Cash-for-Votes in Nevada

Read our full 120 page report here: Money for Votes

Cash for Votes is Illegal and wrong! But, it happened in Nevada. Offering ANYTHING of value in exchange for your vote is against federal election law. Under the cover of a supposed nonprofit and nonpartisan get-out-the-vote campaign, Native American voter advocacy groups in Nevada handed out gift cards, electronics, and other items to voters in tribal areas. There are a number of accounts showing the exchange of ballots for “prizes” on their own Facebook pages, at times even while wearing official Joe Biden campaign gear.

This is completely unacceptable. Regardless of the candidate and who these people voted for, cash-for-votes is ILLEGAL:

Read more here.

Through tips from members of the public who were concerned about bribery that several organizations appear to have worked together to offer to make expenditures (in the form of cash cards ranging from $25-$1000, $25-$100 gas cards, televisions [e.g. 65” Samsung], new laptops, iPads, Bose stereo speakers, cookware, clothing and many other items of value) in what seems to be a coordinated effort to target specific groups to incentivize them to vote. We also found a few additional groups who appear to have acted similarly.

In addition, at least some of the leaders of these groups appear to be partisan in their support of candidates while representing their official organizations. The outward support includes postings to their organizations’ official social media pages in the form of images and videos. From the various social media pages, we found additional links and followed those links to create this document.

Here are a few examples from our 120 Page Report (you can read the full report here Money for Votes):

“I have Incentives for those who go and vote only a limited supply of T-shirts for those of our native community who vote take a picture of you voting send it to me and then come and see me after you’re Done voting and also I have coffee very nice native coffee for Our elders in our native community who vote please reach out to me Either on Facebook or on my phone”

30:22 – Even if you would offer a legitimate explanation as to the tribe’s position on these things, they would just argue with you. They would never be convinced otherwise, so there would be no use in doing that. [Quid pro quo expenditures to entice voting has no legitimate explanation.]

30:37 Reads prepared statement that was not released to the public. Native american communities have been excluded from our democracy… 

31:00 We aren’t answering to FOX News, but that would be our position on any statement we would make. 

32:10 Fortunately they tried to go after the Native American vote, and all across the nation, tribes were doing pretty much the same thing as Reno Sparks to get the vote out…. 

32:48 “ Because they’ve come against our tribe, I think the next time we have an election, we probably won’t even need to do any incentives.. I think once you come against Indian Tribes, I would say that that motivates them and you don’t need incentives to get people to vote. You attack them and they are going to come out and vote on their own without incentives to vote, or whatever.” [He appears to tacitly admit to the incentives, with a full knowledge of the leadership?]

We are against expenditures, or offers of things of value to any voter from any person or group to incentivize him or her to vote.  Given the past history of buying votes, “walking around” money and other shameful historic practices, we feel that this needs to be stopped and the current actors investigated and prosecuted, as appropriate, to prevent future elections from becoming merely wholesale vote purchasing operations throughout the country.