turning point usa is in local livco elections
8/15/24
Hartland school board candidate Angela Yarber (Clean Slate 2.0) has good friends- multi million dollar extremist organization ‘Turning Point USA’ that are trying *hard* to meddle in our local elections by hiring "ballot chasers" in lil ol Tyrone & Hartland Townships, Fowlerville, Howell, etc. They have posted hiring 51-200 full time employees in an attempt to turn the state of Michigan red in the 2024 election. Everyone should keep an eye out for this is happening in your area.
“Turning Point Action (TPA) is planning a $100m ‘Chase the Vote’ operation to help propel the ex-president to the White House." However, it is important to note that Turning Point Action has been active in Howell -at the Opera House early this year via the Grand New Party, and Hartland & Pinckney school communities (see comments). The Grand New Party is a state PAC in Michigan that can accept/move money from larger Turning Point organizations and then funnel that money into local elections- county commissioners, school, library board, etc. The Grand New Party has clearly stated that this is their intention and Angela Yarber has proudly participated in their events.
Turning Point Action is partnering with Early Vote Action, Tea Party Patriotic Action, America First Works, Moms For America, and several other groups on its Chase the Vote initiative. TPA wants to involve state and local conservative organizations in the effort as well.” Their coalition “hopes to mobilize more than 1,000 field organizers to track and chase target ballots in battleground states.” Revenues for Kirk’s Turning Point USA skyrocketed from $8m in 2017 to $80m in 2022.”
*Scroll to bottom of the post to see more local connections in LivCo*
“Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk is getting heat too for his stream of unabashed racist comments including criticizing Martin Luther King as “awful” and “not a good person”; and said that whenever he boards a plane with a Black pilot he worries whether they are qualified. Darrell Scott, a Black pastor from Cleveland who has been close to Trump for more than a decade, has accused Kirk of breeding a new generation of Hitler Youth. Scott told the Guardian that Kirk was damaging Trump’s chances of winning in November by alienating Black voters.”
The crowd at the “people’s convention” in Detroit recently told a different story. It was largely older in age, as Trump crowds often are, and almost exclusively white – a striking contrast to Trump’s boast that he is gaining ground with Black voters.
The speakers’ rostrum and attendee list at the Detroit event were stacked with conspiracy theorists and extremists, including the promoter of “Pizzagate”, Jack Posobiec, and Alex Jones, the bankrupt InfoWars host who claimed the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. The combination of older white people in the audience and extremists on stage led the conservative Washington Examiner to denounce Turning Point as “one of the most destructive forces in Republican politics”.
Indeed, Ziprecruiter and other hiring platforms show ballot chaser managers' descriptions in Michigan as “Responsibilities also include hiring and building a community of the nation's most aggressive and highly skilled ballot chasers in recent American history. . . “TPA’s strategy departs from the traditional GOP voter outreach model by building relationships with prospective voters in the months leading up to election season. New recruits are instructed on how to employ a community-based approach that involves forming personal ties with these potential voters and following up with them after initial contact.
Ballot chasing, also known as "ballot harvesting," is a political practice involving the collection and submission of absentee or mail-in ballots by individuals other than the voter. While the specifics can vary by jurisdiction, this process typically involves party operatives, volunteers, or activists who collect completed ballots from voters to submit them to election officials. The practice is controversial and subject to varying legal regulations across different regions as there is increased chances for fraud and manipulation. Allowing third parties, like Turning Point, to handle ballots can lead to undue influence over voters' choices, loss or tampering of ballots, and challenges in verifying the authenticity of the votes.
TPA is also targeting newly registered GOP voters and independents, according to Martinez. To streamline its ballot chasing initiative, TPA developed an app for chasers to download on their phones that allows them to access the comprehensive data analyzed and produced by Martinez and his team. The app provides chasers with a list of low-propensity voters in their area and includes information such as an elector’s name and address, and a map showing where he or she lives. It also identifies if the voter has a mail-in ballot or is a traditional early or Election Day voter, indicates whether the voter has cast his ballot in any given election, and will update daily with the latter information as it’s released by county governments.
The app’s mapping feature allows users to prioritize which targets to focus on leading up to the election by using icons that signify whether the low-propensity voter still has a ballot in his possession. Turning Point Action retains this data so it can be used to enhance its GOP voter outreach operations and data infrastructure for future elections. the application allows chasers to provide conservatives “they come into contact with a tool to be able to contact voters on their own,” and help ensure “more people in their community are contacting the targeted voters that we need to chase.” In fact, TPA plans to collaborate with other conservative organizations to help boost its voter outreach efforts, according to Smith and Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet.
They have “expended “tens of millions of dollars” on building the infrastructure for the initiative, with funds having gone towards developing and troubleshooting the app, accumulating and finalizing voter data maps, and hiring ballot chasers. The group’s aspirational goal is to put $108 million towards Chase the Vote, according to Kolvet. Dubbed “chase the vote”, the plan is being conducted in direct coordination with the Trump campaign. It will target what Kirk calls “low-propensity voters” who rarely bother to cast ballots yet are open to Trump’s increasingly authoritarian allure. Turning Point activists will descend on three vital swing states – Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin”
“Turning Point has become toxic in Arizona,” said Tyler Montague, an Arizona-based Republican strategist. “They’ve helped to cement an extreme worldview, creating anger that in turn generates political energy that they harness. That’s their game.”
Turning Point now exerts an iron grip on the Arizona legislature through the all-powerful Freedom caucus, which is led by Jake Hoffman, former communications chief of TP USA. Hoffman is closely connected to Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point’s chief operating officer who represents Arizona on the Republican National Committee.
Both Hoffman and Bowyer are being prosecuted for their role as so-called “fake electors” in which they allegedly plotted to prevent Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election by sending an alternative slate of electors to Congress. Bowers told the Guardian that he now sees the Arizona Republican party and Turning Point as synonymous. “They are basically the same, they are in sync right now,” he said.
“They wrap themselves in a Christian flag and get all these young kids to think they’re doing the Lord’s work, and they use that evangelistic fervor very cynically to raise money and increase their power.”
Note: Turning Point is one of the national MAGA groups that Floodgate in Hartland has recently hosted, drawing in 5K+ attendees from around Michigan and surrounding states to these political rallies. This is a massive movement that is flooding LivCo right now. Watch out for those local candidates that are being promoted by extremist MAGA church Floodgate!! Bill Bolin is the preacher at this church and he is leading a slate to try and overthrow the supposed to be NON PARTISAN community library board. More on him in th ecomments.
*Shout out to those staying alert and sharing this concerning information. If you see evidence of Turning Point trying to lay roots in your area, document and send our way.
