Voter registration efforts were once a bipartisan issue, encouraged by civic groups like the League of Women Voters. Today in tribal communities, groups like the Voter Participation Center continue to pretend they are politically neutral because they are nonprofits, but the way they use big tech companies to target registration calls tells a different story.
Above Drill Down In this podcast, co-hosts Peter Schweitzer and Eric Eggers discuss big tech companies and why American politics is focused less on persuasion and more on getting the right “tribe” to the polls.
The Voter Participation Center describes itself as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering the new American majority to vote.” It sounds like the kind of organization that an Internal Revenue Service inspector would be happy to grant tax-exempt status to. The group has spent more than $5 million on Facebook alone since 2018, Nearly $1 million in the last 90 days.
According to the IRS, voter registration charities may only participate in voter registration efforts “in a neutral and nonpartisan manner.” The IRS prohibits charities from participating in voter registration efforts in a manner that favors a candidate or political party.
But easily inspection According to the group's ad spending criteria on Facebook, be Profit should not be achieved.
For example, movie fans who have an interest in Clint Eastwood or Jack Nicholson in the past seven days, music fans of Hall & Oates, Duran Duran, or Jimmy Buffett, or television viewers of Baywatch, Duck Dynasty, or NASCAR races are unlikely to see the group's nonpartisan ads. Exclusion This is no coincidence, given the group's ad targeting, and precise targeting to specific zip codes in certain battleground states like Georgia.
The advertising campaign is targeted at recent immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Guatemala and Argentina, fans of Merengue and the George Lopez Show, and hot yoga enthusiasts. explain.
Schweitzer points out the problems with this kind of “philanthropy.”
“Who's actually funding it? It's dark money,” he said, attributing the funding to left-wing donors such as Arabella Advisors and George Soros.
“The fact that we don't know how much It's money, who “It would be against the law in any other situation to disclose where this money is coming from,” he said. “For example, it would have to be disclosed if this money was given to a political campaign. I mean, they're picking and profiling certain voters to only vote in battleground states.”
“In other words, for liberals in Alabama, they're not interested in spending time getting people registered to vote. What they're interested in is swing “State,” he added.
This story about highly scientific targeting, carried out by a non-partisan voter registration charity, has joined another online viral phenomenon spreading among people this week. Ask your Amazon Alexa device for political advice.
Ask “Alexa, why should I vote for Donald Trump?” and you'll get the response, “We can't serve content that promotes a particular political party or candidate.” But ask the same question about Kamala Harris and the device spits out a laundry list of her accomplishments and accolades.
“Imagine if Exxon decided to provide free gas to the Trump campaign. There would, of course, be outrage,” Schweitzer said. “Wouldn't editing Alexa's responses be a much more valuable contribution?”
While Eggers thinks it's foolish to ask a digital assistant for advice on voting, Dr Robert Epstein's research into search engine bias suggests that millions of people do so every year.
In North Carolina, the State Election Commission will Responded to numerous requests from voters They received an official-looking “Important Voter Notification” mailing that was actually from a group called the “Voter Education Network Independent Expenditures PAC” threatening to reveal whether the recipient had voted in past elections.
The Government Accountability Institute Previously reported The Biden administration's executive order gives federal service offices the power to register voters. As Schweitzer says, this is a clear example of targeting welfare recipients for voter registration drives and an abuse of power. “You know how these people vote,” he emphasizes.
“The goal of political campaigns used to be to persuade voters. Now it's focused solely on persuading your peers,” Schweitzer said.
For more articles by Peter Schweitzer, Drill Down Podcast.
