This afternoon, the Voter Participation Center held a quickly arranged conference call to react to the Romney campaign’s call for Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to launch an investigation into the group’s activities. The Washington Post, the Richmond-Times Dispatch and PJ Media have all published reports that the group is sending out hundreds of thousands of voter registration forms in many US states, and many of those forms have been addressed to the deceased, children, and even pets. VPC founder and president Page S. Gardner led the call with a statement, in which she said that the VPC is “Stunned that the Romney campaign would try to shut down legitimate voter registration,” and that VPC is asking the Virginia attorney general to “refuse to investigate these lawful efforts.” Gardner added that the Romney campaign’s call for an investigation of the group “may rise to the level of legally interfering with Virginians’ right to vote.” Gardner dubbed the investigation request “absolutely wrong and absolutely outrageous.” Gardner described the Voter Participation Center as “non-partisan” despite the fact that she is a long-time Democratic operative, John Podesta sits on the group’s board, and the group receives its funding from leftwing groups.
Page continued her opening statement, saying that VPC has registered more than 15,000 voters in Virginia and is working in 28 states to continue voter registrations. She admitted that her group has had “small problems” with its mailings, but those problems “cannot be an excuse to shut down a legitimate” voter registration effort.
Asked if the group is complying with Virginia’s request that it stop pre-populating its voter registration forms, Gardner said that the group is going to stop.
I asked her about the zip code issue, explaining that on the group’s forms the return address for the state election board is correct up to the zip code, which is not the correct zip code but a zip code owned by the VPC. Gardner said that she did not understand the question, so I asked it again and directed her to our story. She replied that the zip code is “assigned by the postal service so they can track business reply mail.” That does not explain why the zip code leads to a post office in Richmond, VA or what happens to the forms en route to the state elections officials.
Asked how pets and the deceased have been mailed the forms, Gardner answered that her group gets some of its mailing lists from vendors, who compile their lists from consumer activity such as magazine subscriptions. Some people subscribe to magazines on behalf of their pets or using their pets’ names, those names in turn get on the VPC’s list and forms go out in the mail to those pets and others who are not eligible to vote.
As I suspected the spokesperson pretty much concedes the You are eligible to register and vote claim in the body of the mailing is entirely bogus. There simple is no readily available mailing list of people who are eligible and not yet registered. VCP is simply carpet bombing with every mailing list they can get purged against lists of those already registered. Pets, non citizens, dead people, convicted felons, it matters not a wit.
“her group gets some of its mailing lists from vendors, who compile their lists from consumer activity such as magazine subscriptions”
Those could indeed be pets, or dead (or perhaps one of Charles Manson’s 4,294 alter-egos?)
They could also be persons living in this country illegally.
When non-citizens get the forms they think the government has stated they qualify to vote.
I wonder what they do with the form if you register republican
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz down the shredder.
There is no party afiliation stuff on the form.
I’m pretty confident the Romney camp has already submitted 20 or 30 with party marked “Republican.” The it’ll be telling when virtually none of those show up as being registered to vote.
Of course you’ll only see that story on the internet. MSM wouldn’t touch it ‘cuz it don’ fit the Narrative.
It’s interesting how Gardner equates the call for an investigation to shutting down the operation. It’s just the sort of hysterical hyperbole you’d expect from someone like that. But at the same time, she has essentially admitted that an investigation would find something warranting a shutdown. Oops. Perhaps someone should ask her if that’s what she believes..
This is sooooo sickening … and absolutely must be stopped or there may be a call to suspend the election because of mass confusion? Who in the hell are these people doing this and who exactly do they think they are?? I know corruption exists and nothing is perfect but … the extent of the deception and dishonesty of this entire operation is difficult for me to comprehend. And please … don’t say that Holder and Obama are clueless about this either.
These folks are just trying desperately to narrow the “margin of fraud.”
You know that if The Won loses Virginia (or any other battleground state) by less than 2%, there will be a massive effort to “find and count every vote!”
And just like in Florida 2000, it will be skewed to count all the votes for O, and discard as many votes as possible for Romney.
We just need to keep the pressure on, and make sure that the margin of victory is outside of the “margin of fraud.”
So let me get this straight. Some Democratic Party non-profit spoofs millions of voters into thinking they are registering directly. Even if all the forms, regardless of declared political party, make it to the election boards the non-profit can use the info any way it wants as there are no privacy statements on the forms.
At the very least the forms can be used for gerrymandering purposes, so that House members can more accurately choose their constituents. At worst entire elections can be thrown and members of the opposition party become victims en masse of identity theft.
The fact that the forms are actually being intercepted by this group and not going directly to the VBE should be enough to shut them down. They are asking for personally identifying information with no means to protect it. The fact that the recipient indicated on the address is not where the mail is actually being delivered (since the VBE is not the holder of or or payee for the BRM indicia) this should be adequate reason to charge the group with thousands of counts of mail fraud.
The fact is any citizen who has the right to vote doesn’t need a form mailed to them. And if they’re not smart enough to figure out how to register otherwise, they really have no business casting a ballot.
…but, unfortunately, there is no real intelligence qualification needed to vote, as the election of BHO proves conclusively.
WHY???????????????/ is this story not ALL OVER TV and the news?????? At least on FOX?????????????????
The idea that “Investigation” equals “Shutdown” was interesting. Of course, when the left calls for an investigation of some conservative activity they mean that they want it shut down, but to so plainly admit that to investigate them is to shut them down is pleasant.
So the head of the group disingenuously first “doesn’t understand the question” about the switch in zip codes, and then just says, “yeah, we’ve had “a few small problems” with that.
Well, if you send out, say, 25 or 50 thousand forms that are supposed to go to the Virginia Board of Elections, but they are all returned, instead, to your rented mail box, I’d think you’d notice, and class that as not just “a few small problems.”
Interfering with the vote is, I believe, a felony, but, reading the papers, very few people are caught, even fewer people are prosecuted, and that is usually long after the damage has been done, and the election is over.
I am reminded that Al Franken became Senator in Minnesota (and the Democrats critical 60th vote in the Senate) after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled–after 7 months of wrangling–that he had won a hotly contested election by 312 votes, and that one Conservative watchdog group reported that matching records showed that 341 felons illegally voted just in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area alone, so even a few votes one way or the other matter.
I’d hand out the “raid jackets” and shut these people down now, examine their whole operation very carefully, and vigorously prosecute anyone involved in illegal activity.
Bryan,
Have you thought of inquiring of the local postal inspector’s office whether this sort of thing qualifies as mail fraud since they’re basically trying to spoof an address of a governmental agency (albeit a state one)?
They should be shut down immediately and all of their databases confiscated for cross checking against State voter registration lists. And anyone attempting to vote or casting a vote under any of these ficticious names should be prosecuted for fraud. There is so much here that is illegal, I hope some attorney groups go after this. And don’t forget the U.S. Post Office is a government agency that should be held accountable for their lax procedures that allow something like this to happen. It’s just the cunning using the loopholes, as usual.