Local Labs – which calls its work both political research and journalism – is demanding voters’ details across the country to back claims of
Jen Filfield at The Guardian:
In North Carolina, Local Labs wanted obscure voter records that would take weeks, or even months, to prepare. In Georgia, the company requested a copy of every envelope voters used to mail in their ballots. And in dozens of counties across the US, Local Labs asked for the address of every midterm voter. Local election offices across the country are struggling to manage a sharp rise in the number of public records requests, and extensive requests coming from a little-known conservative effort called Local Labs in at least five states have stymied election officials, according to a Votebeat review of hundreds of records requests, as well as interviews. The requests are broad and unclear, and the purpose for obtaining the records is often not fully explained, leaving officials wondering in some cases whether they can legally release the records. Local Labs is known for a vast network of websites that rely mainly on aggregation and automation, blasting out conservative-leaning hyper-local news under names such as the Old North News, in North Carolina, and Peach Tree Times, in Georgia.
Local Labs’ CEO, Brian Timpone, told Votebeat the company was using records requests in an attempt to expose election fraud that he is sure exists. The company was sometimes getting paid by GOP-backed clients to do so, Timpone acknowledged, characterizing the work simultaneously as both political research and journalism. “We’re just trying to push for more free speech and more transparency,” Timpone said. “And no one else is doing it.” Veteran journalists and those who study journalism ethics say he’s wrong. The Arizona State University journalism professor Julia Wallace – previously the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution – said doing reporting and paid-for work at the same time is not ethical. “That’s not independent, so that’s not journalism,” she said. Timpone is no stranger to journalism controversies: among his previous companies was one that sold cheap content to local news organizations and was ultimately closed after a series of ethics scandals, including plagiarism. To be sure, public records laws exist because the public has the right to know what the government is doing, and ensuring access to records is a critical window into that. Election offices, open records advocates say, should consider proactively and publicly sharing more election records.
But election officials have questions. It’s unclear from the requests when the company is doing the work for a third party or for their news websites, or both, and if the election offices can legally provide the records. One recent Local Labs project offers a clue of what might be to come. After the midterm election, Local Labs was paid by America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a national thinktank that pushes the former president Donald Trump’s agenda, to send public records requests to 100 counties in the US asking for a record of each voter who voted, along with their address and other information. AFPI published the first results of that work in June, in a misleading report that insinuated that thousands of fraudulent ballots were cast in Arizona’s midterm election. “Voter Discrepancies Found in the Arizona 2022 General Election,” the AFPI headline read. But most, perhaps all, of the more than 8,000 discrepancies found were because Local Labs had compared two sets of voter lists from different time periods and including different voters.
Yavapai county officials, for example, showed Votebeat emails in which an elections official tried to convince Local Labs not to publish the broad findings because they were misleading, taking time over days to explain the source of the discrepancies. The warnings went ignored. “They just put the information out, and we are left defending ourselves,” the Yavapai county recorder, Michelle Burchill, said. “Then we are being harassed,” she said, because people believe it.
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Local Labs slam county offices with requests
North Carolina and Georgia election officials say they are frustrated by Local Labs’ broad requests because the company often fails to answer any questions that would make them easier to understand. “I am reaching out for the third time to clarify your records requests to our county boards of elections,” Pat Gannon, spokesperson of the North Carolina state board of elections, wrote to Espinoza on 17 August, asking him to call him. “Obviously we will respond to all public records requests as required by law, but this is immensely frustrating to busy elections officials trying to ensure that all eligible individuals can vote and have their vote counted,” Gannon said.
Records provided by Gannon show numerous Local Labs requests across the state in recent months, for broad information that would take weeks to gather such as all documents with information about election hardware and software, and all absentee ballot applications. These add to outstanding Local Labs requests, including for all absentee ballot envelopes cast in the midterm election, which would take weeks to scan and redact. In Wake county, North Carolina, it took a team of election workers three or four months to respond to a similar request for the envelopes from a different requester – there were more than 40,000 absentee ballots cast in the midterm election there. Danner McCulloh, who processes records requests for Wake county, said each envelope had to be scanned and redacted individually, and then reviewed by a legal team. The result was just envelopes with the voter’s name and address, since state law required the redaction of signatures and other identifying marks.
Local Labs, the right-wing election denier outfit founded by CEO Brian Timpone, filed numerous requests for voting records to fuel their crusade for their twisted lies.
