The Voter Participation Center - Controversy

Controversy

In June and July 2012, it was reported that the organization had sent out a number of voter registration forms to non-citizens, deceased people and pets as part of a campaign to increase voter participation among groups it says are underrepresented, including unmarried women, blacks, Latinos and young adults. Page Gardner, VPC president, fielded a teleconference call with reporters recently because such a mailing was sent to a dog, Mozart, in Virginia. This occurred because this dog got on a magazine subscription list earlier.“Mozart won't be registering and won't vote,” Gardner said. Virginia state representative Alfonso H. Lopez also defended VPC in an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, writing, "Any large-scale effort to reach millions of Americans is guaranteed to include some clerical errors and inaccuracies. However, focusing on these harmless errors to attack the efforts of the Voter Participation Center to bring more Americans into our democratic process does the organization an injustice." Cases of this were reported in Florida, New Mexico, Virginia, Washington, and other states. A representative said that the organization expected people who were already registered or who received forms in error to simply throw the erroneous forms away. Officials in at least one state said they feared that ineligible persons could be added to the voter rolls as a result. In response, VPC representatives cited a study from the Brennan Center for Justice, which suggested that cases of "voter fraud" are very rare and critics are overstating concerns.