‘2000 Mules’ fact check: Michigan experts debunk election fraud claims

It’s a supposed blockbuster film on the political right showing widespread ballot drop box fraud in Michigan and other battleground states.

But insufficient methods and a lack of convincing evidence fail “2000 Mules” in proving its central claims about the 2020 election, according to MLive interviews with voting, technology and politics experts.

Released in May, the movie from conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza has been promoted as an election fraud smoking gun by former President Donald Trump and conservative politicians and influencers.

Seventeen Republican Michigan lawmakers formally asked Attorney General Dana Nessel to investigate its claims, and multiple Republican governor candidates mentioned the movie in debates.

Experts MLive interviewed as part of a deep review of the film, however, say “2000 Mules” is unreliable in proving ballot drop box fraud in five key states, as it jumps to conclusions not supported by material presented in slick and dramatic packaging.

Misleading: Absentee votes stole Trump’s lead after polls closed

The movie begins with a montage of news clips from election night and the day after, questioning an apparent comeback by Joe Biden as mailed-in Democratic votes overtook Trump’s lead from election day votes.

But this phenomenon called the “blue shift” does not prove fraud, as it was known before election day and was influenced by the president, says former Michigan elections director Chris Thomas, who worked under Democratic and Republican administrations for 36 years until 2017.

Trump continuously told voters not to trust mail-in ballots, tweeting in September, for example, that it is a “scam.” The result: More Democrats than Republicans voted absentee, which in Michigan was about 57% (3.2 million) of the total ballots.

“Now you have created a red mirage where you’ve got a higher Republican vote in person that’s going to skew the vote around midnight,” Thomas said, “looking like Republicans won, with just huge numbers of mail ballots uncounted and unreported.”

So why did absentee ballot results come in so much later? In Michigan, they’re required by law not to be counted until 7 a.m. on election day.

“[Trump] created it,” said Thomas, who also advised Detroit election administrators in the 2020 general election. “And then he turned around and used it as an indicator of fraud.”

The film relies on cellphone tracking data purchased legally and analyzed by conservative election integrity organization True the Vote and its “highly skilled contractors.”

Communications representative Brian Glicklich told MLive in an email that there was “no predication on or correlation to” a late-night jump in votes for Biden in TTV’s research. He acknowledged its methods “cannot determine how many ballots were cast or who they were cast for.”

Method check: Is geolocation accurate enough?

True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht and associate Gregg Phillips claim their 10 trillion geolocation signals nationwide show a web of ballot “mules” in five key metro areas – Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Phoenix – repeatedly traveling from liberal activist nonprofits to ballot drop boxes in the weeks before election day.

TTV only looked at devices that went to more than 10 drop boxes and made more than five trips to nongovernmental organizations, Glicklich said, and which also did not display the same patterns before or after the absentee voting period.

But cellphone tracking lacks that kind of pinpoint accuracy, says Ella Atkins, an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Michigan until August when she moved to Virginia Tech.

Atkins said the best location reliability happens when a phone’s GPS is turned on, like when you use a navigation app. With GPS on, satellites orbiting Earth can see your location standing outside within “two or three meters,” she said, about 6.5 to 10 feet.

But that’s if the sky is clear and you’re not blocked by tall buildings in urban areas, where much of “2000 Mules” is set.

“So, if there’s like a library door and there’s a ballot box next to it, you could not tell whether the person was at the ballot box inserting a ballot or whether they’re just walking into the library,” Atkins said. “It’s not that accurate.”

Glicklich said TTV used geospatial data based on “ad keys,” which he said incorporates an aspect of GPS but is precise “within one meter.”

With ad key data’s “SDK pings that are sent every few seconds,” Glicklich claims, “you can tell if someone walks into a building or approaches the drop box outside of the building, then turns and leaves.”

D’Souza says in the movie they can prove a left-wing “ideological element” because True the Vote found cellphone pings from 67 of the 242 supposed Atlanta mules at Antifa and Black Lives Matter protests.

Their method, D’Souza said, is similar to “the reliability of a fingerprint.” But the same geolocation problems exist here, too, Atkins noted.

“I was at several restaurants where people were walking by carrying signs,” she said of 2020 protests in Ann Arbor, “and my son lives in an apartment next to one of the main streets that people come by carrying signs, so we were probably counted.”

“Cellphones do not know where they are to fingerprint accuracy,” Atkins added, “they just don’t. Especially if GPS is not available or turned off.”

Claim: Liberal nonprofits paid mules to stuff drop boxes

Phillips says in the movie that the nonprofits allegedly paying mules are liberal, leading them to stuff votes for Biden.

But the movie never names a nonprofit pinged by the cellphone signals, and the only interview with a supposed mule is of an anonymous woman from Arizona who, too, never names a nonprofit. There is also no video of money changing hands.

“It’s not conceivable that you’d have that many people involved and nobody’s spilling the beans,” said Josh Pasek, an associate professor of communication and media and political science at the University of Michigan.

Glicklich said that Arizona woman was a state witness in a case that ended in two convictions and a raid on the nongovernmental organization where she worked.

To further support its claims, the movie shows some surveillance footage outside drop boxes, of which Engelbrecht and Phillips said they got 4 million minutes via open records requests.

The movie shows multiple examples of people approaching drop boxes and depositing ballots, but the filmmakers only assume that what they think is suspicious activity – like depositors looking around, being quick or taking photos – is evidence of fraud.

They also never show surveillance video of someone going to multiple drop boxes.

Glicklich said all surveillance video shown in the movie is from Georgia drop boxes that were only for ballots. In Michigan, some municipalities use their drop boxes for other government documents.

It’s legal in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania to deposit your family members’ ballots, which can explain people dropping off a stack. But even if folks on surveillance video are returning more ballots than they are allowed, Thomas said, that doesn’t prove the votes were illegal or for Biden.

“Just the fact of doing it is not in itself an indication of any kind of fraud,” he said.

Glicklich noted, “TTV never stated that the ballots were illegal,” only that “they were illegally cast.”

Conflict of interest: D’Souza’s pro-Trump past

D’Souza was pardoned by Trump in 2018 after being convicted of a campaign finance felony and sentenced to eight months in a halfway house, five years’ probation and a $30,000 fine.

Before that, D’Souza had a history of spreading conspiracy theories, including President Barack Obama not being born in the U.S. and that the Clintons have had people assassinated.

Books he has written include titles like “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” and “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.”

“I don’t earn a penny for saying whether an election was accurate or not,” Pasek said. “D’Souza does.”

He says that D’Souza gains a following by continuing to make these claims, as people who have lost feel comforted by thinking they were cheated instead.

“It’s not a credible belief that is subject to evidence anymore,” he said. “People just want to be able to wave something that helps validate their feelings.”

MLive’s request to D’Souza’s media company asking him to comment went unreturned.

Benson: No widespread fraud in Michigan’s 2020 election

More than 200 Michigan audits, as well as a Republican-led state Senate report last year, found no fraud that could have overturned the 2020 election.

Nationwide, the top federal cybersecurity agency said no “voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” And Trump and his allies lost more than 60 court cases challenging election processes.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who oversaw the 2020 election, told MLive it was the “safest and most secure” in state history, and “2000 Mules” is among the many “false, baseless allegations” that have emerged since.

“The reality is we have many secure protocols in place in Michigan and throughout the country to ensure that only valid votes are counted,” she said. “And if anyone does attempt to thwart the system or submit fraudulent election items at any point in the process, we do catch it through our protocols and we do prosecute accordingly for people who break the law.”

Benson’s office maintains a fact-check website about Michigan election processes and ballot security measures to push back on false claims.

“I encourage all citizens to simply look at the facts and the data as opposed to sensationalist rhetoric to determine and affirm the security of our elections,” she said.

Read more from MLive:

17 Michigan lawmakers want AG to investigate debunked “2000 Mules” claims

Nessel names AG opponent DePerno in voting machine probe, wants special prosecutor

Republican candidates want to stop talking about 2020 fraud claims. They may not have a choice.

Roughly half of Michigan’s Trump-endorsed House, Senate candidates won their primary races