RALEIGH — Mailings related to obtaining absentee ballots from third-party organizations have been showing up again in North Carolina ahead of the November midterm elections.
The mailings come from the Voter Participation Center (VPC), a sister group of the Center for Voter Information (CVI).
According to its website, the “Center for Voter Information is a nonprofit, non-partisan partner organization to Voter Participation Center, both founded to provide resources and tools to help voting-eligible citizens register and vote in upcoming elections.”
The VPC mailings appear in some cases to be targeting individuals who are either no longer on North Carolina voter rolls or have inactive voter registration. One citizen who shared a mailing they received said it was addressed to a family member who hasn’t lived in the state for almost a decade.
North State Journal reached out to VPC to see how many mailers went out in North Carolina and to which counties. A response was received from Jim Popkin, a former NBC News investigative journalist and founder of Seven Oaks Media Group.
Seven Oaks Media Group describes itself as “a select group of former reporters and producers from the nation’s top print and broadcast news organizations who truly understand the news.”
Popkin’s response first asked for more information about North State Journal’s story before providing a “reporter toolkit” about VPC along with a press release-style document about VPC and CVI’s current activities in North Carolina.
The toolkit says the groups have reached 5.8 million voters since 2003 and describes CVI and VPC as “the nation’s largest nonpartisan, non-profit organizations working to ensure the New American Majority (NAM) — people of color, young people, and unmarried women — participate in democracy equal to their presence in society.”
The reporter toolkit also presents a series of “facts” to counter “disinformation and misinformation” about the group’s work such as receiving letters with incorrect information, confusing voters who are already registered, and stating their mailings are a “legitimate” way for citizens to register to vote.
Under the section addressing whether or not VPC and CVI use incorrect data, the document says, “Unfortunately, no state makes available a list of individuals who are unregistered or ineligible. As a result, VPC and CVI must use commercially available residential databases and match them to the state’s voter file to determine who is unregistered and otherwise eligible.”
According to the press release sent by Popkin, more than 1.4 million North Carolinians have been sent mailings from VPC and CVI as “part of an ambitious effort to build enthusiasm around North Carolina’s general election on Tuesday, Nov. 8.
“The nonpartisan and nonprofit Voter Participation Center (VPC) and the Center for Voter Information (CVI) are mailing 607,931 voter registration applications and 808,220 vote-by-mail applications to 1,147,545 eligible North Carolina citizens this month to encourage participation in our democracy.”
In response to an inquiry from North State Journal, N.C. State Board of Elections (NCSBE) Communications Director Patrick Gannon said they are aware of the mailings “as they send mailings just about every year.”
“They routinely ask us to review them prior to mailing them to ensure they are lawful and that any recent state law or court orders are reflected accurately in their language,” Gannon said in an email response. “We have had relatively few complaints about these mailings at the State Board of Elections so far this year.”
Gannon also said there are “many groups that conduct voter outreach campaigns, especially in important election years like 2022. Obviously, this is one of the larger ones.”
As far back a decade, North Carolinians have received similar VPC mailings that have been criticized for being misleading, confusing or inaccurate, but also for sometimes including preprinted absentee ballot applications along with prepaid return postage envelopes.
The mailers currently showing up across the Tar Heel State also appear to include applications and pre-paid envelopes.
According to a past report by news outlet ABC 11, around 1.8 million of the same type of absentee ballot request mailers were sent to citizens in North Carolina during the 2020 election by CVI and VPC. Similar mailings also went out to voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia that year.
The State Board of Elections issued a statement during the 2020 cycle about election-related mailers in response to questions from concerned citizens. The statement said, “These efforts typically are legal, but they can be confusing or frustrating for voters and erode confidence in elections, especially when they are unsolicited.”
While both CVI and VPC claim to be “non-government, nonprofit and nonpartisan 501(c)3,” their funding, staff affiliations and political spending appear to be tied to left-leaning and Democrat-tied organizations.
CVI and VPC are helmed by the same person, Democratic strategist Tom Lopach. The board members for each organization are slightly different, but staff lists are identical.
The founder, as well as board chair of CVI, is Page Gardner. Like Lopach, she is a longtime Democratic strategist with a track record that began with Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-MA) 1980 bid for president and included former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.
Over time, Gardner became involved in voter outreach and formed CVI, VPC and Women’s Voices Women Vote in 2003. Both VPC and Women’s Voices Women’s vote share CVI’s nonprofit tax ID number.
John Podesta, a constant figure in both Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political campaigns and careers, was a founding board member of Women’s Voices Women Vote. In early September of this year, President Joe Biden appointed Podesta as a senior adviser to Biden for clean energy innovation and implementation.
Women’s Voices Women Vote came under fire in 2008 for being behind allegedly illegal automated robocalls that targeted black female voters in multiple states including North Carolina, according to an NPR report.
In terms of funding, CVI is awash in cash. IRS filings show CVI took in $49,138,867 in 2020 and $3,853,228 in 2019.
Tax filings also show billionaire George Soros’ Tides Foundation along with other left-leaning organizations like the Sierra Club and Green Advocacy Project have given financial support to CVI over the years.
A 2020 filing for the Tides Foundation revealed $5,375,000 to CVI. In 2019, Tides gave CVI $50,000.
The National Redistricting Action Fund, which is the 501(c)(4) affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee run by former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder, gave CVI $58,050 according to 2018 IRS filings.
During the 2020 election, CVI spent $533,820 in support of Joe Biden’s bid for president but apparently didn’t spend a dime on any other candidates, according to Influence Watch, a project of the Capitol Research Center that tracks dark money in politics. In the previous two major election cycles of 2018 and 2016, CVI apparently spent hundreds of thousands backing Democratic candidates while opposing Republican ones.
View a copy of the mailer sent to the North State Journal.
