Why Is the Voter Participation Center Spoofing the Virginia State Board of Elections’ Return Address?
Earlier today, news broke that the Romney campaign is requesting a state-level investigation of a voter registration group in Virginia. That group, the Voter Participation Center, has been sending out voter registration forms to people all over the commonwealth, hundreds of thousands of forms per month. The Washington Post and the Richmond Times-Dispatch have published stories on the Voter Participation Center and the allegations that the Romney campaign has levied against it. But both stories barely hint at what the VPC may be doing.
The center’s registration forms, some of which have been addressed to the dead, children, even pets and felons ineligible to vote in Virgina, state that recipients are eligible to vote. They come with some personal information already filled in, and instruct recipients to send the forms in to the Virginia State Board of Elections via Business Reply Mail to an address pre-printed on the form. But where do the returned forms really go? A Virginia blogger at the Disrupt the Narrative blog received one of the VPC’s forms in the mail in June 2012, and posted screen shots of the form on the blog. Click the image to enlarge it.
Look at the screenshot of the form above. The address for the State Board of Elections is correct up to the zip code. But the zip code on the form will send it somewhere other than the actual State Board of Elections.
The group bills itself as a Washington-based voter registration group, and on the voter registration form gives its return address as 7109 Staples Mill Rd., #160, Richmond, VA 22238.
Where is that? It certainly is not an office. Click the photos to enlarge them and see.
The evident misdirection of the return address and the permit number registered in Pennsylvania all beg for an answer: Why? These returned registration forms contain real personal information including full legal names, date of birth, and even Social Security numbers. What is the Voter Participation Center really up to, in having forms returned to an address that it says is controlled by a state entity, when that is not the truth? Additionally, where are the completed forms really going?
And yet there are some people, including commenters here at PJM, who continue to maintain that there is no voter fraud occurring…
No voter fraud happening, is like saying that obozocare won’t raise your taxes one dime, and that you can keep your doctor. OOPS wrong
No voter fraud happening is like unemployment under obozo is at 5.7% as he promised OOPS wrong
no voter fraud happening is like 5,000,000 green energy jobs created, OOOPS no such luck as billions went to his bundlers and companies went bankrupt and masssive layoffs.
And no voter fraud like obozo is pro private sector business. OOOPS wrong-o again.
So how many pinochios do people get for telling us that no voter fraud is happening, and doesn’t one claim of fraud taint any election????????
Why isn’t this mail fraud?
Good point.
isn’t that what obama is?
No that is male fraud since he is such a whiny wussy.
This seems to be a very valid point. The group is clearly representing themselves, fraudulently, as a state government agency. The fact that the address is to a VA government agency, but the zip code takes it to a partisan political association seems to be proof positive that the group is deliberately attempting to deceive voters through the mail system and deliberately seeking to fraudulently obtain voter personal information. This seems like a slam dunk!
With our slow, lumbering justice system, any efforts to stop this might be too little, too late. Pray, everyone. Pray hard. Our country is literally being stolen right before our eyes. People in swing states PLEASE demand accountability for the polls. We need your efforts for our very survival.
The city on the permit is the city of the post office from which it was mailed.
It should be relatively easy to contact that post office and find out who hold the permit. Hell stake it out and find out exactly who is dropping the mail at that post office. It’s most likely a private mail processing business that was contract by whoever is organizing this.
Also, just noticed that the return permit no 78103 from Denver does not match the mailing permit no 1984 from Lansdale.
Whoever holds that return permit from Denver is probably the funding source of the mailing.
I’ll have to check from home, but I believe some members of my family have received very similar forms here in Missouri as well.
You still live in the Cleavermander District, don’t you?
Do we have any clue as to whether this is also an identity theft problem? Is this data only being used for voter registration, whether legitimate or not?
Isn’t it safer to assume it’s identity theft/fraud?
Identity theft would certainly be a good way to prosecute these guys. Shouldn’t the FBI be checking into this?
I am not a lawyer and dont play one on TV, but it would seem that claiming to be the Va State board of Elections is bordering on mail fraud.
To get the media to investigate this more thoroughly, somebody needs to “suggest” that Republicans are involved somehow. Maybe the owner of the UPS store is a registered Republican. Or better yet, maybe the owner has “Tea Part” ties.
This site needs a thumbs up button. You got mine.
This is just a stern warning to make sure you get out and vote against the big “O”. The only way that Barry will be a 1-termer is if the vote is outside of the famous “margin of fraud.”
You can just bet that if any state is even close, the shenanigans in Florida 2000 will look like afternoon tea. Could you even imagine a politician from Chicago losing a statewide election by a lousy 537 votes?
You can rest assured those registering as non-democrat are ending up in the garbage can, AT A MINIMUM.
23286 is a unique ZIP Code. It is not a neighborhood, but an individual company or entity. Many large corporations, governments, schools, etc are assigned unique Zip Codes.This appears to be a remote PO BOX section associated with Virginia Commonwealth University. Somewhere on the University grounds is a PO Box facility either owned and operated by the University, or it is owned by the USPS who rents out the boxes directly. It should not be hard to locate with a little foot work. (I am in the Midwest, so I can’t do it)
I called the main Richmond Post Office and they said that those boxes are in there, but as for vicinity, it’s closer to Virginia Union University than VCU.
Find them!!!
This has got to violate some Virginia law, or even mail fraud.
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, so, in addition to fraud, these people are racists for asking ANY kind of identification for voting rights.
So… How about re-spoofing those buzzards? Send in social security number 314 15 9265, first nine digits of π.
I used to do this to annoy anybody who asked for my social security number. Let the mayham proceed forthwith.
Maybe the simplest explanation for the bogus return address is that this is the cheapest way to have free (postage-paid) return mail. Once back, VPC can sent them in bulk to the registar.
This would be cheaper than placing a stamp on each return since most of them won’t be mailed. Asking the prospective registrants to provide their own stamp would slash the response rate.
They took the risk that no one would check.
WI did not get sent them because they have election day registration.
So the question now is what the end-game is, if this is intentional voter fraud.
-Run voting registration drives
-Get lists of people eligable to vote
-mail out letters for voting registration that appear to be authentic
-People now believe they are registered to vote
Now what? If this is indeed malicious then:
-Use information to steal identities -unlikely
-Do nothing with information
-Forward vote registration information onto states
The fist option is unlikely. But if the 2nd and 3rd options are done selectively based on indication of how that person is going to vote, then this is voter fraud through vote suppression, and a rather clever one with the only risk being if someone were to actually look up the return address zip code, which is unlikely.
Judging by the persuasion of this group, a potential stratagy may be to have a lot of would-be Romney supporters showing up on Nov 4th to find that they are actually not registerd to vote.
This would definitely be noticed if it were done on a large scale – people would take note if a lot of people that thought they registered go to the booth and find they did not. It would be noticed less though in states with Absentee Ballots like Washington, where there isn’t someone at a desk drawing the dots when they get a score of people that could’ve sworn they registered.
But if it was noticed, a correlation of how they registered was drawn, and the trail leads back to this group sponsored by prominant democrats, with the testimony of the defrauded people showing a political bias in the selection, it would either be:
A) too small of a deal and considered not worth looking into because results are in or,
B) be considered a heinous show of voter suppression and call into question the integrity of the election against the democrats.
So in a roundabout way, my conclusion is that we can’t speculate too much on this, because while it seems like a clever set-up, they would have to be:
A)very diffuse in the suppression so as to go unnoticed, or,
B)they would be caught in the end, and likely not go unchallenged.
Both of these end-games seem unlikely, so I would imagine that if there is anything malicious going on, it would be something other than selective registration as a form of vote fraud. Or maybe it just wasn’t thought through.
The reason for flooding the system with registrations of pets, the dead, and ineligible people is to vote under those identities, either absentee or by assuming their name.
Voting under an assumed name is why the left opposes voter identification requirements.
When they bus people in from blue states to vote they’ll need a good supply of names to impersonate; they’ll be less like to be caught if they impersonate dead people or animals…
Forget the written address and zip – its the BAR CODE that needs to be decoded as that is what the mail system will route to. Unfortunately the image on this post is too fuzzy to get a clear image, but there are sites that will decode a cropped image of the barcode itself.
I took a good copy and put it into the barcode decipherer and it came back….
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.
Actually, I’ll give that a try a little later as I’m headed out. Thanks for the tip.
The decoded barcode says…
(1) It’s business reply mail
(2) It has a Mailer ID of 000000 (is this even a valid number assigned by USPS?)
(3) It has a serial # 295113275
(4) Its zip+4 is as printed, 23286-0508
If you unscramble the letters of the Voter Participation Center you get “Tea Parti Center”and a bunch of left over letters that are probably very meaningful. Now, we don’t know if this is the same Voter Participation Center…..
Who compiles a list of those eligible but not yet registered to vote? No one I can think of. You can approximate one by getting lists of those who have turned 18 or moved into the state since the last election and run a merge to kick out those already registered. That’s still going to give you a bunch of people who aren’t citizens or who are felons. The pets and dead people on the list make me suspect VPC just bought a whole bunch of names on the cheap and are clueless as to eligibility. This will give them their rationalization for the spoof reply address. Watch VCP officials tell the media that rather than burden the state with determining eligibility VCP is vetting the forms before sending them to the Virginia State Board of Election.
That’s bogus but the media will buy it. Now if Virginia registered by party affiliation I’d suspect a large number of those applications with an R in the party affiliation box would get lost in the mail but Virginia doesn’t ask that information. VCP could try to call to ask before turning in the forms but that would probably take a prohibitive amount of manpower. What VCP can easily do is to use the respondent’s information to create a second mailing list. This can then be run against the first list to generate a second wave of reminders to register to vote. Then as we get closer to the election the list can be used for mailings of candidate information and for GOTV efforts. Both parties often try to target newly registered voters, especially in the local races where new voters may not be familiar with candidates and issues. Having those names a couple of months before the Board of Election markets the updated lists to the competition is a real edge.
What’s a real problem here is that confidential information people thought was going directly to the government is likely to pass through the hands of unknown workers being paid low wages to do boring work on a short term or contract basis. That is a formula for identity theft.
Soros is paying significant bucks to perpetrate this fraudulent voter registration scheme. However it is designed to work in practice, it subverts democracy by misrepresenting itself to voters, clearly against their interest. Requesting Social Security Numbers under false pretenses is certainly illegal. State law enforcement officials are not known for their diligence or integrity in ensuring honest elections, but this stinks enough to suggest that some AG, somewhere, may smell the opportunity to pose as a crusader respecting the people’s choice. Romney seems to get the picture. Let’s hope he makes an issue of it. The senior Rats involved deserve the right to explain themselves to a judge.
When I was in High School (in the 60′s) my mother was somehow on Ralph Nader’s mailing list, He was destroying a GM car at the time (Unsafe at any Speed) which were all lies and half truths, a good friend had one and it was a great car. Back to the point, I would take a cinder block and cover in rapping paper, attach the return postage prepaid envelope to the “package” and take it to the local Post Office the clerk knew what it was but took it every time. I did it maybe 10 or 15 times. It must have cost Ralph a lot. Now when I get a prepaid return envelop I stuff it with all the junk mail I get and mail it back.
The dem vote fraud machine is beginning. Any bets that if VA authorities attempt to crack down on this vote fraud operation, Holder will hit them with some kind of discrimination lawsuit. It will not be enough to win this election by a small amount, we will have to win big to overcome dem vote fraud. Obama and the dems, with Soros funded vote fraud operations like this one, have pulled out all the stops, this will be one of the most corrupt elections in history.
Is this a state matter or federal? The lead agency on investigating identity theft is the Secret Service, which is part of the department of Homeland Security. Soliciting that such information as full name, birthdate and SSN be sent to a false mailing address certainly might interest them.
I am sure DHS will get right on it. They are terrorific on enforcing the laws they think are important.
From what I have seen the Secret Service jumps pretty fact on identity theft issues. It helps that the big banks hire former Secret Service guys to run their security operations in this area.
My youngest daughter got one of these in the mail about a month ago (we are in NJ). She came to me and asked half jokingly, why do they taunt me with this voter registration form when I am too young to vote??!! (She wants to vote so much, but has to wait till the next presidential election to be old enough!) We thought it was strange, but didn’t look at it too closely, just figured it was a mistake and shredded it. I wish now we had been more suspicious and looked into it. What I saw is pretty much the same as the scanned one shown, except with NJ info. I wonder how we can make sure no one uses her info to vote? Now I am worried about it.
My daughter got one of those in the mail several months ago. She had already registered to vote via the Secretary of State’s office here in Michigan. You can register to vote when you renew your driver’s license here in Michigan. I looked up the name of the group sending it online and it was easy to see that it was a left leaning organization. I wish I had kept the form and scrutinized it a bit more. I have another daughter turning 18 this Fall – I’ll wait to see if she gets one soon.
For the love of heaven, people, if you live in a swing state and you get one of these, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Don’t just throw it in the trash! Report it, loudly, to your congressional reps, state reps, attorney general, local media, local post office…anywhere you can. They are trying to steal our country right from under our noses! Please, people, be vigilant. And tell EVERYONE you know to do the same. This must be stopped in its tracks.
It NEVER occurred to us that it was not legit until I saw this article. It just seemed like a clerical error of some sort. We will make people aware of it now. I am just not used to thinking of myself living in a country where things like this can happen … naive of me, I guess. Learning more each day.
What is the evidence that this fraud is restricted to unregistered voters. A properly registered voter may assume that the form was sent by the state to renew a registration. The voter is unlikely to know if the form is a normal occurrence.
With the address, signature, and a proper SSAN, the voter’s address can be changed. Then, an absentee ballot can be requested. Many of them will get through if the state doesn’t check for duplicates, or if the citizen chooses not to vote.
Nice job catching this.
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Do I smell Acorn and/or SIEU?
As the USPS indicates, 23286-0508 is the BRM ZIP code for the VPC who sent out this form. If they forward the forms on to the Board of Elections (and get them there in time), then they have facilitated the process of unregistered voters signing up, which by itself is laudable, really. However, by intercepting these forms before going to the Board of Elections, they are able to compile a targeted list of new voters, free(r) of pets and deceased individuals. Perhaps this is the end game.
Of course, in the process of doing all that VPC also has these new voters’ personal information, including SSN and birthday. Not good, IMHO.
Keep us posted on the results of this one, Obama’s only chance of winning is to cheat. We must be vigilant!
By intercepting the mail, they get all the information needed, probably including a signature, to be able to vote as that person before the actual person can vote. If the actual person later shows up and tries to vote, they will be disallowed, the illegal vote will be tallied, and the perpetrator will be long gone.
I’ve been writing on this group since my wife and I got THREE registration forms. The thing is, they were not for dead people or pets — they were for three aliases my wife uses for magazine subscriptions to see who is selling her information — in other words, three non-existent people. Here’s my latest report, with links to the earlier posts. http://rhymeswithright.mu.nu/archives/331323.php
What if: submit all the fake voter registration and after see if they voted. If they did then only the ‘voter participation center’ committed fraud and voted in those names because no one else even knew your dog was registered.
Is it legal to place a camera and video people in line at the voting station. Perhaps that would keep people from voting for your dog and some dead guy. If you see the same person in line several times it is obviously fishy. This is not voter ID as no one asks his name, just video tapes him in line.