Outer Cape town clerks have received a load of public records requests throughout the summer and fall from people like Yehuda Miller who are making elaborate requests related to the 2020 election.
As the Nov. 8 election cycle draws to a close Tuesday, clerks who are already feeling overwhelmed are getting inundated by what Secretary of State William Galvin has described as shrill requests that imply conspiracies.
“There is a lot going on in every town clerk’s office during election time,” said Eastham Town Clerk Cindy Nicholson. “Vote by mail and in-person early voting has increased our workload with little extra manpower or money.”
On Oct. 17, the New York Times published a report detailing election deniers’ vigilante tactics of acting out 2020 presidential election conspiracies. In the years since that election, the Times reported, “groups of right-wing activists have banded together, spreading false claims of widespread election fraud and misconduct.”
The radical brigades’ methods include “disruptive poll watchers and workers, aggressive litigation strategies, voter and ballot challenges and vigilante searches for fraud,” the Times reported.
Many of these actions seek to overwhelm municipal governments. In February of this year, NBC News reported, “Amateur fraud hunters bury election officials in public records requests.” While attempts to inundate local officials are mostly concentrated in the South and in battleground states, Massachusetts towns have seen a slew of them.
A list of public records requests from June through October of this year in Provincetown, Eastham, and Truro (Wellfleet did not respond to the Independent’s inquiry) show that these town clerks were asked for detailed ballot information. Eastham received three requests from Yehuda Miller from Aug. 22 to Sep. 14, all having to do with election results and records. Provincetown also got three, and Truro got one.
The Kentucky Press Association identified Yehuda Miller as a Republican committee member from Teaneck, N.J.
Miller submitted a request for records to the Letcher County clerk in Kentucky “in the sequence processed by the county, every ballot, its sequential ID, its timestamp, its method of voting, the specific votes for all races, and other information for every election beginning with the Primary Election in 2015.”
The summary of Miller’s Truro request, received on Sept. 12, is “2020 General Election preliminary tally sheet, post-election tally, official results, election warrant.”
Miller sent that same request to Eastham, too.
Miller asked Provincetown and Eastham for “access to physically inspect ALL ORIGINAL documents and records relating to the 2020 general election, for your entire jurisdiction and/or in your custody, this request should be construed liberally to include every record relating to the 2020 general election, to include but not limited to all physical and electronic records to include every type of ballot, ballot envelopes tally sheets, chain of custody documentation, splunk logs, routers, Cast Vote records, adjudication logs etc. In addition, I am requesting electronic scanned copies of all records from the 2020 election in the following format: double sided, color scan, 600 dpi, TIFF format.”
Other requests for detailed information on Eastham’s electronic voting machine came from the email address [email protected]. Provincetown received requests from [email protected], who wanted addresses of ballot drop boxes as well as policies for handling the 2020 drop boxes, records of video surveillance, chain of custody of the drop boxes, and much more. Public records requestors do not have to use their real names, or any name at all, Nicholson said.
Many towns have seen requests that are identical or based on a common template. The Independent did not receive copies of all individual records requests this week in time to check whether any were identical.
But Nicholson said every clerk has been deluged and has compared notes on how to handle the influx. She and other clerks got some help from Mass. Secretary of State William Galvin’s office in early September when he issued a template that clerks could use to respond to requests for information from the 2020 election to the present.
The template, which Nicholson sent to people like Miller, said that they are free to come and look at every single ballot and other records from 2020 but that the records could not be sent electronically, Nicholson said. The reason many of the requests came in between July and September is because the clerks were reaching the deadline of 22 months following a state election, after which they are allowed to destroy records.
Miller’s most overwhelming request actually missed that 22-month deadline, Nicholson said. But Eastham had not yet destroyed the 2020 ballots. They are available. Nicholson has not yet heard from Miller, she said.
Paul Benson contributed reporting for this story.
