Conservative group challenges 17,000 names on voter rolls

DENTON – KERA reports that since May, Denton County has received about 17,000 challenges to local voter rolls, Elections Administrator Frank Phillips said. True the Vote, a Texas-based conservative election-monitoring organization, has been sending complaints nationwide about inaccurate voter rolls with the goal of preventing voter fraud. Founder Catherine Engelbrecht asks people to use a web-based app called IV3 that lets them research voter records and submit voter eligibility challenges to local election offices. Phillips said the Denton County election office has faced three categories of voter eligibility challenges.

“They’re basically following three categories,” he said. “The vast majority of them are people that they believe had moved and no longer live at that address, because they did a national change of address with the post office. That is, overwhelmingly, the majority. They sent a few … where they think a person is deceased [claiming] that we still have on the rolls. … The third category … they’re questioning is if it’s a commercial address versus a residential.” Wired magazine reported in 2022 that little is known about the IV3 app because it isn’t active in most states and requires users to submit personal information and images of the front and back of their identification. Wired analyzed the code and found the app “uses an ineffective and unreliable methodology to determine who should remain on the rolls.” According to a news release, True the Vote says nearly 7,000 people have used IV3 to complete nearly 650,000 voter challenges in 1,322 counties across the U.S. Phillips said the organization’s data is outdated, and he has disputed claims about voter roll inaccuracy. “It looks like they’ve probably got their database, wherever they got it — I’m guessing at the end of last year because we mail out a bunch of registration cards in January, when those start coming back as undeliverable,” Phillips said. “That’s when we put people in suspense.”