Keizer officials host “Johnny Appleseed of election fraud”
Disinformation-dealing, far-right extremists again welcomed to publicly-funded facilities
Two self-anointed election experts and a doctor walk into the Keizer Civic Center.
No punchline. It’s not a joke. It’s the City of Keizer allowing the publicly funded Keizer Civic Center as a venue to spread disinformation and debunked lies about elections, election integrity, and election security.
The event, “Election Integrity Symposium” is scheduled for Friday, May 24, from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Keizer Civic Center - hosted by the Oregon Republican Party.
According to materials promoting the event, the $25 registration fee includes a meet & greet from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. with election disinformation grifters Mark Cook, Phillip Izon, and Dr. Douglas Frank.
Who are these three absolute muppets?
Exactly who you’d expect them to be:
Mark Cook
Cook is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit in Colorado, alleged to have helped a group of assholes hack into the state’s voting system to make illegal copies of voting records…for science? Or whatever. He calls himself a cyber security expert and, in an expression of sanity & normalcy, Cook is reported to be driving a branded RV across the country, unsuccessfully working to persuade elections officials to entertain his bullshit. Cook’s solution to secure elections? Child-labor hand-counting ballots.
Phillip Izon
Is a self-described incompetent moron who was recently heavily fined in Alaska for repeated campaign finance violations, “in part by funneling money through a religious organization.” Izon has a raging interest in eliminating ranked-choice voting from the face of the earth.
Dr. Douglas Frank
Frank has been called the “Johnny Appleseed of election fraud” since he left his gig as a high school math teacher to get roundly debunked over and over and over by his peers and his betters in his travels across the country spewing bullshit about the 2020 election results.
Frank is very cozy with MyPillow moron Mike Lindell - so close that the FBI seized Frank’s cell phone in an Ohio airport in 2022
From the Los Angeles Times (emphasis added):
His more than 50 speeches in California and hundreds more across the country are part of a multi-pronged effort by the election denial movement to make a significant impact on future elections by changing state laws, training candidates and — in Frank’s case — organizing volunteers to challenge local results and voter rolls.
Paul Gronke, director of the Elections & Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore., called Frank’s theories “fiction.”
“He’s a compelling presenter, but that doesn’t change the fact that what he’s saying are not facts,” Gronke said.
Keizer builds on its reputation as welcome host for dangerous disinformation
This embarrassing trio has booked the Keizer Civic Center on this stop of their election denial roadshow. The center is part of the same complex that houses City Council chambers; city staff offices; and Keizer Police. Groups seeking to rent the space can do so through the Keizer City Website, and there doesn’t seem to be any policy against renting to dangerous conspiracy theory-slinging grifters.
Keizer officials are hosting these Big Lie assholes just a couple years after allowing a group of criminals to amass a crowd on publicly-owned land at the Volcanoes Stadium complex in Keizer Station for “Reawaken America” - a christofascist traveling carnival of grifters selling lies and dangerous disinformation about everything from election integrity to anti-vax nuttery.
Voters in Keizer certainly are gullible. And Keizer leadership criminal.
Keizer is a natural audience. Just look at their unethical, and some say borderline criminal, city council