Report: Democrats Using Nonprofits To Launch Partisan Voter Registration Initiatives
A recent report has detailed how left-wing activists have been utilizing nonprofit organizations, which are legally supposed to operate in a non-partisan manner, to lead blatantly partisan voter registration campaigns that benefit the Democrat Party.
The revelations come from a multi–part report published by Restoration of America, detailing how the left uses tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofits to fund voter registration efforts focusing on likely-Democrat supporters in important battleground states and districts.
It is no secret that Democrat officials have a history of promoting voter registration drives, often doing so publicly. Take for example a Twitter post supporting such events put up by now-Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who in 2018 shared a video of then-Mayor Eric Garcetti promoting voter registration drives that urge young city residents to vote and participate in elections.
As the Federalist notes, federal law clearly does not allow for partisan voter registration via nonprofits: “voter education or registration activities conducted in a biased manner that favors [sic] (or opposes [sic]) one or more candidates is prohibited.”
Restoration of America found that among the most prominent organizations that are undertaking such efforts are the Voter Participation Center (VPC) and Center for Voter Information (CVI), a duo of D.C.-based nonprofit organizations created by Page Gardner.
Gardner reportedly signed up numerous voters for the 2008 presidential primary campaign of Hillary Clinton and has been recognized for coining the “marriage gap” in 2003, a statistical discovery revealing that unmarried women are less likely to vote than those that are married but will more likely back Democrats.
The Restoration of America reports estimated that VPC and CVI sent out a combined 85.5 million mailers in 32 states in the months preceding the 2022 midterm elections, with VPC mailing literature to 52.8 million homes in October alone.
VPC’s work was especially prominent in the 2020 election — the nonprofit netted a self-proclaimed 272,443 votes due its efforts.
“VPC and CVI were created to identify and register likely Democrats, cleverly using statistics to predict how individuals vote and microtargeting techniques to discover where they live. Using demographic data is the sharpest way to register certain voters without explicitly violating the IRS ban on biased registration drives,” states the report.
Restoration of America pointed out that these ‘nonpartisan’ voting organizations secure much of their funding from wealthy leftist donors who are pushed to make the donations by Democrat super PACs. One example of such a PAC is Mind the Gap, which was formed by Barbara Fried — the mother of disgraced former FTX CEO and Democrat super-donor Sam Bankman-Fried.
Other examples of influential nonprofits that dabble in politics include an initiative by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to steer hundreds of millions of dollars for the benefit of Democrats in battleground states.
