Did Nevada voter Christina Gupana "disappear"? Is the "Louder With Crowder" show correct in saying her vote in the 2020 general election was fraudulent? No, that's not true: Lead Stories located Gupana and spoke to her on several occasions. She is registered to vote in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her listed address, 353 East Bonneville Avenue, Unit 435, was her address before she moved overseas in 2017. As a U.S. citizen living abroad, Gupana is permitted to vote. Neither her voter record nor her vote is proof of fraud.
The claims were made in the course of a "Louder with Crowder" video (archived here) posted to YouTube on March 1, 2021. The video was titled "HUGE: Nevada Voter Mysteries DEEPEN!" Host Steven Crowder said about Gupana:
We did some research and we found a fake London address, and that she appears to be in the Philippines. You know, people haven't been able to find her.
Click below to watch the video on YouTube:
Lead Stories found and spoke to Gupana on several occasions. We'll get to what she said later but, first, let's look at exactly what Crowder said about her and the voter rolls in Las Vegas. Please note that this fact-check does not include all the claims Crowder made. We are limiting ourselves to what he said about Gupana.
His video was a follow-up to an earlier "Louder with Crowder" video about "fake voter addresses" in Nevada and Michigan. See here for our debunk of that earlier fact-check in which we pointed out Crowder claimed Gupana was registered at "353 West Bonneville," an empty stretch of highway. That's not correct. According to public records, that voter's address is listed as 353 East Bonneville Avenue. Courtney Kirchoff, director of digital communications at Blaze Media, told Lead Stories that it appeared Gupana's record was changed after the first "Louder with Crowder" video aired on February 23, 2021. "Louder with Crowder" licenses its show to Blaze Media.
Kirchoff is correct. Gupana's address was updated from 353 West Bonneville to 353 East Bonneville on February 24, 2021. We reached out to Dan Kulin, spokesman for Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, to ask why that was the case. He explained that after Lead Stories initially contacted his office about Gupana, county staff checked her record and realized they had made a mistake. She had submitted her address as 353 East Bonneville, but it had incorrectly been entered into the system as West Bonneville. Kulin said:
We were able to see that we were the ones that made the typo, so we fixed it.
Crowder made a fuss over the fact that the update did not take place on a Monday. He pointed to language on the Clark County website, which says that "files are updated every Monday morning of each week," claiming that an update on a day other than Monday is "against the law." It's not, according to Kulin, who said that records are updated daily during election seasons. He added:
Once the election season is over, we typically go back to that once-a-week thing for updating what's on the website, but we just hadn't switched back to that yet.
In his follow-up video, Crowder sent someone to Gupana's updated address, 353 East Bonneville Avenue, which is the location of the "Juhl" condominium complex. The person at the front desk confirmed to the show that Gupana was not listed as living in the building. Later, Crowder said:
At this point, do you have to say irregularity? That's fraud. That is fraud. That's an address where someone does not live, and you switched it to another address where that person does not live.
He further claimed that Gupana "never lived there." Much later in the video, Crowder appealed directly to viewers. Again, referencing Gupana, he said:
I'm looking for an answer here -- bullsh** address, someone who's disappeared, worked for the Clintons, changed Tuesday night, which goes against the county's own law, their own guidelines, to a new bullsh** address -- someone went in and changed it overnight to another address that doesn't exist and we don't know who it is. You give me the most reasonable answer there that isn't a conspiracy or, at that point, not incompetence, corruption, I will be more than happy to listen to your theories.
To check Crowder's claims, we went directly to the source: Gupana. She had a lot to say.
One, she added context to the claim that she "worked for the Clintons." Gupana said she was an unpaid fellow for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
Two, she told Lead Stories that she used to reside at Juhl, located at 353 East Bonneville Avenue. She sent a copy of her Nevada driver's license, which lists that address.
In 2017, Gupana got married and moved with her husband, a British test and fighter pilot, to the United Kingdom. They currently live in London. Gupana sent Lead Stories copies of her residence permit as well as a utility bill that showed their London address.
Gupana also sent us copies of her valid U.S. passport and her voter registration card from Clark County. She said that she voted in the 2020 general election, a fact that was confirmed by Kulin, the county spokesman.
U.S. citizens living abroad are permitted to vote. An explanation of the process can be found on the State Department's website as well as on the website of the U.S. Embassy in the United Kingdom. Voters must register and request an absentee ballot, complete their ballot and then return it, either by mail or electronically. According to the Federal Voting Assistance Program, a person's "voting residence" is the address in the state in which he or she last lived, before leaving the United States. That address may remain valid even if the voter no longer has other ties to that state.
In sum, Gupana did not "disappear," and her vote, cast as a U.S. citizen abroad, was valid. Statements to the contrary are not supported by the available evidence. The harm done by them is, however. In an email to Lead Stories, dated March 4, 2021, Gupana wrote:
Mr. Crowder's concern for the integrity of our voting system is belied by his actions. If his allegations were true, then he should've issued a complaint with the Secretary of State's Office. But he didn't. If he failed there then he could've filed it with the District Court. But he didn't and ultimately, he won't, because it has no bearing in reality, and a person who maliciously brings a lawsuit to court will be liable for the other party's attorney's fees and damages. He is not interested in the truth, he is interested in social media traffic. So much so that he has lost his humanity and ability to empathize with how much pain and damage he can do to innocent people. I am now in a very strange position of having to be paranoid that someone might recognize me, wrongly think that I helped steal a presidential election, and physically harm me. And for that Mr. Crowder is responsible.
