Response to the Guardian Editors Regarding its Reporting on The America Project’s Election Transparency Initiative, by Timothy Meisburger

Publisher’s Note: the Guardian recently wrote an article about the efforts of the American Project to bring election integrity to the USA. As far as we can tell, none of us mentioned were actually contacted by the Guardian, which is something of a new low. So Tim Meisburger drafted this response, which the Guardian has refrained from publishing.

Since I am mentioned in the Guardian’s article on the America Project’s election integrity program, and am the Director of that program; but was never actually contacted by anyone at the Guardian before this article was published, I want to take this opportunity to respond in print. 

Rather than honestly reporting on our election integrity program, the Guardian leads off with the headline “It’s a sham”, drawing its conclusion in the first three words of the article; then going on in the sub-heading to claim our advisor, General Michael Flynn, promotes falsehoods about Biden’s 2020 election win. 

This article is littered with “scare quotes”; a rhetorical device and cliché whose overuse reflects poorly on professionalism of the author, and competence of his editor. Although this article is listed under “US news”, it is immediately clear that it is an opinion piece; and also clear that the Guardian, once a respected newspaper of the left and the working class, has sadly become nothing more than a corporate shill, promoting the messaging and programs of the globalist 1%.

Early on Peter Stone (no relation to Roger, I think) plays the “Hitler” card, suggesting our leadership is pushing a “big lie”; a pejorative the left uses to refer to the belief shared by many (according to recent polls, more than half of all Americans, including 30% of Democrats) that the 2020 election may have been affected by fraud. 

I’m not sure of Peter’s particular experience, but as someone who spent almost thirty years working in democratic development overseas before returning to lead the Center for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance during the Trump Administration, I can assure there is ample reason someone might doubt the integrity of that process.

As election and democracy professionals know, you cannot judge the legitimacy of an election by looking solely at what happens on election day, as many events can occur well before election day that affect the integrity of the election process. In the case of the 2020 election, we can go all the way back to the 2016, when Donald Trump’s political rival launched a disinformation campaign against him in collaboration with a British mercenary, Russian intelligence operatives, and corrupt officials in the FBI and Department of Justice.

Although that operation surely reduced his total vote, it was not enough to prevent Donald Trump’s election; but it was used throughout his presidency to hamper his administration and damage his future political prospects. The fact that no one was ever prosecuted or punished for this illegal and undemocratic operation contributes to many peoples’ doubt about the integrity of our institutions; including the judicial branch, federal agencies, and the press.

Other undisputed examples of incidents or programs that might give one cause to doubt the democratic legitimacy of the election include:

  • Coordinated suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election
  • Introduction of many new election procedures as a response to COVID 19 that universally weakened the security of the election process
  • Widespread use of insecure mail-in ballots and drop boxes, paid for in many cases by donations from a partisan billionaire.
  • The use of state officials and resources to turn out voters in predominately Democratic areas, again paid for by a partisan billionaire.
  • Mules geo-tracked and videoed collecting ballots from partisan organizations and then stuffing said ballots in drop boxes
  • Observers being prevented (on video) from observing counting processes
  • Poll workers (on video) sending observers home and stuffing ballot boxes in the middle of the night
  • The suspiciously coordinated suspension of counting in battleground states, followed by markedly different results when counting is resumed

These and other incidents may not be enough to sway Peter, but they are certainly enough to create reasonable doubt for many people. For me, as an election professional, the prevention of effective observation alone is enough to declare that the integrity of the election cannot be verified; and if I were overseas monitoring that election in a developing country, we would be calling for new elections with increased safeguards.

The denigration of our volunteers through the use of scare quotes around “election reform advocates” is insulting and uncalled for. Every single one of them is committed to facilitating a free and fair election for every American citizen, regardless of political party (as am I), because at the core of our being we believe in democracy, self-government, rule of law, and traditional morality.

Your article states that “voting rights advocates have voiced sharp criticism of Operation Eagles Wings, calling it a “sham”, and “voting rights watchdogs say the new election integrity operation has an Orwellian quality”. Both “advocates” and “watchdogs” are plural, but none of these individuals or organizations are named, unless you are referring to Sean Morales-Doyle, who is a lobbyist and lawyer for the far-left Brennan Center. So, if you count Sean as an advocate, and Brennan Center as a watchdog, who are the others? 

I assure you that our election integrity program is not a “sham”. In fact, we are using methodological approaches and practices developed by democracy promoters like the United Nations for use in authoritarian one-party states to enhance the transparency and credibility of the election processes in America; helping to ensure that all Americans, of whatever party, can have confidence their elections are free and fair.

To correct the record about me, I did not leave USAID under a cloud in mid-January; I left at the end of President Trump’s term on January 20. I don’t recall calling the Capital “attack” peaceful, but if I had that would have been funny, given our experience with the press describing riots as “mostly peaceful” riots. 

As I recall, I said something like “On January 6, at the President’s speech, I saw two million people peacefully protesting for free and fair elections.” The relentless focus by the left on what was happening a mile and a half away diminishes the true significance of January 6, which will ultimately be remembered as the largest pro-democracy demonstration in the history of the United States.

The open bias and slander throughout the article would easily be identified by any of the media monitors we used to train in places like Cambodia and South Africa; and for that, the author should be ashamed, and the Guardian embarrassed. 

Tim Meisburger

Tim Meisburger

Director – Election Integrity

The America Project

Populist, Protectionist, Isolationist

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9 comments
  1. Good for you Tim. Way too keep your cool, take aim, and shoot straight. As someone who went to college for journalism, the state of media in this country is an embarrassment. There is no investigating anymore. Just parroting political lines. It’s offensive and nauseating. The true colors will come out in the wash. Hopefully something is done about the crooks when it does.

  2. I predict the election meddling will be even worse in November of 2022….Still waiting for anyone of substance to be held accountable not just for the last election, but for the countless crimes of the last 3 decades… the delay tactics by the deep state are working well – there is surely a statute of limitations that will run out and as usual, the swamp rats will run free to continue plundering the little liberty and wealth we have left… Given the nature of Government the cycle must run it’s full course into a total collapse where people finally lose faith in the inherently inefficient, wasteful, and coercive territorial monopolist known as Government…. The AntiFederalists were right, unfortunately the other side had more aggressive marketing and better communication.

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  4. LOL, “The relentless focus by the left on what was happening a mile and a half away…” You mean the attack on the capitol where participants set up a gallows with the intention of hunting down and lynching the VIce President? Oh no, so sad the left sees that as a bigger priority than the ridiculous claim that Trump attracted 2 million peaceful protesters that day (and why do Trump people have to be such persistent and shameless liars? Oh, yeah, I remember where they get it from).

    1. You want to talk about liars!? The fact remains that a coup/sedition/insurrection or whatever the liberal media wants to call January 6th is defined as the attempted overthrow of the sitting head of state. Which was Donald John Trump on that day. Because he can’t overthrow himself, because the protesters were there in defiance of a fraudulent election BEFORE the inauguration not after, and because no obstruction of the transfer of power took place, your perception of what happened and all lefties is pure fantasy. There was ample evidence of the President saying “peacefully and patriotically” that was deleted by Twitter. How convenient. You can’t rewrite reality. I know you nut jobs like to change definitions to fit your narrative, but it doesn’t change the truth.

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