dubbed “Voto Honesto” is also active on Truth Social. This effort to engage Spanish-speakers is noteworthy.
- Donald Trump has voiced support for True the Vote.
Background
True the Vote is a conservative organization with a stated focus on election security. The group has pushed the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election in the US.
The group has been around in one iteration or another since 2009. Founded by Catherine Engelbrecht, the organization has grown from a local Texas cause to a national one. The group is active on Twitter/X, as well as alt-tech social media platforms like Truth Social and Rumble.
Open Measures is conducting ongoing research into the upcoming US presidential election. As such, we decided to examine True the Vote’s activities more closely.
At first glance, the True the Vote website seems relatively innocuous. It encourages readers to register to vote, and includes phrases such as: “Don’t just observe history. Shape it!”
It also includes scenic images of US alongside pictures of celebrated figures from US history. These photos include Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, and Ronald Reagan.
The primary focus of True the Vote, however, is election fraud. The site’s FAQ section contains various questions on the topic of election fraud and voter ID laws.
One of the group’s specific concerns appears to be that non-citizens will vote in federal elections, which is not legal.
On “Project 611”, a part of their website dedicated to an initiative of the same name, the group explains their concerns as the following:
“Since 2021 the Biden Administration has pushed voter registration among non-citizens while allowing over 10,000,000 illegal immigrants across our boarder [sic].”
1
True the Vote played a significant role in providing flawed information for the discredited political film 2000 Mules by conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza. The organization found itself in hot water for making election fraud-related claims—including some that appeared in 2000 Mules—that it could not support in court.2 3
Investigations into non-citizens voting in elections have routinely found that this is not a widespread problem with an influence on electoral outcomes.4 5
Research
As mentioned, True the Vote can be found both on Truth Social and Rumble.
Truth Social is a Twitter-esque microblogging site that markets itself as a “big tent” social media platform with a focus on free speech. It was created by Trump Media & Technology Group.
Rumble is a Canadian video sharing platform known to host extremist content. Rumble was founded in 2013 and has a cloud services business that hosts Truth Social.
On Truth Social, the primary True the Vote account appears to have 133,000 followers and joined in February 2022, the same time Truth Social launched. Many of the posts focus on topics such as election fraud in the 2020 US presidential election, news articles related to election integrity, and concerns over the number of undocumented immigrants entering the US.
The Voto Honesto account was created in March 2024 and has significantly fewer followers. The account posts in Spanish and English. The Spanish-language posts indicate that the author may not be natively familiar with Spanish. Nevertheless, this effort to engage Spanish-speakers in the United States is interesting.
The True the Vote account gets significantly more engagement than the Voto Honesto account; this checks out, given that Truth Social’s user base is largely English-speaking. In May 2024, the average True the Vote post on Truth Social generated ~112 “re-truths” (the equivalent of retweets), garnered ~241 favorites, and got ~14 replies.
The group gained attention from Donald Trump, the largest personality on Truth Social, who voiced support for the group and touted their claims of fraud in the 2020 election as evidence that the election was rigged. Some Trump posts include the following:
On July 6, 2023:
[Journalist] Brit Hume of Fox has really gotten it wrong! First of all, he never thought I would win in 2016, & some things never change. In 2020 I got more votes than any sitting President in history, by far. Biden didn’t get 80 million votes. The Election was Rigged, even if you just want to go by the recent FBI/Twitter Files Hoax, or the DOJ/Facebook Scam, or True the Vote, where tapes of millions of Votes are shown being “Stuffed.” He likes to say I lost, but I didn’t, & my Endorsements almost all won!
On May 17, 2022:
Congrats to Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote on the great success of [the political film] ‘2000 Mules,’ which is doing so well that it will return to theaters beginning this Friday. You can also stream the movie at home or purchase DVDs. Go to 2000Mules.com for details. The evidence is massive and overwhelming – everyone must see this movie on the Rigged and Stolen Election!
Conclusion
Election integrity is a major concern among many conservative groups, inflamed by Trump’s discredited claim that he won the 2020 presidential election in the US. Open Measures has explored the way grassroots organizations have organized around election integrity concerns on Telegram and will continue to monitor this space in the months ahead of the 2024 presidential election in the US.
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- The 611 project. True the Vote. (n.d.). https://truethevote.org/the-611-project. ↩︎
- Bynum, R. (2024, February 14). Conservative group tells judge it has no evidence to back its claims of Georgia ballot stuffing. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/georgia-elections-true-vote-ballot-stuffing-199113b47bc2df79c63fdf007cd23115. ↩︎
- Dreisbach, T. (2024, May 31). Publisher of “2,000 mules” election conspiracy theory film issues apology. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/05/31/g-s1-2298/publisher-of-2000-mules-election-conspiracy-theory-film-issues-apology ↩︎
- Riccardi, N. (2024, April 17). Noncitizen voting isn’t an issue in federal elections, regardless of conspiracy theories. here’s why. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/trump-immigrant-voting-noncitizens-elections-explained-cf4c73b336147b5f5d9c2a22b2564994 ↩︎
- Kessler, G. (2024, March 6). The truth about noncitizen voting in federal elections – The Washington Post. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/06/truth-about-noncitizen-voting-federal-elections/ ↩︎