Federal, state and local governments, leftist foundations and nonprofits are distributing a vast fortune in funds aimed at voter engagement and registration. The vast majority of that money is directed at enhancing Democrat voter turnout by targeting demographics, young people, immigrants, minorities, and single women who are statistically more likely to vote for their party. Formally, voter registration and outreach is considered nonpartisan if it doesn’t endorse specific candidates, but the demographic targeting makes a mockery of the regulations and is aimed at boosting Democrat voter turnout in elections.
The Democrats benefit from a massive voter turnout machine funded by taxpayers either directly in the form of grants or indirectly through the nonprofit status of the organizations.
The networks of George Soros and Pierre Omidyar, a former Nazi collaborator and Franco-Persian tech tycoon, had urged, “We will need to mobilize more than a billion dollars to uphold the integrity of our election process and ensure diverse, equitable participation.”
Diverse and equitable participation are the kind of terms that allow foundations and nonprofits to fund systemically partisan demographic targeting for the Democrats to help them win elections.
The New York Times quoted a Democratic donor expressing concern that “organizations working on voter registration” are not being fully funded due to Soros and Omidyar not coming through with the cash. As the paper put it, nonprofits “have taken advantage of provisions in the tax code that allow them to engage in the political sphere through efforts that are technically nonpartisan, like voter education and registration” with charities spending millions of dollars for the “pinpoint targeting of demographic groups that typically vote Democratic.”
Earlier this year, the Voter Participation Center, a C3 nonprofit run by a Democrat strategist, which spent over $100 million on voter outreach, announced that it was taking part in Michelle Obama’s midterm push through When We All Vote. When We All Vote claims to have played a role in registering over half a million voters. The voter outreach component is part of Civic Nation, a C3, whose board is headed by Valerie Jarrett and other former Obama administration members. Its leadership team consists of former Obama campaign staffers and operatives.
Kyle Lierman, the CEO of both When We All Vote and Civic Nation, was Obama’s field organizer and an associate director at the Office of Public Engagement. Lauren Kidwell, the COO, was Obama’s Midwest Field Director and a partner at 270 Strategies, a Democrat consulting firm created by Obama vets. Bobby Brady-Sharp, its managing director, was a field organizer for Obama, and then a state director for the Biden campaign.
Despite being an obvious Democrat voter turnout operation run by experienced Democrat campaign organizers, Civic Nation claims that it “is organized exclusively for charitable and educational purposes within the meaning of section 501(c)(3) of the International Revenue Code.” Donations to it are tax deductible. But if that’s a charity, so is the Democrat Party.
The head of the Voter Participation Center explains that it is a “nonpartisan, nonprofit civic engagement organization that works to ensure the New American Majority — people of color, young people and unmarried women — engage in democracy equal to their presence in society through voter registration, mobilization and education.” There’s nothing nonpartisan about this.
Democrats have built a massive nonprofit political machine funded by taxpayers and abetted by the IRS. The DNC can afford to spend a mere $5 million on its voter registration campaign because most of the work is already being done for it by an army of nonprofits with nearly infinite budgets.
Previous Democrat abuses, most prominently by the Ford Foundation which under President McGeorge Bundy, a spook and former member of the Kennedy administration, had gotten into the business of funding Democrat politicians and campaign organizations, had led to the Tax Reform Act of 1969.
Unfortunately the law, embedded in IRS regulations, bars a foundation from “conducting or paying the expenses of conducting a voter registration drive limited to the geographic area covered by the campaign”, but not a particular demographic group. However current IRS regulations state that C3s “are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign”. It further warns that, “voter education or registration activities with evidence of bias” that would “have the effect of favoring a candidate or group of candidates, will constitute prohibited participation or intervention.”
The entire strategic point of nonprofit voter outreach is to have the effect of favoring particular candidates from a particular party. Even the New York Times has admitted that much is true.
The IRS has failed to enforce its own regulations. And Congress has failed to properly update nonprofit and foundation regulations to bar not just voter registration drives in a particular area, but also targeting a particular demographic group: a glaring omission since the Ford Foundation’s funding of CORE’s black voter turnout helped trigger the 1969 bill.
And where the federal government proves unwilling to enforce the law, state attorney generals have the right and duty to investigate these abuses and state legislatures have the opportunity to crack down not only on ‘Zuckerbucks’, but on partisan nonprofit voter outreach charities.
While Democrats complain about how little taxes corporations pay, 90% of their political operation is a tax-exempt project, often funded by corporate interests and radical billionaires, for the purpose of robbing taxpayers and rigging elections. It’s time to make them pay.
