An illegal money-for-votes raffle scheme has been inadvertently exposed in Nevada.
A report by The Epoch Times claims that the Nevada Native Vote Project posted photos on Facebook on Election Day showing smiling voters holding $25 gift cards after handing over their ballots.
The posts have now since been deleted in a move The Epoch Times suggests may have had to do with the U.S. criminal code, which imposes fines and prison sentences for "whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote."
Nevada group used raffle to encourage people to vote
The gift cards were not the only thing that the Nevada Native Vote Project used to entice people to vote. In a video, posted on Nov. 24, Bethany Sam, public relations officer for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, could be seen urging people to come out and vote with offers of "some extra swag that we can give out."
“We have twenty-five $25 gift cards to raffle off so that’s a lot of money in cash here,” Sam said. “We have also four $100 gift cards to give away, so again you want to make sure to get out here and vote. And then, we have four $250 gift cards to raffle. And our grand prize is going to be a $500 Visa gift card to the person or native voters who came out early this week for early voting.”
The video also showed people with T-shirts that they received for coming out to vote, with Sam adding that more shirts were still available.
In another video, filmed on Election Day, Sam can be seen encouraging Native Americans to vote as the state is a swing state. Nevada has an estimated 60,000 Native American voters.
“I also want you to know that we do have a raffle going on whether you’re early voting or you vote today during the Election Day,” Sam said in the video. She instructed people to enter the raffle by sending her either screenshot of their ballot from a ballot-tracking website or a photo of themselves with an “I Voted” sticker.
Aside from the $25 gift cards, other prizes include $100 and $250 gift cards as well as T-shirts and beaded items.
Allegations come as Republicans drop lawsuits in Nevada
The report on the raffle comes just after Nevada Republicans dropped their federal lawsuit that claimed that voter fraud occurred in the state.
Federal court records show that Jill Stokke, Chris Prudhome and Republican congressional candidates Jim Marchant and Dan Rodimer dropped the lawsuit last week.
Their lawsuit was based on allegations of voter fraud, claiming that around 10,000 votes were from people no longer living in Nevada and that 3,000 were from ineligible individuals. It was just one of a number of since dropped or rejected lawsuits in the state alleging some form of voter fraud. (Related: Nevada reports over three thousand individual accounts of mail-in ballot fraud.)
But none of the suits have so-far picked up on the activities of the Nevada Native Vote Project and its alleged vote-buying. Should the allegations pan out, then it could be another weapon that Republicans could use in their efforts to contest the results of the election in the state.
Currently, the lawyers for President Donald Trump's re-election campaign have one more lawsuit that they filed in Carson City, alleging fraud. The lawsuit, which seeks to overturn the election results certified last week, is set to have a hearing on Thursday, Dec. 3.
Follow VoteFraud.news for more on investigations into allegations of fraud and cheating during the 2020 election.
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