Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
- CNN analyzed voting records for 80 insurrectionists arrested in connection to the Capitol Siege.
- They found that several did not vote in the election they were trying to overturn by force.
- A Florida man arrested was likely unable to vote because of unpaid court fines.
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A new report details how some of the insurrectionists who were arrested at the storming of the Capitol did not vote in the election they believe was stolen.
CNN analyzed voting records for 80 of those arrested, and found that while most of the rioters on the list voted in 2020, eight of them did not, and some weren’t even registered to vote.
One explanation offered by a Boston University professor specializing in extremists speculated that for the rioters to be 2020 voters, “you would have to believe in the ethic of voting more than you thought it was a waste of time…and see it as a moral imperative.
“You have to believe the system works for everyone, that it’s for the good of the country,” Jessica Stern, a BU professor with almost 30 years of experience studying extremism, told CNN.
In other cases, a possible explanation might be more straightforward.
CNN found "a Florida man previously convicted of attempted murder who was accused by the government of refusing to leave the Capitol likely did not have the option to cast a ballot because of his unpaid court fines."
Another rioter who got arrested, 25-year-old Jack Griffith of Tennessee, voted in the 2016 election and even the 2018 midterms, but not in 2020, according to Tennessee and Alabama records reviewed by CNN.
"I hate to be that guy, but The New World Order beat us," Griffith wrote in a Facebook post after leaving the Capitol on Jan. 6. "Trump was our greatest champion, and it still wasn't enough ... I even helped stormed [sic] the capitol today, but it only made things worse...Why, God? Why? WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN US? Unless...Trump still has a plan?"
Arie Perliger, a University of Massachusetts Lowell professor specializing in right-wing domestic terrorism, told CNN that the non-voting dynamic among some of the insurrectionists should be a cause for legitimate concern.
"When we see that significant ideological groups are stopping participating in the Democratic process, that may mean they are looking for other ways to participate, and those other ways could be more violent," Perliger said. "We should be concerned if we see a growing number of ideological groups are reducing their involvement in electoral politics."