The leader of a right-wing “election integrity” activist group in North Carolina was recorded in a virtual meeting telling volunteers to flag voters with “Hispanic-sounding last names” because they might be a “suspicious voter,” according to a video obtained by CBS News.
"It doesn't mean they're illegal. It just means they're suspicious,” the man, James Womack, said in the video. He is founder and president of the "North Carolina Election Integrity Team," a group that purports to investigate potential voter fraud in the battleground state. Womack is also the chair of the Republican Party in Lee County.
The virtual call was attended by over 1,800 people, the majority of whom are retirees and work remotely to analyze voting records for corruption, like non-citizen voting, Womack told CBS.
Throughout his campaign, former President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed the baseless claim that Democrats are encouraging newly arrived migrants and undocumented immigrants to vote for them in November, which is both illegal and incredibly rare. The fabrication has circulated in conservative media and has even been used by Congressional Republicans to push for proof-of-citizenship voting requirements.
Speaking to CBS, Womack claimed that investigating non-citizen voting is essential to ensuring “no other legal citizens vote is diluted.” Flagging “Hispanic-sounding” names is part of that work, he insisted.
"Citizens, individual citizens have a right to that information and they analyze that information to identify potential illegal or improperly registered people,” he said.
The "North Carolina Election Integrity Team" is one of eight groups in the “Election Integrity Network," a national coalition of “conservative leaders, organizations, public officials and citizens dedicated to securing the legality of every American vote," led by GOP election attorney Clea Mitchell. In 2020, Mitchell was on the call where Trump demanded that Georgia election officials "find" him the votes needed to overturn his loss.
