“The Algorithm and the Pillow”: How Mike Lindell amplified Clint Curtis—and why it matters

Executive summary

Beginning in August 2022, Mike Lindell—the MyPillow CEO who has bankrolled and hosted large-scale events devoted to overturning the 2020 election—brought longtime election-technology whistleblower Clint Curtis onto his stage and media network. Their collaboration gave Curtis an expansive platform and lent Lindell a “Democrat-turned-skeptic" validator, further energizing a movement that has repeatedly failed to produce proof, drawn rebukes from courts and experts, and intensified public-records blitzes and harassment of election officials (Marks, 2021; Toomer, 2022; Riccardi & Slevin, 2025).

Who is Clint Curtis—and how he entered Lindell’s orbit

Curtis first surfaced nationally in 2004, alleging a Florida politician had asked him years earlier to design vote-flipping software; those allegations made headlines but were hotly disputed by others involved, and key elements of his claims were questioned at the time (Zetter, 2004). Two decades later, as county officials in California weighed hiring him to run a local elections office, Curtis himself emphasized his appearances with prominent election-denial figures—explicitly including Mike Lindell—while again promoting his long-standing opposition to voting machines (Anguiano, 2025).

When did Curtis and Lindell meet/present together?
The earliest publicly documented collaboration is August 20–21, 2022, at Lindell’s Moment of Truth Summit in Springfield, Missouri, where Lindell interviewed Curtis on stage about alleged vote-flipping “algorithms” (IMDb, 2022a; Rumble, 2022). News outlets independently reported on the summit, its focus on 2020-election conspiracy claims, and its venue/timing—even as they did not list every guest by name (Bacharier, 2022; ABC News, 2022; Colorado Newsline, 2022). Curtis’s appearance at the summit—framed by Lindell’s network as “Democrat whistleblower exposes the truth”—has since been circulated across Lindell-aligned channels (Anguiano, 2025; Rumble, 2022).

Lindell had already built a national megaphone through earlier spectacles, particularly the 2021 Cyber Symposium in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. That marathon event promised irrefutable digital proof of a stolen election but delivered none, according to cybersecurity experts who were invited to review the data (Marks, 2021).

Joint messaging: a mutually advantageous narrative

For Lindell, elevating Curtis served a narrative purpose: a onetime Democratic candidate and coder claiming he could explain how “the machines” allegedly cheat. For Curtis, Lindell’s platforms—live events, FrankSpeech streams, and allied talk shows—provided audience, production, and a ready-made ecosystem predisposed to embrace his claims (Anguiano, 2025). The spectacle of their joint appearances conveyed momentum and “insider” credibility even as outside scrutiny found no substantiating evidence (Marks, 2021; Riccardi & Slevin, 2025).

 Evidence test: what happened when the claims faced scrutiny

• Cyber Symposium “proof” collapsed under expert review. The Washington Post reported that by Day One, the data Lindell hyped as hacking “packet captures” amounted to “a smattering of data that amounted to nothing,” according to specialists (Marks, 2021).
   
• Courts and juries have rejected the movement’s core assertions. In 2025, a Denver jury found Lindell defamed a former Dominion employee over false claims made in 2020, awarding $2.3 million (Riccardi & Slevin, 2025). Separately, a federal judge ruled that Lindell defamed Smartmatic with false claims about voting machines (Karnowski, 2025a).
   
• Lindell’s “$5 million challenge” saga underscores the evidentiary vacuum. While a 2024 district-court ruling ordered Lindell to pay the challenge winner who showed the data didn’t prove election hacking, an Eighth Circuit panel vacated that award on contractual grounds in 2025; the appeal opinion still recounted the finding that the files contained no election packet data  (Tunheim, 2024; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, 2025; Karnowski, 2025b).
   

Independent assessments and court records consistently show that the movement Lindell bankrolls has not produced proof of systemic fraud in 2020. Curtis's appearances within that ecosystem do not change that record (Marks, 2021; Anguiano, 2025).

Real-world impact: how the partnership helped fuel the movement

Mainstream reporting documents a measurable post-event surge in copycat demands and pressure on election offices after Lindell's productions. In the week following the 2022 Springfield summit, county clerks reported waves of identical requests for "cast vote records," and officials tied that directly to content circulated from the event (Toomer, 2022; Gardner & Marley, 2022). Nationwide, election administrators described heightened threats and harassment as denialist activism intensified (Kim et al., 2022). In California's Shasta County—where Curtis later won appointment to run elections—the county became a hub of denialist experimentation and turmoil, with Curtis himself citing his appearances with Lindell as part of his persona (Huseman, 2024; Anguiano, 2025).

In short, Lindell's spotlight multiplies its reach. By hosting Curtis and rebroadcasting his claims, Lindell expanded Curtis's audience far beyond niche forums, feeding a pipeline that translates stage rhetoric into local pressure campaigns—without delivering evidence that survives expert or judicial review (Marks, 2021; Toomer, 2022; Riccardi & Slevin, 2025; Karnowski, 2025a).

Keep reading—this is where the curtain lifts and the cozy ties between Crye, Curtis, and Lindell start to look a lot less like coincidence and a lot more like conspiracy and quid pro quo. 

The Minnesota Connection: Did Mike Lindell's Legal Promises Open the Door for Clint Curtis in Shasta County?

In March of 2023, Shasta County became a flashpoint in the national battle over election administration. Following months of agitation from election-denial activists, County Supervisor Kevin Crye made a highly publicized trip to Minnesota to meet with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the most visible funders of 2020 election-conspiracy claims (Ting, 2023). During that period, Lindell sent Crye an email offering to "provide all of the resources necessary (including both financial and legal)" should the county face lawsuits or "pushback" for abandoning its Dominion Voting Systems contract (American Oversight, 2023). Within weeks of those communications, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors voted to terminate its Dominion contract and begin transitioning toward a hand-counted election system—an action later condemned by California's Secretary of State as impractical and unlawful (Ting, 2023). 

Adding to the intrigue, Clint Curtis was observed at a meeting held at the Shasta County Registrar of Voters' office in March of 2023, a visit confirmed by former interim Registrar Joanna Francescut. However, no public explanation has been given for his presence. The article reads:

                  "Francescut told SFGATE in a phone call that she first

                  met Curtis in March 2023 when he was invited to a meeting

                  led by former elections official Cathy Darling Allen to create

                  a "manual tally plan" for counting votes. "I'm not sure why

                  he was brought in," Francescut said. During his interview with

                  supervisors earlier this month, Curtis said he wanted the

                  the county plans to install surveillance cameras at polling 

                  places and to pivot to hand-counting ballots, a tedious 

                  and expensive process that would delay results" (Sosa, 2024).

The same month Crye traveled to Minnesota to meet with Lindell is the same month Curtis unexpectedly appeared at a meeting at the Shasta County ROV? Coincidence or collusion?

The timing of Lindell's involvement raises an important question: Did the financial safety net he offered influence the county's subsequent selection of election-denial figure Clint Curtis as its registrar of voters? Curtis, a self-described "whistleblower" who had shared stages with Lindell at events such as the 2022 Moment of Truth Summit, emerged in 2024 as Shasta County's new elections chief despite limited administrative experience (Anguiano, 2025).

While there is no public evidence that Lindell directly instructed Crye to appoint Curtis, the close sequence of events and shared ideological messaging invite speculation about whether Lindell's pledge of legal funding created leverage for him to shape local decisions.

Public records show that Lindell's promises were explicit and documented: he assured Crye that Shasta County would not bear legal costs if it followed through with the Dominion cancellation (American Oversight, 2023). This form of quid pro quo-style support—financial backing tied to policy alignment—represents an unusual level of external influence in local election governance. Even without a written condition naming Curtis, Lindell's public commitment to hand-counting and his established working relationship with Curtis suggest at least an indirect pathway for influence.

Ultimately, the Shasta case illustrates how national disinformation networks can infiltrate local governments, using monetary and legal assurances to advance ideologically driven agendas. The unanswered question remains: Did Lindell's promise to pay Shasta County's legal bills also pave the way for his allies to gain footholds inside its election apparatus? You decide for yourself.