“Weaponizing” 501(c)(3) Voter Registration Drives And American Campaign Academy
Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were murdered for participating in a Mississippi voter registration drive. Their deaths led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From The Federalist yesterday:
A new report reveals how the left has been actively weaponizing nonprofit organizations, which are legally required to function as non-partisan, to conduct explicitly partisan voter registration campaigns to help Democrats win elections. Released by Restoration of America, the two–part report unveils how Democrats employ tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofits to administer voter registration campaigns targeting likely-Democrat voters in key battleground states and districts. Notably, federal law expressly prohibits partisan voter registration through nonprofits: “voter education or registration activities conducted in a biased manner that favors [sic] (or opposes [sic]) one or more candidates is prohibited.”
Everybody knows that Democrats, even more than Republicans, I imagine, use voter registration drives not just because they believe everybody should vote, but because when everybody votes there are likely to be more Democrats voting than Republicans. That’s what led to murder in 1964. The Federalist article is kinda stupid, asserting that “Democrats will stop at nothing in their bid to rig elections in their favor.” One thing Democrats don’t do is storm the doggone capital. Or kill idealistic college students trying to make a difference. Still, the Federalist still puts forth some decent evidence for the assertion that Democrats use voter registration drives to help democratic candidates, not in a non-partisan fashion. One piece of evidence cited is a Mind The Gap memorandum discussing the partisan value of voter registration drives:
Voter registration. The most effective tactic in a Presidential year by a wide margin is nonpartisan voter registration focused on underrepresented groups in our electoral process. Provided that such efforts are well-designed and executed, on a pre-tax basis they are 2 to 5 times more cost-effective at netting additional Democratic votes than the tactics that campaigns will invest in (chiefly, broadcast media and digital buys). Because 90 percent of the contributions we are recommending for voter registration and GOTV efforts will go to 501(c)(3) organizations and hence are tax deductible, on an after tax basis such programs are closer to 4 to 10 times more cost-effective than the next best alternative. They are also eligible recipients of donations from donor-advised funds and private foundations.
Authored by Restoration of America, a right leaning 501(c)(4), the Report makes dumb conclusions from otherwise good information. The information fairly supports the unsurprising assertion that Democrats target their voter registration to people most likely to vote for Democrats. Ok, duh!
At the heart of this election machine is a pair of D.C.-based nonprofits: the 501(c)(3) Voter Participation Center (VPC) and 501(c)(4) Center for Voter Information (CVI). Both share a common founder, Page Gardner, who registered voters for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential primary campaign. (At one point Clinton crony John Podesta also sat on VPC’s board.) Gardner is credited with discovering the “marriage gap” in 2003, a statistical revelation showing that unmarried women were less likely to be registered or turn out than married women but were more likely to support Democrats. Of course, single women are just one part of the “New American Majority,” the Left’s euphemism for likely Democratic voters.
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. As VPC boasts: We’re “dedicated to increasing the share of unmarried women, people of color, Millennials, Gen Z, and other historically under-represented groups in the electorate”—which happen to be the Democratic Party’s core constituencies.
Here is Part 1 of the Report, and here is Part 2. I did not see any mention of American Campaign Academy, a case that fits here. But it makes sense more about private benefit than campaign intervention. The Report’s authors are in the wrong ballpark if they think voter registration motivated by and operated to bring in voters biased one way or the other is prohibited campaign intervention or lobbying. If the voter registration efforts do not not actually campaign for or against a candidate — as in, “vote for X not for Y” — or seek to influence legislation there is not likely to be prohibited campaign intervention or substantial lobbying violation. There might still be hope for the authors. American Campaign Academy identifies perhaps a muddled and poorly lit path to challenge voter registration conducted in a partisan manner. According to American Campaign Academy, registering voters to benefit only the Democrats could constitute impermissible private benefit. I think the case would be decided differently today, but it is still good law even if its not often cited anymore.
darryll jones