Mike Engleman🇺🇲

Votebeat Panel on Federal Election Interference One Week Before Midterms: Allegations Lack Evidence! Votebeat’s Editor in Chief, previously served as research director at (CREW), the group co-founded by Norman L. Eisen. In a Votebeat event held one week before the 2026 midterms, Orange County Registrar Bob Page described ongoing Department of Justice requests and lawsuits seeking unredacted voter data and ballot segregation for individuals on federal lists of suspected non-citizens. Page stated that he was not looking to simply refuse cooperation and instead wanted officials to determine exactly what California and federal law allow so the county can respond appropriately. Page noted that hundreds of thousands of ballots had already been separated from their envelopes, making segregation of those ballots impossible under California rules that prohibit identifying marks on ballots once removed, and that his office would continue processing ballots and encouraging early voting without interruption while awaiting court guidance. Caltech professor Michael Alvarez characterized the underlying allegations as failing to meet academic standards for evidence and described them as a big nothing burger with respect to the claims. Alvarez said Orange County voter registration data is among the most accurate and clean in the country, and he argued that the lawsuits and lists appear designed to distract election officials, generate confusion among the electorate and stakeholders, and potentially set the stage for later interference after Election Day. Carrie Levine, Votebeat’s Editor in Chief, previously served as research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the group co-founded by Norman L. Eisen, but she was not a speaker on this panel. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington was first established in 2003 with origins around 2001 to 2002 primarily as a progressive counterweight to conservative government watchdog groups. Founders included Norman L. Eisen, later Obama’s ethics counsel and ambassador to the Czech Republic, and Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and Democratic congressional staffer. Early backers and the founders described it as intended to even the playing field against conservative legal groups that had targeted the Clinton administration in the 1990s. The organization filed roughly 180 lawsuits against the Trump administration by January 2018, and its site currently lists more than 28 ongoing lawsuits. These coordinated legal and public messaging efforts around election administration lawsuits are intended to capture public opinion, mobilize radicals, cripple the federal government’s capacity to react, and destabilize the country. Public mobilization would demonstrate outrage with the intent to place pressure on the Supreme Court if an emergency petition were filed. This is why voters must choose common sense candidates in this midterm cycle. The modern Jacobins are out for blood, and only a decisive choice at the ballot box can save our republic. Although the speakers on the panel and the host Jessica Huseman from Votebeat do not themselves have a documented direct past or present affiliation with CREW, they function as ancillary media that help promulgate the related messaging around federal election lawsuits and administration actions. This cast of actors seeks to delegitimize the Department of Justice and the current President.