Ring cameras on voter trap houses? Programming issues, and how you can help
In this newsletter:
Ramon Jackson is still on the ground...and discovered a new anomaly
A Michigan SOS employee blew the whistle on a noncitizen who appeared registered — and determined it was a more widespread issue
Sheriff Dar Leaf and Attorney Stefanie Lambert joined TTVN LIVE and detailed how clerks are caught between systems they don't control and determinations they may not be equipped to make
Why our 611 Project — built around 18 U.S.C. § 611 — is suddenly current again
Three questions to take to your own local election official this week
Hi Friend,
The house wasn't livable.
Door hanging open. Raggedy cars out front. Old mops piled inside. Nobody had lived there in a long time.
But there was a brand-new video doorbell on it.
Ramon Jackson pressed it. And a voice answered — from somewhere — asking who he was looking for.
Nobody ever came to the door...although the door was ajar.
Ramon is careful, so we'll be careful too. In his own words on yesterday's TTVN Live: "I don't never make a definite statement that this is happening. I'm saying that I'm afraid that this is happening." His concern is simple enough — that a house full of registered voters can now be vouched for by somebody sitting anywhere in the country.
So he changed his method. He doesn't ring the bell anymore.
He knocks. Until his hands hurt.
Hold onto that...because we also heard from Barry County, Michigan Sheriff Dar Leaf and Detroit attorney Stefanie Lambert.
But first...here's something interesting Ramon found.
Still on the ground
After every election, Ramon pulls the voter list straight from the clerk — the official record of who the county says voted. Then he goes and matches names to addresses.
One name took him to an apartment complex. Nobody by that name lives there, the leasing office told him. The unit had checked out on August 6 — two days after the primary.
He never set out to do election work. He was trying to understand why Detroit kept getting stripped — 100,000 homes lost, $600 million over-assessed and never returned. The rolls are where that trail ended up.
Check out just a "small poisoned sample from the pool", as Ramon would phrase it 👇👇👇👇
Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf joined last-minute with what an insider at Michigan's Secretary of State brought to him.
When a voter came in to update the address on her license, she'd forgotten her permanent-residency card, so the employee told her it couldn't be processed.
A voter registration popped up anyway...and the voter received a letter congratulating her on her registration.
When a Michigan state employee raised concern, the manager seemed to brush it off (see the confirmation and the employee's email series below) 👇👇
The whistleblower's report
The manager's answer, according to the account: it's a programming setting, nothing he could do — and not to worry, because the local clerks will catch it.
They can't, Leaf says. Clerks have no way to determine citizenship. They see a voter ID number come through, and they move the line.
"And these are just little counties," he told us. "I can't imagine what's going on in the inner cities."
Clerks Are Asking for Help Out Loud
Attorney Stefanie Lambert joined by phone with the rest of it.
The Secretary of State holds the data needed to verify citizenship, she says, and clerks don't get it. The registration is created upstream; the clerk at the end of the line is told to make a call she has no ability to make. The opt-out is an honor system — a form you mail back to undo a registration you never asked for.
Then the squeeze. On August 13, Michigan's AG charged five non-citizens over voting in 2024, and said others couldn't be charged because they were on the roll and believed they could vote. In July, DOJ warned election officials of criminal exposure over non-citizens on theirs.
So the people in the middle are on the hook for a system they don't control — hence the videos, hence the whistleblowers.
And the programming, Lambert says, isn't unique to Michigan.
Why the 611 Project is being resurrected
We started pulling this thread in 2016, when voter registrations were riding along with healthcare.gov applications — a benefit non-citizens can't receive. Nobody could tell us how a name got from a federal database onto a state roll.
That work became The 611 Project in 2024, named for 18 U.S.C. § 611, the federal statute on voting by aliens.
Read it and you'll find the exception: the prohibition doesn't apply if the person "reasonably believed at the time of voting" that he or she was a citizen.
Citizenship as a state of mind...codified.
Why write that in, unless someone intended to use it — even against the will of a noncitizen?
The handbook is on our site under Engage, along with our Letters to Non-Citizens — warning people that voting before naturalization can end their path to citizenship.
Most noncitizens caught up in this aren't schemers. They're doing everything right, and they stand to lose the most.
Your Call to Action this week!
Stefanie's ask is simple, and any citizen can do it. Print the two documents from Sheriff Leaf (the above whistleblower's reports), take them to your local election official, and ask:
Who does the programming for voter registration at our DMV?
Do we have this same issue here?
Do you have the ability to determine whether someone is a citizen?
Write down the answers. Be kind; your clerk may be more alarmed than you are. If the answer is no, your clerk should take it to law enforcement — and if nobody hears them, bring it to us.
Then start at your own kitchen table. Scan. Check. Protect. is live on our site: your registration, your voter history where available, and everyone registered at your address.
Catherine checked hers last week and found a relative from thirty years ago on her address. That woman never lived there. Not once.
So call your parents. Text your adult kids. Make a family night of it, and then send us what you see! We hope for good reports, but we prepare for anything.
One last thing...
Justice and accountability are important — we agree. But right now, we have a country to fix, and cleaning these voters rolls is something that we can all do.
This isn't Republican or Democrat. It's whether the count is honest.
Ramon stopped ringing the bell — a bell can be answered by anybody, from anywhere. So he knocks.
Your call to action is the knock.
This is a We the People moment.
Ever Onward!
“Two are better than one… And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” - Ecclesiastes 4:9–12
