The American Constitutional Rights Union (ACRU) and the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) have partnered to protect senior voters during this midterm election cycle.
In a press release, AMAC CEP Rebecca Weber announced the partnership with the ACRU to help safeguard elderly Americans voting rights after reports of potential vote fraud in nursing homes.
“If there was ever a senior-centric election cycle, it’s this year’s midterm elections; older Americans will win big or lose. It is critical that the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, senior citizens, protect their rights, particularly their voting rights,” stated Weber.
Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III are both on the ACRU board and highlighted an investigation into a Wisconsin nursing home for vote fraud in a Town Hall article over the Summer:
In Wisconsin, the state assembly appointed a special counsel to investigate vote fraud in nursing homes after an investigation by a county sheriff uncovered evidence indicating numerous cases of vote fraud in a nursing home. Special Counsel Michael Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, released a report this year indicating, “rampant fraud and abuse occurred statewide” at Wisconsin’s nursing homes and other residential care facilities.” After investigating more than 90 nursing homes in five counties the Special Counsel concluded that there was evidence of fraud including illegally assisting and marking ballots and possible forgery.
The investigation revealed voting rates in the nursing homes in these counties were astoundingly high. In three counties, 100% of nursing home residents voted. Given the likelihood that every nursing home has some residents who suffer from severe dementia, it seems highly improbable that each resident was capable of requesting an absentee ballot and filling it out.
While this is just one example of several that are detailed in Blackwell and Meese’s article, ACRU and AMAC’s press release notes that the report “indicates that the problem is widespread.”
Blackwell, who also serves as chairman of the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute, emphasized the importance of protecting senior voters in a statement to Breitbart News:
“One of the fundamental purposes of government is to protect vulnerable among us. When it comes to making it easy to vote but hard to cheat, protecting our senior citizens as they exercise their fundamental right to vote is a moral obligation as well as a legal one,” he said.
The release highlights several tools voters can use to safeguard seniors’ rights, including the ACRU’s Vote Fraud Hotline. ACRU President Lori Roman said the hotline has yielded reports of seniors being taken advantage of.
“We’ve received reports of cognitively impaired facility residents having their ballot choices made by staff, sometimes under coercion and often without their knowledge,” she stated in the release.
“Other complaints have uncovered activist groups across the country collecting ballots from residential facilities with the promise that the ballots would be delivered to election officials,” she added. “The chain of custody and security of ballots should be a foremost concern.”
Another tool for senior voters was implemented last week when the ACRU launched the Center for Vulnerable Voters website, which “offers resources, information, and training to protect the most vulnerable voters in the U.S.” The resource is an expansion of the group’s 2020 endeavor called the Protect Elderly Votes Project, and the organization is also providing AMAC members with its Senior Citizen Voter Bill of Rights as “AMAC is focused squarely on protecting the interests of America’s seniors,” the release notes.