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In May of 2019, then-Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill joined a "bipartisan" group of secretaries of state from across the nation – eight Democrats and 12 Republicans – to spend three days experiencing the "history of the voting rights movement."

“I’m proud to be joining my colleagues to put aside partisanship and celebrate the history of voting rights,” said Merrill about the trip. “At a time when the Voting Rights Act and the foundational democratic right to vote is under attack, it is critical that Secretaries of State across the country fight to tear down barriers that prevent voters from being able to cast their ballot and make their voice heard.”

The tour featured stops in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma. Participating secretaries of state visited historical locations and museums that "tell the story of the struggle for voting rights" and enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The National Association of Secretaries of State, which received $15,000 from the left-of-center New Venture Fund (part of Arabella's dark money network) in 2020, provided logistical and organizational support for the tour.

The tour was funded by the Southern Poverty Law Center, along with the left-of-center Ford Foundation, the Democracy Fund, and the Center for Secure and Modern Elections (CSME), a New Venture project that advocates for automatic voter registration. (Note that CSME was operationally and financially linked to the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) during the 2020 election through private grant administration for local election offices via CSME's "Cities Project" -- think "Zuckbucks.")

Less than a year after the tour, the covid pandemic erupted, turning the 2020 election into chaos and leading to, among other things, calls for universal mail-in voting. President Trump warned it would lead to "the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history," but SPLC said it was "shameful" for Trump to "spread lies about a trusted method of voting" like that, arguing that vote-by-mail was "safe and secure."

It's important to note there was an unprecedented surge in vote-by-mail in 2020.

Coincidentally, many of the participants on the Alabama tour promised the 2020 election was safe, secure and accurate, including:

• John Merrill, Alabama (R)
• Kevin Meyer, Alaska Lt. Governor (R)
• Katie Hobbs, Arizona (D)
• Denise Merrill, Connecticut (D)
• Brad Raffensperger, Georgia (R)
• Connie Lawson, Indiana (R)
• Paul Pate, Iowa (R)
• Scott Schwab, Kansas (R)
• Kyle Ardoin, Louisiana (R)
• Matt Dunlap, Maine (D)
• Jocelyn Benson, Michigan (D)
• Barbara Cegavske, Nevada (R)
• Kathryn Boockvar, Pennsylvania (D)
• Nellie Gorbea, Rhode Island (D)
• Kim Wyman, Washington (R)

One participant, then-Texas SOTS David Whitley, claimed nearly 100,000 illegal voters were included on the Texas voter rolls. He was quickly accused of leading a "botched" voter purge effort which resulted in multiple lawsuits. Whitley resigned on May 27, 2019, just a couple weeks after the tour but his replacement, Ruth Hughs, promised the 2020 election was "smooth and secure."

"The 2020 elections spawned the unsubstantiated “Big Lie” conspiracy theory that former President Donald Trump lost because of massive voter fraud," wrote the SPLC. "A veritable cottage industry of election deniers has since taken up the cause, traveling the country and preaching various election conspiracy theories as fact to local communities."

SPLC attacked a number of conservatives as being "election deniers" who "planted seeds of distrust" in national and local elections, including Mike Lindell, Kash Patel, Seth Keshel, and David Clements.

Those paying close attention recognize the 2020 election was anything but safe, smooth and secure. A recent poll reveals 63% of Republicans believe, as does Trump, the 2020 election was stolen.

Earlier this year Trump highlighted a series of examples of alleged 2020 voter fraud:

• Colorado - Trump votes were switched to Biden votes after an IT expert gained access to a forensic image of the Dominion Voting System.
• Nevada - "They knowingly certified a fraudulent election"; 130k+ instances of fraud included double-voters, dead voters, voters who didn't live in Nevada but voted there, voters casting ballots from non-existent addresses, non-citizens.
• Arizona - Anomaly of 11,326 voters on voter rolls, which was bigger than Biden's margin of victory; and all those trucks that kept showing up... the ballots from Runbeck... and the fact that Arizona didn't finish counting election results until 2.5 weeks after the 2020 election.
• Michigan - All those absentee ballots showed up in the middle of the night, and then suddenly Biden is ahead; a verified list of 17k+ voters confirmed dead whose votes showed up in the mail.
• Wisconsin - 138k votes all for Biden and not a single vote for Trump; statistically unlikely.
• Georgia - Massive homeless ballot harvesting fraud used to register thousands of people from a single address; tied to Soros-backed NGO.
• Minnesota - Nearly 500,000 voters were registered on on election day -- that's 19% of all voters in the state.
• Pennsylvania - Received nearly a million MORE ballots than it sent out; plus non-election personnel reportedly uploaded USB devices to election machines.
• Various States - "This is how they stole it" video mash-up.
• Dominion (Vote Counts) - Deleted 2.5 million Trump votes nationwide and switched hundreds of thousands of Trump votes to Biden.
• Dominion (Printing) - Severely degraded ballot quality on 25,000 ballots / suspected counterfeits.

As of April 2026, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is still actively involved in Trump administration efforts to investigate alleged irregularities and foreign interference in the 2020 election. The efforts have included seizing election records from Arizona’s largest county and probing to determine whether 'substantiated' irregularities in Georgia 2020 vote counts were intentional. Whether the probes amount to anything remains to be seen.

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