Bemis Hall speakers push claims of 2020 election fraud

The digital flyer publicizing the May 5 event in Lincoln.

(Editor’s note: please see this accompanying editorial by Lincoln Squirrel editor Alice Waugh. Also, this story was updated on May 12 — scroll to the bottom for details.)

Questions swirled last week about how a group of right-wing “election integrity” skeptics came to speak to an enthusiastic crowd (most from out of town) in Bemis Hall on May 5. The controversy gave rise to dozens of passionate posts on LincolnTalk before the topic was banned by moderators, snared former Select Board candidate Adam Hogue, and spotlighted a grassroots movement to restrict voting and take over the management of elections at the local level.

Alarm bells rang for many in Lincoln when it became know that “Election Integrity Analysis & Discussion” would feature remarks by Seth Keshel, a U.S. Army veteran who’s been speaking around the country in support of his claims that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election only because of voter fraud.

It initially appeared that Hogue, who runs the Veterans of Lincoln, Mass. group (VOLMA), organized the May 5 event, but this turned out not to be the case. The actual organizers were Todd Pond Road residents Tom and Edie Risser. Tom Risser, a cardiologist with the Cambridge Health Alliance and Navy veteran, is a VOLMA member.

Renting Bemis Hall for a private event costs $300, though there is no fee if a town group sponsors it. “We reached out to Adam and he was happy to sponsor it from the perspective of saving us money,” Edie Risser said on May 10. They agreed that VOLMA would not be mentioned in publicity for the event, but after the resulting outcry, Hogue clarified with Bemis Hall that his group was not sponsoring it, and the Rissers agreed to pay the $300.

Hogue co-founded VOLMA (which he said has 30-40 members) about 10 years ago to work with the Lincoln Veterans’ Services Officer and plan activities for Memorial Day and other events. Asked by the Lincoln Squirrel this week whether he agreed with Keshel’s views about the election, he said, “Absolutely not.”

According to Edie Risser, Keshel offered to include Rhode Island election trends in his analysis, so a group of about 30 people from that state were bused up to Lincoln to attend. 

The event itself was orderly, with a tone that varied from light-hearted to indignant. Co-emcee Tom Risser opened the proceedings by leading the audience in a militarily correct pledge of allegiance and a prayer. Several other speakers preceded Keshel, including former Army Capt. James Tesauro, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Sheboygan, Wis., last year. He didn’t discuss any specifics regarding alleged election fraud but railed against what he saw as the left’s attempts to “brainwash” and control people.

“I’m not sending my kid to public school when she’s old enough because she’s not going to be indoctrinated by state propaganda. End of story. I don’t care what the state tells me what to do. I don’t need Daddy Government to tell me how to live my life or teach my children how to grow up or what they should believe. That’s my job,” he said to applause.

“We have to learn how to fight and think… we have to be involved,” said Tesauro, who urged attendees to run for local school board and county government. “Or go to a [local government] meeting and show up to stuff like this,” he said. The left’s attitude toward people like him is “we’re going to delete you from the planet,” he added, saying it was a “badge of honor” that he had been banned from Twitter.

Keshel, decked out in Revolutionary War clothing and tricorn hat, titled his segment “Behind the Election Corruption Curtain.” His talk focused on how the 2020 election results in some states and counties bucked voting trends from several previous several elections. “I don’t believe Trump won Massachusetts, but Rhode Island has a very nasty trend chart,” he said.

Keshel gained attention last summer when he claimed to prove that there were 8.1 million fraudulent votes in the 2020 election and that Trump won seven states that he actually lost. His false claims were publicized by websites including the Gateway Pundit, which Wikipedia describes as “a far-right fake news website… known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.” Centrist news organizations including the Associated Press and Reuters have debunked the election fraud claims made by Keshel and other military veterans.

Among Keshel’s other remarks:

• He scorned polling by the “mainstream media,” which he said is done to “influence minds.”
• Moderate Republicans often promote centrist candidates “to make sure the political system stays intact and is not taken over by populists who may put America first.”
• The CDC is “tracking all kinds of people to see if they’re obeying [public health] mandates.”
• The Department of Homeland Security “wants to call people organizing meetings like this a bunch of terrorists.”
• He cited a quote often misattributed to Samuel Adams: “He did not believe you needed a majority to prevail… he believed it only takes an irate minority intent on setting brushfires of freedom in the hearts and minds of men.”

To achieve “election integrity,” Keshel advocated 10 steps including banning all electronic voting equipment, requiring a photo ID for all voters, banning early voting and mail-in voting by everyone except overseas military members and those who are certified as “disabled by a notary,” and banning so-called “ballot harvesting” where it’s legal in 36 states for someone chosen by the voter to return mail and absentee ballots on their behalf.

Interviewed by the Squirrel on May 10, Edie Risser said, “if I could do it again, I would. I was happy with the event — I think it reflected a lot of stuff going on out there. This has been going on for a while, the sense that the elections can’t be trusted. I think people also felt disenfranchised in 2016 and then there were four years of targeting that president [Trump].” She also echoed familiar claims about the media distorting and suppressing accounts about the Clinton campaign’s activities, Russian election interference, and Hunter Biden’s laptop. 

“People have to be nonemotional and just look at data,” she said. “I wanted that whole thing to be objectively looking at information, but I guess nothing can be nonpartisan these days.”

May 12 update:

A video of the May 5 event was available for a few days on YouTube, but the platform took it down shortly after this article was originally published on the evening of May 10 for violating its community guidelines. Those guidelines cover a number of categories, but the video was most likely removed for violating the Elections Misinformation standards, which include a prohibition on videos about election integrity with “content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of select past national elections, after final election results are officially certified.”

May 17 update:

The YouTube video has been restored. It is also also available on Groton resident John Abrahamsen’s Facebook page, which contains links to other far-right conspiracy sites and commentators.