Investigative reporter Greg Palast discusses the voting trickery that elected Trump.
According to Greg Palast, Trump would’ve lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia if all legal voters were allowed and all legal ballots were counted.
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Summary
In a powerful interview on Politics Done Right, investigative journalist Greg Palast exposes the extensive and racially targeted voter suppression tactics that helped re-elect Donald Trump in 2024. Drawing from his film Vigilantes Inc: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitman, Palast lays out how millions of voters—especially Black, Brown, Indigenous, and young—were disenfranchised through purges, false challenges, and rejected ballots. He explains that had these votes been counted, Kamala Harris would have won the presidency. Palast’s findings are rooted in federal court data and collaborations with civil rights groups, highlighting a coordinated assault on democracy.
Key Bullet Points:
Mass Voter Suppression: Over 3.5 million voters, primarily people of color and youth, were disenfranchised in 2024 through purges, rejected mail-in ballots, and provisional ballot disqualifications.
Vigilante Challenges: Right-wing operatives, under groups like True the Vote, individually challenged hundreds of thousands of voters without evidence, reviving tactics used by the Ku Klux Klan.
Racial Targeting: African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and young voters were disproportionately targeted, with Black mail-in ballots four times more likely to be rejected.
Systemic Failures: Palast criticizes the Justice Department’s inaction and highlights bipartisan silence on these systemic abuses of voting rights.
Call to Action: If possible, voters must check their registration, avoid mail-in ballots, and support grassroots voting rights organizations to protect democracy.
Greg Palast’s investigation is a blistering indictment of a system that claims to be democratic while actively silencing millions of its most vulnerable citizens. Through meticulous research and a fearless commitment to truth, Palast exposes how the GOP, with complicity and indifference from key institutions, weaponizes bureaucracy and racism to suppress the vote. For progressives, the message is clear: the right to vote is under siege, and without a relentless defense of it, every other progressive cause—from healthcare to climate justice—is imperiled.
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In the aftermath of the 2024 election, many Americans asked how Donald Trump—who had consistently trailed in polls and faced widespread criticism for authoritarian leanings—could have clawed his way back into the White House. Investigative journalist Greg Palast has an unsettling answer: It wasn’t the people’s will that elected Trump. It was a coordinated campaign of mass voter suppression—legal trickery, bureaucratic barriers, and modern-day Jim Crow tactics—that engineered a stolen victory.
Palast, best known for his work with The Guardian and the bestselling The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has long sounded the alarm about attacks on voting rights. In his latest film, Vigilantes Inc: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitman, narrated by Rosario Dawson and produced by Martin Sheen with support from Leonardo DiCaprio, he reveals the chilling extent of the manipulation used to undercut democracy. His evidence is not speculative but backed by forensic analysis, federal court proceedings, and fieldwork conducted in partnership with civil rights organizations like Black Voters Matter, Rainbow/PUSH, the NAACP, and the ACLU.
Palast asserts that had no voter suppression in the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris would have defeated Trump by 3.56 million votes—enough to win both the popular vote and a decisive Electoral College majority. That’s not hyperbole; it’s math. Drawing from data supplied by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) and verified by professional analysts, Palast tracks the disenfranchisement of voters—primarily Black, Brown, Indigenous, and young people—through purges, rejected mail-in ballots and discriminatory voter ID laws.
One of the most egregious tactics Palast exposes is the return of “vigilante” voter challenges, a method resurrected from Ku Klux Klan playbooks of the 1940s. In 2024, a right-wing group named True the Vote launched a campaign to challenge the eligibility of over 363,000 voters—often targeting people of color—without any governmental authority. Palast details how Major Gamaliel Turner, a Black military officer stationed in California, was among those wrongly challenged. Despite being a legal Georgia voter with a right to cast an absentee ballot, Turner’s vote was denied unless he physically traveled 2,700 miles to prove his citizenship and residency. He did—but thousands of others couldn’t.
This is not an isolated story. According to the EAC, 43% of all provisional ballots—typically given to voters facing registration issues—are rejected. The rejection rate for mail-in ballots is shockingly high: Black voters are 400% more likely to have their mail-in ballots disqualified than white voters. These numbers should be headline news, but instead, they are buried in obscure databases and ignored by mainstream narratives obsessed with political horse races.
Palast’s work shows that modern vote suppression is systemic, racially targeted, and executed with both high-tech precision and legal cover. Voter rolls are purged en masse based on flawed data. Ballots are disqualified for technicalities. Voters are misled or unaware they’ve been challenged until it’s too late. While Republicans frame these efforts as protecting “election integrity,” the actual result is the disenfranchisement of millions of legal voters.
Perhaps most infuriating is that this war on voting rights is openly supported—or at least tolerated—by Republican-controlled legislatures and secretaries of state. In Georgia, for instance, Palast and his team verified that 63% of the nearly 5 million voters purged from the rolls had not moved and were still eligible. These purges disproportionately affected Black voters, the Democratic base, and communities least likely to have the resources to fight back.
The film Vigilantes Inc. doesn’t merely diagnose the problem—it prescribes action. Palast urges voters to check their registration status months before any election. He recommends voting early in person if possible to avoid the pitfalls of mail-in ballots. Most crucially, he calls on Americans to support grassroots voting rights organizations that are doing the heavy lifting to inform, register, and protect marginalized voters.
At its core, Palast’s investigation reveals a disturbing truth: the United States does not suffer from voter fraud; it suffers from voter suppression. This isn’t a fringe theory. As legal scholars, civil rights advocates, and election data analysts consistently affirm, these tactics are deliberate, racialized, and antithetical to democracy. If left unchecked, they will continue to warp elections, silence communities, and keep power in the hands of those who fear a truly representative electorate.
The progressive movement must recognize that voting rights are not simply a civil rights issue—they are the linchpin of every other cause, from climate justice to economic equity. Without the vote, the people have no power to chart a different future. That is why exposing the crimes detailed in Vigilantes Inc. is not just important—it is urgent.
You can stream Vigilantes Inc for free at gregpalast.com and share the film widely. As Palast puts it, “It’s time to fight like democracy depends on it—because it does.”
The big mystery to me is how rural areas like Brazoria County had very high turnout, and yet turnout dropped in urban counties like Harris. Something was definitely off. Were the challenges targeted at urban areas that tend to vote blue?
That’s very interesting