A” Traditional think tank leader” is today calling for “banning organizations from voter registration attempts,” as a recent article from USA Today reads. The” Conservative think tank leader”, my employer, Scott Walter, has very good reasons for calling for this, though if you read the article in full, you might be uncertain what those reasons are. Because the grounds were n’t even discussed at all, that’s why. Instead, the article is full of platitudes from the worst partisan offender in the” charitable” get-out-the-vote industry, the Voter Participation Center (VPC ).
The now-classic” conservatives seize” or” Republicans pounce” framing is renowned for its tale arc, in which the response to a controversy is depicted as the center of a story ( but only if it makes a person or group on the left seem bad ).
In this case, the “pouncing” occurred in response to a tale by Andrew Kerr of The Washington Free Beacon. The VPC made it known that they had purchased “register to vote” ads on Facebook and Instagram that had been specifically filtered so that they would n’t be shown to users interested in topics and interests that are frequently associated with Republican voters. ” Excluded” topics included NASCAR, Duck Dynasty, Ted Nugent, modified Vehicles, and the PGA Tour. Shortly after, letters from numerous Republican senators asking about an investigation into the VPC were delivered.
Did USA Today mention these blatantly political campaign filters? Even though IRS regulations plainly state that charities may not support one group when they assist voters in voting registration, it is undoubtedly not.
The USA Today report does notice that Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N. Y., sent papers to the IRS, and also provides links to the papers, but does not offer a single expression from either. Instead, the article simply says the letters “focused on the campaign strategy that the volunteer used on Meta to pin voters, claiming it focused progressives”. The true “ad strategy” — the one that excluded possible GOP voters— was never discussed in any detail. The VPC was not asked to explain the frames, and none of them were mentioned in any way.
Otherwise, USA Today accepted at face value VPC’s arguments about its nonpartisanship. Quotes from Tom Lopach, VPC’s president and CEO, are strewn so densely throughout the article that his quoted words ( 136 in total ) outnumber Walter’s ( 105 ), despite the latter’s opinions ostensibly being the subject of the article. Instead of the clear proof that Walter, Rep. Tenney, and Sen. Cotton supplied about VPC’s politics, users are told just that” Lopach said little the Vote Participation Center does is partisan, and the business should not be viewed through a political lens”.
Also, if Lopach,” a longtime Democratic social operative”, says thus …
The number of different sources of proof that VPC has long served as the Democratic Party’s campaigning super-weapon are also not mentioned in the post. As far back as 2012, left-wing blogger Sasha Issenberg wrote of the VPC,” Even though the party was officially nonpartisan, for tax purposes, there was no secret that the purpose of all of its work was to make fresh vote for Liberals”. Additionally, this particular detail was left out of the article.
Reports surfaced in Vox in 2020 that the Democrat Super PAC Mind the Gap, which was led by Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother, was advising its donors to donate to VPC because it was” 4 to 10 times more cost-effective” when it came to “netting additional Democratic votes than the tactics that campaigns will invest in.” Even though the information was provided to the reporter, this particular aspect of the article was not mentioned.
VPC paid a consulting firm called Pivot Group nearly$ 13 million in 2022, and the company has since received roughly$ 55 million from VPC. On its website, Pivot Group says it’s” committed to electing Democrats up and down the ballot”. You guessed it, this and other sizable payments to equally partisan consulting firms were not mentioned in the article.
If at least some of this proof had been mentioned, readers of USA Today would have been much better informed. But, then again, if USA Today’s readers were better informed, they might no longer be readers of USA Today.
Parker Thayer works at Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C., as an investigative researcher.
