Gregg Phillips: The Man Behind the 3 Million

No one has seen any of the data, nor the algorithm Phillips and his group have put it through, let alone confirmed if it’s even possible for any part of it to be true.

  The Daily Beast

What a surprise.

Phillips told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that his group would not only release the full data but was also working to highlight each of the 3 million names his algorithm has identified as an illegal voter.

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He did not share the data set or algorithm with The Daily Beast, or give a timeline for when either would be released.

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Phillips claims his group, a band of volunteers loosely affiliated with a right-wing organization called True the Vote, has “184 million voting records we’ve collected over time.”

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Phillips said he doesn’t want to accuse someone of felony voter fraud who isn’t a felon.

“That’s exactly what’s taking so long. Rather than publishing things that might be wrong, we not only just want to do a quality check on our own algorithm, we want to do an internal audit, if you will,” he said.

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In the meantime, though, he’s mostly gone dark. He’s yet to post on Twitter this year, he said, after finding himself the subject of accusations he’s responsible for crimes he said were actually committed by another person with his name—a somewhat ironic development. He also deleted his Facebook account.

“I’m not a racist. I’m not a child molester. I’m not an Israeli spy. It’s just Twitter,” he said. “Somebody accused me of murder in Sarasota. I’m a 55-year-old white guy. This was a 30-year-old black guy. Same exact name. Spelled the same.”

Doesn’t that give him some reservations about releasing his list to the public? Even if he thinks it’s entirely right, won’t random people on Twitter implicate the wrong people with the same name?

“I agree with you. You kind of spurred it in my brain yet again, what we plan to do. It’s been a bit of a hot topic within the group: ‘What are we gonna do?’” he said. “We’re not looking to hurt anybody. That’s not our gig.”

What brain?

This has happened before. In Florida in 2000, when they purged thousands of people from the voter register using some hinky database without checking social security numbers - just dropping supposed felons by name, and if you happened to be a black man named William Johnson, guess what?

Phillips said the data set his group is working with came from True the Vote, a conservative vote-monitoring group that splintered off from the Tea Party’s King Street Patriots. Both King Street Patriots and True the Vote were founded by Texas Republican organizer Catherine Engelbrecht.

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King Street Patriots has been successfully sued by the Texas Democratic Party for voter intimidation, and True The Vote was the subject of a 2012 congressional investigation for voter suppression.

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Phillips estimated True the Vote has 100,000 volunteers, and said it encourages splinter groups like the one creating the supposed illegal immigrant database. He said the side project doesn’t have a name.

Any suggestions?

In the meantime, he and his group are back to figuring out which people his algorithm might be confusing with illegal immigrants.

“We’re about halfway through,” he said. “Our biggest problem right now is that people are just tired. It really is tough work.”

UPDATE 1/31:

Gregg Phillips, whose unsubstantiated claim that the election was marred by 3 million illegal votes was tweeted by the president, was listed on the rolls in Alabama, Texas and Mississippi, according to voting records and election officials in those states.

  AP

So, according to Phillips' calculations, he alone counts for three of his3 million fraudulent voters.