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Photo: Alamy
An election integrity app, VotifyNow, is gaining traction amongst voters before the election cycle begins, allowing them to report election irregularities to party members and volunteers in real-time.
Founded by Johnny Vieira, VotifyNow, was created in 2019 after he heard complaints of election fraud circulating due to the 2016 presidential and 2018 midterm elections. Vieira told Just the News that at the time, he noticed Democrat candidates were actually discussing election fraud, while Republicans only were concerned about it.
“About 16 months ago, I started putting a lot of thought into election integrity. Created a tool of what we thought is a brand new way of approaching election integrity and strengthening, you know, people’s confidence in the process and that’s what turned into VotifyNow which everything is looked at in real time. And VotifyNow is the only system that has a feature in the app where users can look on Election Day and they could click additional incidents button to see what else is getting reported around them,” Vieira told One America News in 2022.
After an incident is submitted, the reports, which can include a photo or video that is automatically geotagged and timestamped, are allegedly verified for authenticity. Any incident that has been reported multiple times will be labeled with a color-coded system on the display map. A white dot would indicate a benign case, while a red dot would mean a criminal one.
All incidents reported are then filed into a PDF-style format which can be sent to county officials. However, Vieira noted to Just the News that the reports can also be available within about 15 minutes, allowing journalists and candidates to receive them in real-time.
“Download the app, they will get a menu item asking them what type of incident they’re seeing, a mail-in ballot issue, a problem with the polling location, on the more nefarious incidents, we will archive and store those to keep chain of custody, we will share those with multiple parties, we don’t share with any one entity, it might be a sheriff or it might be a campaign manager. We share with multiple parties so that there’s no funny business,” Vieira told One America News.
In addition to reporting incidents, VotifyNow also includes tracking voting centers on a county basis. This feature allows voters to be able to see if a nearby center may have an abundance of reports, giving them options to choose to vote elsewhere.
During the 2022 election midterms, the app was used by a majority of Arizona voters who allegedly reported over 8,000 voter suppression incidents.
Vieira noted to Just the News that he knows the app is not the final solution to election fraud but hopes that it will help “chip away” at it.
“We’re looking to help people make decisions on real-time information that is vetted as thoroughly as possible,” Vieira told Just the News.
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