Narrated by Rosario Dawson. Produced by Martin Sheen and Maria Florio (Oscar, Best Documentary).
Vigilantes Inc., America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen tells the story of how the GOP has created an army of self-appointed “voter fraud” hunters, not government officials, who are using new laws – and dormant old Jim Crow laws – to challenge literally hundreds of thousands of voters in each of a dozen swing states, denying Americans of color the right to have their ballots counted.
“Powerful. A great, great film.” - Jamie Foxx
In this documentary, investigative reporter Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) confronts the vigilantes—including one Republican operative in Georgia who personally challenged 32,000 voters, almost all of them African-Americans. Palast also exposes another vigilante, Alton Russell, who actually dresses up like vigilante Doc Holliday, loaded six guns and all, who successfully blocked 4,000 Black soldiers from Ft. Benning from getting their ballots. In 2022, 88 voter vigilantes challenged 180,000 voters in Georgia.
In 2024, the vigilante operation has swelled to 40,000 volunteers who have been given a list of a million voters to challenge in swing states from Arizona to Nevada to Wisconsin and beyond.
Today’s vigilantes are following the script first used by the Ku Klux Klan in 1946 to successfully elect their strategist, Eugene Talmadge as Governor of Georgia by challenging every Black voter on the rolls. That the MAGA crew in 2024 is using the old Klan Plan is shocking.
The Palast team’s preliminary version of the film, promoted by Black Votes Matter Fund, NAACP, ACLU and Rainbow/PUSH in 2022, focused on Georgia; we were credited by public radio with saving Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s re-election.
We are non-partisan, but we are proud that we helped the voters, not the vigilantes, choose their Senator. Now, as the vigilante voter challenges are exploding nationwide, our new film hunts down the vigilantes from Michigan to Texas. This film, released in coordination with our voting rights partners, will warn tens of thousands of voters on how to prevent them from losing their sacred right to vote.