An election denial group is planning to create what one of its founders calls “a dropbox surveillance reality show” by donating “AI-driven” cameras to sheriffs in Wisconsin and other states to livestream dropboxes and remotely monitor people voting.
While WIRED found no evidence that the group has been able to recruit sheriffs or others to implement their scheme, local officials in charge of running elections in Wisconsin are concerned that round-the-clock surveillance could spur potential voter intimidation.
The “dropbox surveillance reality show” initiative is being led by Catherine Engelbrecht, who heads up the Texas-based True the Vote group, which has pushed election conspiracies for over a decade. This year, the group rolled out technology to allow anyone to file mass voter roll challenges. And last week, it launched a new app that will allow election deniers to post photos and videos from polling locations on November 5 suggesting evidence of election fraud.
But dropboxes, where voters can return their ballots, are a particular point of concern for Engelbrecht and her cofounder Gregg Philips. The pair were behind the data provided to the debunked conspiracy film 2000 Mules which alleged—without evidence—that so-called “mules” were used to stuff ballots into drop boxes ahead of the 2020 election, swinging the vote in favor of President Joe Biden.
The distribution company behind the film earlier this year issued an apology and withdrew the film from circulation, after Engelbrecht and Phillips admitted to a judge in Georgia that they had no evidence to back up their claims.
Now, True the Vote is again boosting claims that dropboxes will be used to conduct widespread voter fraud ahead of the 2024 election and their solution is to put cameras on those locations and let anyone watch 24/7 online. Wisconsin is a key swing state in the upcoming election: Biden won the state by 1 percent in 2020, after Trump had taken the state in 2016. In 2020, more than 500 dropboxes were set up in 430 communities across the state, but a 2022 ruling said unsupervised drop boxes outside of clerks offices were not legal. That ruling was overturned last July and within days, Engelbrecht began speaking about monitoring dropboxes in Wisconsin.
“In 2020 and 2022, we learned more than we could have imagined about ballot dropbox monitoring,” Engelbrecht said in a newsletter to supporters that WIRED reviewed. “Our plan involves AI-driven cameras and real-time livestreaming. We have tested the tech for over a year. We have our own data center, so the livestream cannot be ‘disappeared.’”
It’s unclear what exactly Engelbrecht means when she says “AI-driven” and True the Vote did not respond to repeated requests for comment about this aspect of their project.
Phillips, in a post on Truth Social that has since been deleted, wrote that they were implementing a “a dropbox surveillance reality show.”
Engelbrecht first hinted at her plans in July, telling Christian nationalist prophet Lance Wallnau on his podcast that “there will be cheating” and that True the Vote would be “working with sheriffs to identify areas that sheriffs would be willing to allow us to grant them camera equipment that they can monitor and we can livestream.”