Motels and Mules

This post is full of confessions.

First, I confess to not seeing the new documentary, 2000 Mules. 

I say this because I believe many people are speaking about the movie but also have not been willing to pay $19.99 to rent or $29.99 to buy the movie.  I suspect many who speak about the movie also have not actually watched the movie, although they may not be as forthright as me.

(I’ve seen one person who says this movie is “proof positive the 2020 election was stolen,” but whom I doubt has seen it, actually post a “See it Free” link, but the link doesn’t lead to anyone seeing it for free.” The trailer plays, and then the viewer is led to a paywall).

Still, we are a society on the go, so actually seeing a movie these days isn’t necessarily a prerequisite to reviewing a movie.  I’ve seen the trailer and the documentary videos about the movie. 

2000 Mules is cinematic portrayal of findings by the leaders of “True the Vote.”  I know plenty about True the Vote but my latest experiences with True the Vote have come from numerous open records requests they have made of North Dakota in the past two years.  These requests have been similar, and involved voter registration, which North Dakota does not have. 

That makes sense.  In fairness, the organization isn’t called True the Registration, or True the Voter.  Apparently, only the vote is in their truth wheelhouse.

2000 Mules reminds me of the movie 200 Motels by Frank Zappa.  I’m a Zappa fan, but like 2000 Mules, 200 Motels is an often-discussed-but-seldom-seen movie.  It’s a classic movie, but also one I have never seen.  I have the soundtrack, though.  (Zappa is long-dead but I suspect he knew as much about North Dakota voters as True the Vote).

According to Wikipedia, 200 Motels has been “dubbed a ‘surrealistic’ documentary.”

I assume the same can be said for 2000 Mules.

The premise of 2000 Mules comes down to the belief that ballot drop boxes stole the 2020 presidential election.  The dropboxes enabled ballots to be deposited and later counted, and apparently, the maker of 2000 Mules thinks counting ballots is evil.

True the Vote purchased location data tied to cellphones and created intricate backstories of how people crossed paths with dropboxes in five key swing states in the 2020 election.  This location data is combined with some security video showing people putting ballots in the dropboxes, sometimes as the dropboxes were overflowing, and ballots fell to the ground.  This juxtaposition apparently creates some sort of evil narrative.

You know how accurate location data is on your cell phone—Google tells me that I visited a water park 100 times last winter.  (That’s half of 200 Motels!)  Yet, I’ve never been to the water park.

I actually drove by it on my way to the gym down the road.  However, I’ve never been at that gym, so says Google. 

True the Vote claims that this data and images in five swing states prove that the wrong presidential candidate was elected.  Like 200 Motels, though, the storyline just shows unconnected nonsense vignettes, (so says Wikipedia of the Zappa movie).

In fact, while discussing how evil it is that these dropboxes have been fed ballots, the video supposedly raises the concern with the security of the dropboxes, essentially also suggesting that ballots could be taken from the boxes.  Again, unconnected nonsense.

The Associated Press did a good job pointing out that the movie stumbles.  Others have as well, and the very people that the movie is hoping to reach—media pundits—haven’t embraced the movie.  Beyond that, if the facts were so telling, and this was such a bombshell discovery, exactly why would that lead the creators to take several months and create a movie to make money, as opposed to exposing crimes to law enforcement?

The creators claim they did approach authorities and couldn’t get traction.  My suspicion is that no traction was gained because, at the AP says, nothing was proven.

My further suspicion is that the producers saw the money and a willing audience of pillow huggers who would applaud their actions and conclusions without really digging into facts.  It’s akin, in my view, to Bev Harris of Black Box Voting in the early 2000s. Once she had an HBO documentary, “Hacking Demoracy,” in 2006, her profile suddenly was nowhere to be found.  In fairness, she at least made her book available for free, to generate interest.  True the Vote, again, isn’t really True the Marketing.

(Bev Harris also was referenced as a grandmother.  Frank Zappa brought with him the Mothers of Invention.  Portraying yourself as a parent or grandparent is always a good marketing move when questioning elections.  The True the Vote leaders are married but whether or not they have any kids is not…..wait for it….apparent).

Fact is, dropboxes didn’t swing the election, at least the way the creators say.  The fact that communities across the country used private funds to install dropboxes didn’t make dropboxes evil.

While we are making confessions, I must confess that I am not necessarily a fan of dropboxes.  I do believe election offices should have night drops, but dropboxes have become a broad term ranging from night drops at the election office to remote ballot drop-off locations.  Somehow, dropboxes have emerged as yet another political wedge topic, where the Left feels dropboxes represent a constitutional right and the Right, well, actually read the Constitution.

As a local election official, I saw the value of having a 24-hour ballot drop off at our office.  People forget to mail ballots and bring them close to election day, and others feel more secure knowing the ballot was received.  They also don’t trust that the United States Postal Service will competently get their ballot delivered on time, and, as you can search and read in this blog, who would?

We are used to seeing several dropboxes in our everyday life.  They are blue, unattended, and at many street corners.  Older readers might reference these dropboxes by a different name--mailboxes.

Letters often are shoved into these mailboxes and then left unattended for hours before one official comes and recovers the contents, with no check and balance of another employee from another political party in attendance.

What I do like about the notion of election dropboxes is the implied confession, at least an admission, that this whole nationwide Vote At Home push is too much for the United States Postal Service to handle.  The dropboxes provide more assurance than the USPS that the ballots will actually be delivered correctly and expeditiously.  The USPS simply can’t handle the volume of mail that comes from nationwide voting.  Those who say otherwise likely could create a different organization than the creators of this video, perhaps naming themselves False the Vote.

The same people pushing voting at home pushed the dropboxes.  The same people who stress to you that vote by mail is safe and secure, and who tell you that election mail is just a tiny amount of the overall mail, also push dropboxes.  Remember those public service announcements from the USPS that said you must mail Christmas cards by December 15 to ensure they arrive by Christmas?

(One of the great things about the USPS and vote-by-mail, Dear Reader, is that, as evidenced by the question above without a typed answer, often the jokes write themselves).

But back to True the Vote’s problem with dropboxes.

I’ve tried 200 times—nay, 2000 times—but confess to not knowing their point. 

Is it that ballots were delivered?

It is that someone went and gathered ballots on behalf of voters to make sure the voters’ ballots were received?  They could have done this with stamps and a blue postal drop box. 

(And, in reality, the ballots likely would have arrived without a stamp; that’s a little piece of election mail regulations most people don’t know.  The USPS is required to deliver those ballots and charge the election office for postage).

Does True the Vote actually have proof that ballots were prepared illegally?  That seems to be the truth that needs to be sought.

In North Dakota, no one can get a ballot without an application.  The application requires proof of residency and proof of identity, and includes a signature requirement.  The ballots, once issued and returned, contain a place for the voter to sign, and these two signatures are compared.

Vote-by-mail state laws aren’t identical, but they are very similar in most states.  Some states issue mail ballots to all voters, but those are vote-by mail states on the West Coast.  Nearly all states require an application first, and signatures and other identifying information are verified North Dakota has famously been in the news lately for strictly following signature comparisons.

Maybe people who have seen the movie will be able to properly explain the conclusion we are to be left with.  For now, it appears to simply be, “Dropboxes are bad.”

If so, I suspect history will long remember 200 Motels over 2000 Mules.