What Is VoteStand? Trump Cites Obscure App As Source For Claims Of Voter Fraud

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday a plan to launch a major investigation into voter fraud, which he claimed to be responsible for 3 to 5 million illegal votes. On Friday, the President revealed the apparent investigation will be conducted in part by the creator of VoteStand, an obscure app for crowdsourcing reports of voter fraud.

In a tweet on Friday, Trump claimed VoteStand and its creator Gregg Phillips had indicated “at least” 3 million votes were cast illegally.

VoteStand purports to be “America’s first online election fraud reporting app” that “provides the online tools and support” required to report fraudulent or illegal activity that takes place at polling places.

The app asks users to register with a name and email address and then are given the ability to report incidents of voter fraud by sending text and photos that show any irregularity—despite the fact taking photos at a polling place is a practice that itself is illegal in many states.

The Android version of VoteStand has received between 1,000 and 5,000 downloads, according to the Google Play Store. It has 41 reviews provided by users, most of which appear dated to late October 2016, before the election took place. Many of the reviews, including some with high ratings on the 5-star system, include complaints about the app not working properly.

VoteStand is also available on iOS, where it has received six total reviews—several of which tout the concept of the app, but none of which confirm successfully sending a report.

When International Business Times attempted to register an account on VoteStand—which has been unchanged since last updated on Oct. 14, 2016—the process appeared frozen for several minutes. It completed after tapping off the “report incident” menu and returning to it. No email confirmation was sent despite requiring an email to register.

The news feed containing reported incidents was empty, both nationwide and locally—and on both iOS and Android devices. The “latest news” feed—which a screenshot of the app shows containing tweets from True The Vote, the organization listed as the developer for for VoteStand—also fails to appear.

Essentially, VoteStand appears to be a barely downloaded and even less used app. It is unclear how it could be responsible for chronicling three million reports of voter fraud. IBT reached out to VoteStand for additional information but has yet to receive a response.

The app was created by Gregg Phillips, a self-identified conservative and founder of several political action committees. He gained brief prominence in the weeks following the 2016 election as the source of a claim that three million votes were cast by “illegal aliens.”

The report was propagated by InfoWars —a conspiratorial-minded independent news organization run by Alex Jones, who has suggested government involvement in tragedies including the Sandy Hook shooting, Oklahoma City bombings and Boston Marathon bombing. The claim was widely debunked, and Phillips declined to provide any additional information about his claim or where he got the data he used.

Phillips is the former finance director of the Alabama Republican Party and former executive director of the Mississippi Republican Party. He also served as the managing director of the Winning Our Future Super PAC, a group that backed Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign.

While Phillips was cited by name by the President, he is isn’t working alone. His app was published by True the Vote, a vote monitoring organization founded and run by Catherine Engelbrech that aims for the eventual implementation of a nation-wide voter ID program.

True the Vote issued a statement in November supporting a claim from Trump that “millions” of people voted illegally, resulting in his loss in the popular vote. The group began fundraising in January in attempts to raise $1.2 million to “to conduct a comprehensive forensic audit of the entire election.”

On Jan. 25, the organization published a news post supporting President Trump’s claim that three to five million votes were cast illegally in the 2016 election.

The relationship between Trump and True the Vote appears to be a feedback loop. The original claim of three million illegal votes came from Phillips, a member of True the Vote. Trump echoed these claims, and then was backed up by True the Vote as an organization. True the Vote is now apparently involved in the President’s organization to prove millions of incidents of voter fraud took place.

There is no evidence to suggest there were millions of illegal votes cast in the 2016 election, or in any election. A 2012 report from Pew Charitable Trusts found voter rolls were “susceptible to fraud” but didn’t claim evidence of people voting illegally and have since clarified they did not find any accounts of voter fraud.

News 21, an investigative reporting project funded by the Carnegie Corporation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, reported just 56 cases of non-citizens voting between 2000 and 2011.

A study published by the Washington Post and conducted by former Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt found just 31 credible cases of voter fraud between the years of 2000 and 2010—a period in which more than one billion ballots were cast.