The Republican county commissioners in Otero County, New Mexico largely ignored an email last winter from a resident alerting them that at least one of the “canvassers” they hired to go door-to-door asking citizens who they voted for in 2020 was a convicted pedophile, the Daily Beast reports.
“My neighbor was a volunteer for [children’s aid group] CASA and she recognized someone who came to her door asking how she voted in November 2021 as someone who either was convicted or pleaded guilty to sex with a child. She is terrified. She has grandchildren she cares for. Did the County perform background checks on the volunteers going to voters’ homes?” wrote one voter in a February email to the commission. After some internal back and forth, the commission responded that the “canvassers” were volunteers and as such not subject to background checks.
The Daily Beast could not independently verify the allegation, however it’s probably got some element of truth to it given that the volunteers were recruited from a shady MAGA Telegram group called the “New Mexico Audit Force,” and the “audit” was spearheaded by none other than the now-famous “Cowboys for Trump” asshole Couy Griffin, the only currently still-serving elected politician convicted in connection to the Capitol riot (the other one was West Virginia state House Delegate Derrick Evans, who resigned just days after the insurrection). It’s also not entirely clear if the “audit” is even still happening at this point. EchoMail, a digital marketing company with no experience conducting real election audits, but some experience working alongside CyberNinjas on the now-infamous fake one in Maricopa County, Arizona, backed out of the Otero County “audit” in March, announcing they had found no evidence of fraud there in the 2020 election.