The Real Election Story No One Wants Told: Palast in conversation with Anthony Johnson of ABC News

25 years of investigations. Millions of voters erased. A system built to decide elections before you ever touch a ballot. Vigilantes Inc. exposes the real-life hunt for ‘illegal voters’ — and the shocking truth behind who’s actually being targeted.

Last month, Vigilantes Inc. was screened as part of the Teaneck International Film Festival, a prestigious human rights event. The sold out screening, held on November 9 at the Puffin Cultural Forum, featured a Q&A with filmmaker Greg Palast.

Anthony Johnson of ABC News hosted the discussion — the perfect choice given that as a young man he worked for voting and civil rights icon John Lewis.

“I spoke to him six months before he passed away,” Johnson told Palast, as they introduced themselves to the audience after the film. “One things he said to me was that ‘they’re gonna try to take us back, but we’re not gonna let them.’ And by giving us the information that you shared in [this film], there’s more reason to believe more optimistically, as sad as this is, that that will not happen.” 

Johnson’s first question for Palast: How did it all begin?

“I started 25 years ago, when I was a reporter for The Guardian and BBC television,” replied Palast. “It’s the 2000 election, and I’m watching all these Black people come before the BBC TV cameras, one after another, saying I couldn’t vote in Florida.”

Palast was a conspiracy expert for the US Justice Dept and began questioning the purge of 58,000 Black men from the voter rolls. It was the beginning of an investigation that would uncover a political machine capable of deciding elections long before a single ballot was cast.

And, after 25 years of digging, that investigation became the award-winning film, Vigilantes Inc.

During the Q&A, the audience got a rare look behind the curtain: how a “conspiracy theory” turned out to be a very real conspiracy.

What the Q&A made clear is this:

It’s not about Democrats or Republicans. It’s not about partisanship. It’s about rights. It’s not about left or right, but right and wrong. And it’s about the unseen tools used to erase voters — often without their knowledge — while the public is told to “trust the process.”

Palast shared many of the heartbreaking stories highlighted in his film: a military veteran purged because he was assigned to duty out of state… a 92-year-old civil rights icon showing up to vote for her 50th straight year, only to find her name erased… and entire communities losing access to ballot drop boxes overnight.

Palast also talked about the math — a part of the story almost no one hears.

The investigation found that for every illegal voter caught, around one million legal voters were wrongly targeted and removed from voter rolls.

This isn’t speculation; it’s data reviewed name-by-name by experts who usually work for Amazon and Microsoft on mailing list hygiene to prevent delivery mistakes.

The bottom line?

Vote suppression is not an accident. It’s a system.

And Vigilantes Inc. exposes the system: the strategists who designed it, the politicians who enable it, the billionaires who fund it — and the communities fighting to overcome it.

If you’ve ever wondered how elections flip in ways that defy demographics… why millions of provisional ballots never get counted… or how “election integrity” became a euphemism for mass disenfranchisement — this film’s for you.

And if you’ve ever felt like your vote doesn’t matter, this Q&A makes one thing painfully clear:

Someone out there is working very hard to make sure you believe that your vote isn’t valuable. 

Because your vote is valuable — valuable enough to steal.

 

Vigilantes Inc. is more than a documentary. It’s a warning, a wake-up call, and a blueprint for fighting back. Stream it for FREE on Youtube and share it with everyone you know: https://youtu.be/P_XdtAQXnGE

Host a community screening: https://www.gregpalast.com/vigilantes-inc-the-movie/

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