The Improvement Association - Ep. 3
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zero productions in the new york times. This is the improvement association. Chapter three, the ballot of the nursing home ballots. I've been talking to horrors for two years or more, unlike any relationship that goes through its warmer periods and older ones, or is moody, sometimes he is expensive, beginning his answers with here's what you have to understand about blading. Coley sometimes seems resentful and answers and .

me short edit in this .

one conversation. Or selling horse, that a lot of people, republicans, whenever I bring up the cheating accusations against mcrae, dourest their bottle was usually whatever mcrae might have done. The blade in pack have been doing IT way longer and worse.

Okay, now if that's their fans, where is the evidence? Because, oh, the evidence is we are black and they are White. If your White, you're right, that's bush shit. Where is the evidence?

This conversation horse was particularly testy with me because was asking about a particularly persistent allegation, different from the other stuff I had heard bigger IT had to do with absent te ballot from residents in a nursing home, that the pack had somehow stolen votes from vulnerable black voters there. Well.

they talk about these nursing .

home ballots are all. Where are they?

I don't know. I don't know. I've been trying.

Where are they? I don't know. That sounds like that a little desperate, because i've been trying to hunt down these ballots for months.

For some people in blade, in county White republicans meaningly, these nursing home ballots are their origin story. Have blame county became infamous. Why IT became the national poster child for election fraud d all over blading county.

If you ask who's really been cheating in elections here, where did this all begin? Someone will inevitably start strumming their guitar and seeing the ballot of the nursing home. Every rendition of the story ends the same way nothing was ever done.

No one looked into IT. The state didn't care. Or if they did look into IT, they covered up what they found.

You can't touch them. Precious things. Someone said to me once about the pack, which I took to mean black people. You'll get called a racist if you hold them accountable. Other people in the county have said to me that belief that the pack never gets puny shed and it's unfair, runs just as deep as the suspicion that the pack .

must be cheating. I felt like getting .

to the bottom of these nursing home ballots would be like finding the power source of the electrical grid of suspicion and blade in. And a kind of is like that because this handful of nursing home ballots, fewer than ten, there's supercharged. They energize other later allegations against the pack.

They make them more believable. But also the story of these ballots, well, the story of chasing them down. It's like one of those answers that I told you can deal with gives where on group to the answer.

You get a tour of the whole place. You see what's really behind all the talk of cheating in blading county from serial productions. I'm so we chase. And this is the improvement association, a true story about election for.

I first heard about the nursing home allegation at ray britz furniture store, raise furniture and jewelry liquidators in the center of town, a place for local power brokers to gossip or buy a bedroom set. Ray himself is sort of the center of republican politics. And bleeding, always in the mix, is currently a county commissioner, formerly on the board of elections, White republican. You want to know that elections in bleeding county, you Better go talk to ray. Brit is what I was told over and over.

So I went to see him.

Here, yeah, at the store is mostly leather couches in recliners. But no, ray brit, in order to find him and to walk down the rose of sofas and tables and chairs, which I couldn't know, feeling was a power move. This pilgrimage all the way down the long eye to see the wizard device.

I finally found him way in the back behind a drawl recounter next to a tall shelf of boots for shoe repair. Hi, memory and to see you. Well, this was the day after the indictment came out charging my crae dallas with perjury and election fraud crimes. And I get straight to the point. But I mean, when you read the endangered, did you think to yourself or okay, yes, mcrae did do some stuff on.

No, I can pay attention to any .

of the really you didn't .

know because I know what is transparent and happen and then rapidly.

ted, away from a crying.

where are somebody ever us that we are concerned about where IT may be today? Let's talk about ballot set words in the safe that we knew that um an investigator, a lad and from the mister john David and said.

I don't know what you talking .

about a lot that the people don't know that yes, we won't tell the ballots .

ray was talking about here were the nursing home ballots so I took a few more conversations with him to get the whole story. At maybe a second or third meeting, I managed to wheel him out from behind the counter. Seems a little momentous emotions me to sit and he tells me the story of the nursing home ballots.

IT starts a decade ago with horus in the pack launching a big absented ballet get out the vote campaign to help like the first black share of bending county. Same election horses kicked off all the finger pointing. So about two weeks before election day twenty ten, someone comes into raise furniture store. So somebody comes into the store. And what happens?

We had a pastor come into store and I knew him, mr. Kinsey barret ban man, and he come in and i've got ta complaint.

Ray break was on the county election board at the time, so that made sense to come to him.

He said. There's people voting in the nation home had known a family member and years and preciate apparently kinsey barrel.

while visiting the nursing home, had seen some absented ballet on loops about to be male ed. And they were from people in the nursing home that he knew who he didn't think would be capable of making their own choices, people who might not know who the president is or what day IT is. And he was like, I think someone is using these elderly people, filling out ballots in their name.

The assumption was that these adult voters, notably mostly black voters, were being used to rack up votes for the black ended IT for share of point to spending. Ray passed this complaint to the director of the county board of elections, who passed IT up to the steep board elections. And then they waited.

We ask and ask and ask, and tom, when and and nothing .

was ever done, races nor response.

If you have an inquiry or concern from a nursing home, where would you start your investigation? Would you not started that the nursing home, the nursing home has heard or seen anyone .

in with .

that being? Sk, I rest my on that one law, rot after another.

Ray won't say whom is accusing in the story. He doesn't say the words blamed improvement pack. Ray is definitely talking about the pack. When I ask him directly, do you think any of this had to do with the blame improvement association? He says, no, no question about IT other people in bleedin also mention the pack and nursing home about its to me and repeated the idea that IT hadn't been investigated.

Now, just as if you tried to lake fact check and old folk song, the ballot of the nursing home ballots starts to fall apart pretty quickly. Once I look into IT, first of all, had IT been investigated. Uh.

okay, did you ever hear .

anything .

about nursing home ballot?

everything?

Home ballet complaint? L, I called the state .

elections investigator from back then, which is a job in north CarOlina and a hard job that sounds like from two thousand three to twenty eighteen, when just about any election fraud allegation made IT to the state level, this guy, martial tutor, he was the guy who looked into IT. He has a clear memory of the nursing home ballot allegation from the twenty .

ten shares ways and bleeding county many times I and some of the crown on their teach bringing IT up that I did nothing related to their allegations of the west home um that I did even investigated I did martial tuder says he remembers .

getting the tip about the ballots and investigating IT pretty extensively, trying to find out where these voters covers or manipulated to their families know they'd voted.

I talk to staff at the nurse ent home in question, and I could find nothing whatsoever that was provable that anything went wrong. And I found one family member of any of those people that was upset or claimed that something was wrong.

I got a box of martial notes from his investigations back then, and also found an email martial word to his boss about this investigation. Talking staff, saara A S demarch al, if the pack had been involved in this incident at the nursing home, he answered, no, they were not. But elections investigator is not some impartial god.

Everyone agrees zon. He's just a man like other men with biases and sympathies. And I know ray brit doesn't trust martial tuder.

Ray doesn't trust the whole state board of elections, thinks they're biased against republicans. So I knew ray wouldn't believe martiall just saying there was no there there. I needed more than martial's word for IT.

And I finally found the actual ballots in question, or the ballot on the loops, rather because baLance themselves or secret, I found them a small stack lacked in a safe at the county board of elections. In a mislabeled file. IT took all the envelope pes over the kinsey barrel.

The pastor who'd made the initial complaint at race store. He confirmed, yes, these were the ballot envelope he was talking about. So together we looked to see who helped these people vote, who signed as a witness on the baLance. A S.

Kini, was that someone from the blame improvement back? Well, not as far as kinsey. Now, he did recognize the name of the woman who signed as a witness.

IT was a person who worked at the nursing home. She's a black woman, but kini said he had no idea if he was with the pack. Actually, SHE still works at the nursing home, so then I went over there to ask her.

He told me he did not want to talk about this, but I got in one question before SHE shut the door. When you sign those ballots, where are you working for the blading improvement association pack? SHE looked genuinely confused and didn't seem to know what that was.

Right, though, insight was working for the pack. So I checked the payroll for the pack in twenty ten, which is generally pretty rupilius and SHE wasn't listed. Various members of the pack all denied separately. Knowing who he was, IT is technically illegal for nursing homes staff to assist residents with ballots. But ten years ago, marcial tuder talked to nursing homes staff and determine that this woman had made an honest mistake.

He was trying to help people vote who wanted to vote the most positive thing coming out of the situation, martial wrote in an email to his boss detAiling the investigation, is that the staff member who witnessed the ballots and the nursing home administrator have, quote, both told me going forward, things such as this will not happen again because they're more informed on what can be done for a resident related to voting and what cannot be done. Conclusion what happened at the nursing home did not involve the pack was not a big deal and not something that could or should be prosecuted. Martial believed and still believes, so we moved on. Which doesn't mean nobody cheated in the share of race that's after the break.

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When I was looking through martial touters notes in emails about his investigations, IT seemed like every other week there was an email to his bosses, need the van to go to blading colony, and we're headed to bleeding county today.

Number one destination should say over the years.

the notes for chronicle of years, martial spent following up on a steady stream of accusations of someone cheating down there in the twenty ten sheer of race. Marshall says that was a real bruiser.

I'm telling you, I couldn't put a number on the people that are in down there. I mean, IT was just constantly interviewing and the cups he was most of the stuff he was following a ban .

was fairly minor complaints that sheriff deputies were campaigning on the clock or using county cars to put up signs. And of course, vote buying .

everybody is vote .

back everybody. Martial says that a common accusation directed at the improvement association pack. Because the pack is powerful, martial says their endorsements powerful. So whatever candidate the pack doesn't endorse, that candidate or that candidate supporters will accuse the pack of vote buying.

So I asked him, what is IT ever true? Had you ever found cheating by the pack, vote buying or something else? And Marshall says, no.

they didn't cheat.

In fact, he says, horris present of the pack called them all the time, asking if they were doing things right by the book. They had made mistakes. There were times martial would come to them with regularities. For example, the packs sample ballot. Maybe IT wasn't clearly identified as being from the pack, which is required, but he said theyd correct .

stuff like that quickly out of um uh um working with the um uh to make sure that they were following lid low because they were under the microscope, say the least .

that twenty ten share of race how vicious IT was martial tuder said IT reminded him of the old south black versus weight, in this case fighting for the most powerful position in the county, which was partly what accounted for all these warnings, accusations of cheating, but the underlying ugly ss, the racism, he says he saw that clearly. In this other case, he investigated back then. A K nobody really talks about, but that still upsets them.

Now I will say in the bladen county situation， I did have a very good case. And that was on people and and I be specific here, IT was White people who were welt out out in the black community. Going to black citizens who had received an accented ballot and picking up those ballots and throw them in a way. I had statements by the black citizens at so, and so came, and we trust her. And this other and these baLance can never go to the board of elections.

Martial took statements from four voters. Here's what he was told. At least two White women were going around knocking on voters doors.

Black voters, mostly elderly. One of the women was a problem officer. The other a former architect. Investigator martial found during his investigation that they both supported the White candidate for share and blade.

In that year, the voters martial interviewed told him they intended to vote for the black and practice pantone. But one of the voters told martial that one of the women brought him a completed ballot already sealed. He signed IT.

Two voters martial interviewed said they d mark their ballots themselves for principle stand and had sealed them. They told martial that the White women had picked up to sealed on loops with the ballots. But martial found during his investigation that the ballots never made IT to the board of elections.

So their votes for prentice benton word count taking someone's ballot. If you're not a family member that's already illegal in north CarOlina, like picking IT up, taking to the board of elections, even if you didn't tamper with IT at all, that's illegal. But throwing away ballots that was commercial to her, the most serious kind of election crime.

And that's what martial believed was happening based on the totality of his investigation in emails at the time, martials boss said there appeared to be numerous felon violations, talking commercial tuder and another investigator. Now they both think there was a conspiracy network to target vulnerable black voters. That's the word they use, conspiracy. Here were people who had intended to vote for someone, and their intention was deliberately thwarted.

and yet in the end, all the prosecutors are. And the eternal generals office said that the statements from the black citizens were hard to prove, and the black citizens were not educated and they were old, and so they didn't think they would stand up in call. So that was where I was most disappointed.

We reached out to the two women who legem picked up the ballots, and they declined to talk. Most of the voters who martial talk to are dead. We called the relative of one of them and started her while he was at the grocery store, SHE said.

SHE backed the incident out and move down. Didn't anna talk about IT? SHE still seemed upset about IT. This is the kind of story that I think should take tap building in the extensive election law of blading county, super serious allegation, possibly a cynical disenfranchise ment scheme checked out by authorities, found by those authorities to have merit, run up the chain to more investigating authorities who also find IT as merit. And then nothing, no prosecution, know nothing.

So I went back to the furniture store to talk to rape rit to see if I could square what he'd been telling me with everything that I knew. Now, what about the other investigation? The weight women who might have thrown out votes for principle beston. Does that sound familiar to you at all?

Never heard of such. Never heard anything .

after a minute or so. He did remember that other case though, right? Well, maybe he was confusing the nursing home story with this story, melting them into one elderly black voters, someone taking advantage of them with absently ballots.

So we talking about two different things are the same.

I would think, from what you say. no. This is entirely different instance.

raided by my theory at all, that he'd conflated the two. I told him about talking a martial tutor and, looking at his notes, told the martial tuder did look into the nursing home ballots. Ts, but like I said, rate doesn't trust.

Martial, for that matter, really does not trust me, like a lot of people in bleedin and elsewhere. He kindly hits the media cause too biased. He's accused me of being a liberal before.

And now here I am standing in front of ray saying that fraud. D story you keep telling me the ballot of the nursing home ballots about how the pack is cheating. I'm not finding evidence of the blame improvement pack doing anything wrong, which in his book, I think, means i'm just not looking right because I have my own agenda too.

This conversation evolves into a back and forth of me begging him for evidence to back up his claim and him telling me there is much more that he knows about all this that unfortunately he cannot divulge, which might sound familiar. It's very voter fraud discourse of the moment. Sure you're not seeing the evidence today, but just wait, there's more is definitely there.

I know a little more about IT than what I want to tell you because left out folks at the nursing home myself, I guess I should feel free to be able to talk about something. They said, this was never nothing there. But I still choose not to do so, because I think is still something that needs to be addressed.

I, my, my impression has always been that, you know, mcrae, dallas was accused of some things, but that some people in the county who I ve spoken to you, you are one of them, have been like what been going on in this county with bladen county improved association has been way worse and way bigger and have been trying to look for evidence to back that up. You know, for for months now, i'm still looking. Can you help me with that at all?

You probably keep on looking. We just address some of the issues that .

were not yeah, but that's what i'm saying as I tried to look to back that up because I was like, let me see what this nursing home fraud is that mister berts talking about and then when I get the emails, I see it's not pleaded encounter improvement with somebody else so that's why I came back to, is that the investigation your same? No is something else. So i'm like, what show me something I want. Na see you, you.

Know, tell you, can I?

Find that you may .

not ever .

with some .

of this note.

but why won't .

you tell I .

guess is my question. Why won't you just explain that to me so that I don't know just what I can see the full picture because I still feel i'm squinting a little bit.

Keep squatting sometime. You squanko focus little Better.

What happens if I squat ray, squint at ray, I see someone very motivated to throw suspicion way off the republican party and enter the democrats race, says no way. But what I see is ray brit isn't simply a concerned county commissioner. Rays got a dog in this fight, not just a partisan one.

Is personal rates ied a big booster of mcrae doulas? He's hired mcrae before for one of his county commissioner. Campaigns in two thousand seventeen.

Raised the guy who introduced cray doulas to mark rs. The republican congressman mckay allegedly cheated for they all met and raise furniture liquidators. A year before the campaign started, ray went and bailed mca, a jail after mcrae was arrested for his alleged role in the scandal. The money for bail was paid for by another republican benefactor in the county, but rain drove macy home. None of that is wrong.

Raised friends with mcrae and points out every time I talk to him that mcrae has not been convicted only indeed, it's just that for a guy who seems pretty interested in talking about election cheating, he doesn't seem very interested in talking about the evidence of mcrae Operation. When I do ask gray about mci, all he says is, if my created something wrong, he should apologize, holding his hands up like, how would I know before returning yet again to the story of the nursing home ballots in the pack in his heart, we might believe the pack is very guilty. But I also think the reason is always telling the story of the nursing home, is because that his way of defending mckay, deflecting attention from the republicans, and I believe this because ray has not just been telling the nursing home ballot story to me in a furniture store after that is eighth congressional district race is in limbo because of irregularities with absentee ballots.

This is A T. V news story from back in twenty years, the heights of the frenzy around twenty eighteen congressional election in the allegations of massive fraud. And there are reporters crawling all over bladen county try to understand how this little rural police managed to steal a federal congressional election.

One of them moves a reporter from Charlotte, nick. In one night, nick scored a huge get of an interview with mcrae, I dallas himself, ray brit and another local republican. Now ray says nick first brought up the twenty ten nursing home baLance to him.

Nick says, no, the whole reason he was in bed and was to hear what had gone on in the twenty six race. That's what we wanted to know about, but he says ray had a different story to tell about fraud that had been going on for years, but no one ever investigated. IT nick won TV at night. Yeah, paul.

Specifically those concerns in two thousand ten thirty on a block of boat that were cast from a nursing home. Those concerns were raised by a man named brit today. He tells me that all of today's problems on uncertainty may not have happened had investigators taken his concern seriously eight years ago.

Your citizens look for you to be accountable for them because they aware these things go and on, but you're doing your job and you submit IT IT to no avail.

Nick, when through the .

same ballot on the lobes, I, we obtain these documents.

which are still in a fe county board of elections, we show county staff and materials to the state. But britt says nothing was ever done.

and all these things are reported.

Nick did get a statement from the support of elections, which basically said that was then, this is now martial tuder doesn't work here anymore. So we all know what happened with that, which was weak and damaging. IT left raised accusation just as open ended as IT was when ray made IT.

And therefore, just as in Sandy area. Remember, this was an allegation that had been checked out, was not substituted. And here was the state not saying that.

So the story raised telling there's cheating all over the place and yet the state just cracks down on mckay that gets on chAllenged at the end of the segment. Neck tees ray up for the takeaway. Do you think some of this .

could have been prevented had the state board started investigating eight years ago and you first try to down the alarm?

Oh, what are down?

Here's what I make of this. The ballot of the nursing home ballots IT functions is cover fire for the republicans dealing with allegations of ballot tampering ing on their side, the nursing home story attraction rate when a different election fraud story about mcrae illness was all over the news. I don't think that's a coincidence.

I know a lot of people listening to this podcast now probably think it's obvious that the pack doesn't cheat. That is either cynical politics or general racism, and that's why people point their fingers at the pack.

But I also know not all of you listening, think that especially if you live in bleeding county, you think I haven't doug far enough, haven't tweeted hard enough, and probably that my own biases getting away, just like a big portion of the country thinks the election was stolen from trump. A big portion of blading county thinks the pack cheats. In blade's case, maybe the majority of people think that, and a lot of people in the state, too.

But I ran down everything that I could find, not just the nursing home story, every single official complaint I could get my hands on, and some unofficial ones too, from twenty ten all the way up to twenty years, I had to. And here's what I can tell you really quick. Twenty ten, we already talked about that one no pack cheating twenty twelve allegation of vote buying, supposedly kag dal, one of the members of the pack, was offering wine to voters.

IT was investigated, not subsistences ated plus nursing home allegation regarding a single ballot dismissed. Twenty sixteen fishy handwriting on absented ballots for a right in canada investigated. A hearing was held, a minor infraction dismissed.

Also, a handful of nursing home complains always with the nursing homes that I checked into that did not up to anything to furious at all. So for the past decade, I found no evidence to back of any allegations that the pack was cheating. They made mistakes. But this is not a group that's committing election fraud. d.

And yet all the accusations and rumors have built on each other very effectively right up to the twenty ten congressional scandal and steed hearing, where the pack out publicly chastise ed, even though most of the four days of testimony were related to a craze Operation, the few specific claims about the pack that were made during the hearing more any more verifiable than but I heard about from ray brit or anyone else in bin. Months after the hearing was over, I went to the investigators in the prosecutor to see if I was missing anything. Was there anything else that made them suspicious of the pack? But I didn't get a chance to see note, they told me in the prosecutor who still working on this case is not investigating the pack at all, SHE told me.

But there .

was still one weird thing left that made me suspicious or curious, and I ended up making me feel like the diabolical thing about accusing someone of cheating is IT can be awful ly hard to prove that they don't or they never did. IT was the moment when horrors was asked to stand at the hearing when lisa brit was testifying.

Lisa brit, by the way, no immediate relation to ray brit, but anyway, lisa brit was mccrae stepped ughi and testified longest and most compelling ly about mcrae lege cheating in your own, the fake signature, the filling in ballots, the transporting of ballots. And you might remember this from the prolog. At one point, lisa brit says horris was working with mccray that SHE saw horrors in mcrae office, and the two men spoke on the phone repeatedly, and then murder trial style, the step board astar, to point him .

out in the crowd.

The genus that is .

hours are you?

Horrors, of course, denies all this. He told me he did not work with mckay, said he hadn't spoken to mcrae in years. So then I asked around, did mcrae horse work together in the twenty eighteen election? IT baffled everyone in blading county, even republicans like, I don't think so.

That doesn't make sense. I, as a woman who actually worked in the office with mccray during the campaign and he said no before, slammed the door over the last two years reporting the story. I asked mckay over and over again for an interview, and he always very gently said no. But one day last summer, I finally got this out of them.

the house number of beyond. And but I can tell you is, but a harsh man has never been in my house.

Ask me a question and this is out less. I found interview, correct?

IT wasn't, but I told horis I was probably done asking about cheating allegations against the pack. And I recently found out this final bit of information. I told him what mcrae said to me about not working with them. Horses response. This revelation was pretty much, if you're .

innocent, you're innocent. And so what I want to you to find out and research IT your eyes. Never me for someone else. He had a child to tell the truth about a, about IT, so he told the truth. And then we would .

I still know know why this. Brad said that I think that's confusing because .

I think there's another person that was there. And to White people, black people look like horse .

thinks lisa confused him for another black man. I tried to ask lisa about this, but he didn't want to talk, so could be.

I've spent most of my time working on this story chasing the ins and outs of cheating accusations against the pack at the same time as the country has been blowing up over accusations of election fraud in the twenty twenty presidential election. And it's been weird, like seeing the movie version of a book of already read lots of different characters in scenes. But I knew where he was going.

I was alarmed from very early on at the drum beat from president trump in his supporters about cheating. IT wasn't just that trump often singled out majority black cities or polling places as site to were cheating was supposedly happening. So we did that.

IT was that a lot of people seem to think these cheating accusations would all fade away if courts and public officials looked into them and found they weren't true and said that in public, or that I would go away of trump lost, or when spite came in, or even now. I just think lots of people think this belief in widespread election fraud will fade away with just sheer passage of time. But what I know from bladder is this, in the right circumstances, one's accusations have been repeated enough times for stuck.

You can't unscrew the lid IT only goes in one direction, tighter and tighter. You know, the line that keeps saying at the beginning of every episode a true story about election fraud. What I mean by that is that actual election fraud, when that happens, it's usually small, self contained, relatively easy to catch, but accusations of election fraud, those linger and grow. So the true story is that the suspicion of fraud can affect people, weigh more directly than an actual fraud, which is rare.

The reason horis called me down to bleating county to begin with was not just to examination his pack, but for me to understand why theyd even been implicated at all, to see how hurling accusations at the pack, creating spicion and distrust of his organization, helps their opponents in a place where accusations of election fraud have been used for more than one hundred years to keep black people from voting.

That's not some kind of coincidence or or says that would still happens here. That would been trying to tell you an article he said, about the south and blading colony. And so far, this story, the story of been telling you, this is the story horis wanted me to tell.

But the rest of the story, what happened next, and just how the cheating accusations would weaken in the pack strength, I would the court saw that one coming because the horrors has been focused on the threat from without. The accusations were starting to cause a lot from within. That's next time on the improvement .

association.

The improvement association is produced and edited by Nancy update and me. Neil drummer is our managing editor, july snider is executive editor, additional editing by sarchin ic and arrogant ass rye need is our editorial consultation, fact checking and research by ben fAiling music supervision and mixing by feeling amida is our social producer in the tub ou is the supervising producer.

Original music composed by comi brand peers additional support from the staff at this american life, including a manual berry july, woody ker, casey holie settled and Francis swans at the new york times cm deric, laun Jackson, Elizabeth Davis more, elena sero and nora keller. Special thanks to gary barnet, Michael becker, m delays, o matt dixon, ginger eson, lorn freeman, Jerry lessen, jen Nelson, nick axon, kim track, Charlotte ith, jeff smith, A D Y, Billy reward, mike weight, mark maximov and Jessica whisper. g. The improved association is produce by serial productions .

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