Quote:Growing increasingly desperate in a tight presidential race, leftist groups appear to be turning to the intimidation game just days before the election.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office is warning the infamous Voter Participation Center to stop sending mailers to residents “threatening to expose” their voting records.

Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, sent the VPC a cease-and-desist letter after Marylanders complained of receiving the group’s so-called “voting report card” attempting to shame people into voting.

“We’re sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to share who does and does not vote in an effort to promote election participation. While we have hidden the name and street number of your neighbors to protect privacy, these are their true voting records,” the mailer warns. “We will be reviewing these records after the election to determine whether or not you joined your neighbors in voting.”

In a press release, Brown admonished the voter registration activist group that “any action that intimidates prospective voters, especially on the eve of such a consequential election, will not be tolerated.”

“Voting is among the most important rights that Marylanders have,” the AG wrote. “Let me be clear: these unnerving letters are unacceptable, and Maryland voters should know that their decision to vote this Election Day is entirely theirs to make.”

‘It’s Really Gross’
The VPC, which bills itself as a “non-profit, non-partisan organization” with a mission to “help members of the New American Majority register and vote,” has been using such tactics for the better part of two decades, said Parker Thayer, investigative researcher at the Capital Research Center. He said the VPC and groups like it are rarely held accountable. They use the First Amendment to push their intimidation campaign.

Maryland residents aren’t the only Americans receiving threatening voting messages.

“This particular bullying tactic to try and intimidate or bully people into voting has been incredibly popular this election cycle,” Thayer told me in a phone interview Friday afternoon from battleground Michigan. “This is a tactic of desperation.”

As Thayer noted on X, the leftist group NowThis Impact created a website that shows users how to “stalk the voting history of an ex, friend, or family member and bully them for not voting.”

“You go to didmyfriendsvote.org, you put in their name, age range, and the place that they’re registered to vote,” a young woman in a video on the site explains. “As an example, I did my mom, and she’s actually voted quite a bit.”

“But then I did this boy who I used to be involved with in college. I thought he was a voter this whole time, and nope! Just keep in mind that it’s more difficult for some to vote than others; there are a lot of barriers to voting. But this man didn’t have any barriers, so I will be having a conversation with him,” the young activist shouts while pointing her finger at the camera. “And yeah, babes, just remember that this is a double-edged sword. No one can see who you voted for, but they can see if they voted. So if you’re sharing a lot of Instagram graphics, you’d better be backing that sh-t up in November on Election Day.”

Thayer said leftist NowThis Impact, which bills itself as a media outlet, is among several leftist organizations pushing out voter participation threats in the name of expanding voter participation.

“It’s really gross. We’ve had a lot of toxic elections groups say that they are fighting for democracy while they are doing everything they can to make this election as toxic as possible,” Thayer said.

‘Inaccurate and Potentially Misleading’
The Voter Participation Center was founded in 2003, starting out as Women’s Voices Women Vote, according to InfluenceWatch, Capital Research Center’s nonprofit tracker.

“The group initially focused on registering the strongly Democratic-leaning voting bloc of single women to vote; today, the group organizes registration of numerous Democratic-leaning voting populations,” InfluenceWatch notes.

The VPC has long operated a direct-mail campaign, targeting “unmarried women, minorities and millennials,” according to InfluenceWatch. With ties to the Clinton Foundation, the Democrat Party, and other leftist groups, the VPC has faced a litany of criticisms, allegations, and charges about unethical, even fraudulent practices. In 2020, Fairfax County, Virginia, warned voters “about an inaccurate and potentially misleading mailing from the Center for Voter Information,” the VPC’s sister nonprofit.

“This group is mass mailing pre-filled, absentee ballot applications to county voters without their request — and the mailer includes return envelopes to send the application to the City of Fairfax, not Fairfax County,” the county warned residents.

In March, the Alabama Secretary of State advised residents of a “misleading, unsolicited mass mailing of pre-filled voter registration forms targeting Alabama mailboxes.” The mass mailings were the products of VPC and the CVI.

‘They Don’t Stop’
The VPC’s threatening mailers this election cycle are popping up around the country. I received a “Voting Report Card” at my home in Iowa. My colleague Logan Washburn found one of the VPC’s threatening missives in his mailbox.

States have pretty straightforward laws on intimidation. While Maryland law allows a requester to receive a copy of the voter registration list, including voters’ election participation history, statutes prohibit conduct aimed at influencing or attempting to influence a voter’s decision — “whether to go to the polls to cast a vote, or vote by other lawful means, ‘through the use of force, fraud, threat, menace, intimidation, bribery, reward, or offer of reward,’” Brown wrote in his press release.

Brown said that Marylanders have “uniformly described feeling intimidated, threatened, shocked, and ill-at-ease by this mailing, as the letter suggests that there will be follow-up after the election. This threat to publicly expose the recipient’s voting record violates both Maryland and federal laws.”

Brown gave the VPC until the end of the business day on Friday to affirm receipt of and compliance with the letter, warning that the leftist organization could face fines and officials could face imprisonment for continuing to violate state and federal law.

Thayer doesn’t expect the VPC and other leftist voter activist groups to change their tactics anytime soon.

“Those tactics work. They’ve been using them since 2008,” he said. “It’s been controversial the entire time they’ve done it. They’ve been asked to stop by secretaries of state, by left-wing journalists. They don’t stop though.”

Quote:An official-looking envelope arrived in the mail on Friday. It came from the Voter Participation Center — a shadowy left-wing group — and contained threatening language.

“Remember, who you vote for is private, but whether or not you voted is public record,” wrote VPC President Tom Lopach in the letter. “We’re sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to share who does and does not vote in an effort to promote election participation.”

The mailer was addressed to my wife. It included a chart with her name, our Michigan address, and her supposed voting record from 2016 to 2022. It placed her information alongside what it claims are voting records of our “neighbors,” though we live nowhere near the streets listed.

“We will be reviewing these records after the election to determine whether or not you joined your neighbors in voting,” Lopach wrote. “While we have hidden the name and street number of your neighbors to protect their privacy, these are their true voting records.”



The mailer falsely claimed my wife did not vote in 2020. The outside of the mailer bears a return address in Lansing on Allegan Street, the same street where the secretary of state’s office is located, in the Charles E. Chamberlain Federal Building. From the large VPC seal on the mailer to the Lansing address, it looks almost intentionally official.

The VPC and its “sister” group, the Center for Voter Information, have been sending out similarly misleading and threatening mailers across America, as The Federalist reported.

In Maryland, the state attorney general issued a cease and desist order on Thursday against both groups for intimidating voters with these mailers.

“Let me be clear: these unnerving letters are unacceptable, and Maryland voters should know that their decision to vote this Election Day is entirely theirs to make,” wrote Attorney General Anthony Brown.

The group had sent unsolicited absentee ballot applications to thousands of voters across America as of September, Project Veritas reported. That month, Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., demanded that the IRS investigate the group “for potentially violating federal tax rules for tax-exempt” groups.

In September, The Washington Free Beacon reported that the VPC was targeting its Facebook voter registration ads to likely liberal audiences, calibrating ads to avoid people with more typically conservative interests, like Duck Dynasty, John Wayne, and NASCAR.

Oregon officials warned residents in August to be careful about mailers from the VPC and CVI, as they planned to send 20,000 mailers to “five of Oregon’s largest counties,” The Oregonian reported.

The VPC is a nonprofit that launched in 2003 as “Women’s Voices Women Vote,” but it changed its name in 2011, according to InfluenceWatch. John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman, helped found the group. Today, it targets likely Democrat voting blocs like single women, young people, minorities, and new citizens as part of the “Rising American Electorate” — or the “Emerging Democrat Majority.” The VPC and CVI have a history of mailing inaccurate voter registration forms.