Elections Bureaucrats Ran Amok
In a blatantly partisan move, the staff of the North Carolina
State Board of Elections (SBE) successfully subverted state law to
facilitate online voter registration in North Carolina by the 2012
Barack Obama campaign. In doing so they coordinated with partisans
behind closed doors, lied about the NC Attorney General’s Office
concurring with the SBE staff on the issue, and dodged oversight by
their own board and the legislature. The end result was to add thousands
of people to the North Carolina voter rolls illegally.
The SBE staff’s audacity is so breath-taking that it’s hard to
believe, so let us emphasize: The Civitas Institute has documented how
SBE bureaucrats conspired with a private company, working for the Obama
campaign
[i],
to facilitate a form of online voter registration for the 2012 General
Election – in violation of state law. It’s a classic example of how
bureaucrats ignore the democratic process and hijack an agency for
partisan purposes.
Breaking the Law
Civitas initiated a series of public records requests to uncover this
scheme concerning online registration in defiance of state law.
NCGS 163-82.6(b) clearly states that the only form where an
electronically captured signature can be used is one offered by a state
agency:
NCGS 163-82.6 (b) Signature – The form shall be valid
only if signed by the applicant. An electronically captured image of the
signature of a voter on an electronic voter registration form offered by a State agency
shall be considered a valid signature for all purposes for which a
signature on a paper voter registration form is used. [Emphasis added]
The major use for this is for voter registration when people get their drivers licenses.
Yet the SBE staff set in motion a scheme that in the last two months
of the election resulted in more than 11,000 people being allowed to
register online. Civitas has confirmed this by a public records request
to all 100 counties and is still compiling the total number of
registrations as counties comply with the request. Thus far, 68 percent
of the registrations we have received were Democratic voters, 10 percent
were Republican voters and 21 percent from unaffiliated voters.
Don Wright, SBE General Counsel, played word games when answering
inquires about the Obama campaign’s own re-election site
Gottaregister.com, which utilized the technology that SBE staff
approved. Wright repeatedly denied that the SBE allowed online voter
registration, insisting that it was “web-based voter registration”
[ii] instead, as if there could be a “web-based” process that wasn’t online.
The technology from Allpoint Voter Services uses remote-control pens to transmit “signatures” over the Internet, according to
techpresident.com[iii].
After entering voter information in an online form, the citizen “signs”
it with a stylus or a finger. The Allpoint technology records the
signature and then transmits it to one of two autopens – one in
California, the other in Nevada
[iv].
One of the pens transcribes the signature on to a paper voter
registration form. Allpoint then mails the documents to local election
boards – or is supposed to, a point we’ll come back to.
To say this is not “online” registration but “web-based” is like
saying a certain vehicle is not a car, it’s an automobile. The point of
having a “wet signature” – one in ink – is to provide a universally
accepted way proving that a prospective voter is affirming in person all
the facts on the form. To have an auto pen inserted at one point in
this long computerized process is a far different thing. Even the Obama
campaign called it online voter registration. Because, no matter how you
twist words around, that’s what it is.
North Carolina law does not authorize any kind of online voter
registration, however “wet” or “web-based” it might be. Neither the term
“wet signatures” nor the phrase “reduced to paper” appear in the NC
General Statutes. The term “wet signature
[v]”
was put in use in the context of elections by Allpoint Voter Services
promoting the product it was providing to the Obama campaign. “Wet
signature” is a term that Wright returns to often, even in the legal
opinion he authored to support the staff decision.
Following the Paper Trail
Click the image above for a larger version.
The scheme appears to go back at least three years, beginning with
cautious probes into the topic. The oldest document found pertaining to
online voter registration was uncovered in a previous, unrelated Civitas
records request to the SBE. It is a letter to Attorney General Roy
Cooper
[vi] from Gary Bartlett, Executive Director of the SBE, dated
September 11, 2009,
formally requesting an advisory opinion of the “effect NCGS 66-311
Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) upon possible electronic
voter registration.” That in itself is a bit odd, as UETA is the state
law governing commercial transactions in general, and is in a totally
different section of the state’s legal code from the election laws.
Bartlett asked specifically whether UETA would make it permissible for a
county board of elections to accept an electronically submitted voter
registration application that has been electronically signed. Bartlett
also asked the AG if voter registration is outside the scope of UETA.
Since we did not have a reply to Bartlett’s request, we submitted a
records request on January 16, 2013, to the Attorney General’s Office.
In answer to our request, Special Deputy Attorney General Susan Nichols
informed Civitas that Bartlett orally withdrew the written request in
question before a response was prepared.
The next documents
[vii] in the timeline can be attributed to the Attorney General’s Office also. Nichols forwarded to Civitas a string of emails dated
April 12 – 13, 2010.
The emails were a conversation between Nichols and David Becker,
Director of Election Initiatives for the Pew Center on the States.
Nichols, on behalf of Gary Bartlett, was seeking contact with other
states that had adopted UETA. Bartlett wanted to know if the other
states chose to also adopt new legislation to facilitate electronic
voter registration. Yet why would Bartlett need the AG’s Office to be
the go-between? Did he want to keep his profile low?
This inquiry into UETA also appeared to die after an email from
Becker to Ms. Nichols. He included a list of states that had passed some
form of online voter registration: Arizona, California, Colorado,
Kansas, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
We could surmise from these two tentative inquiries that the SBE was
hoping UETA would supersede NCGS 163-82.6, the only North Carolina
election statute that speaks to the use of electronic voter
registrations. We might also suspect that the conversation stopped
abruptly with both these inquiries because the SBE could not risk a
written decision that would prevent it from forging ahead with its
online voter registration scheme.
Party Politics
The SBE staff’s following move shows their deep collaboration with
Obama allies. The next document pertaining to online voter registration
was dated more than a year later, on
August 23, 2011. Gary Bartlett was forwarded an email from Veronica Degraffenreid
[viii],
SBE Elections Liaison, with the link to consulting firm Catapult
Strategies, specifically the page that introduces Jude Barry. Barry is
Catapult’s CEO and co-founder and is co-founder of Verafirma and
Allpoint Strategies.
Jude Barry’s political credentials would be considered stellar in
Democratic/liberal circles. According to the Catapult site; “In December
2006, he created the Obama for America Draft Committee, the first
political committee to raise thousands of dollars online to encourage
then-Senator Obama to run for the Presidency.” The Catapult website
elaborates on Barry’s political accomplishments
[ix]
by noting that he began his career in politics as Senator Edward
Kennedy’s press aide and later deputy political director. He also worked
on presidential bids by liberal Democrats Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt
and Howard Dean.
The next day,
August 24, 2011, Peter Allen, Lead Organizer for Verafirma, contacted Gary Bartlett by email
[x] in reference to a phone call he had with the SBE staff. Note that Allen is also an Associate on the Catapult Strategies team.
Catapult Strategies, Inc. describes itself as “a Silicon Valley-based
social media, public relations, and political consulting firm with
strong ties to and extensive knowledge of Silicon Valley business and
political communities.” Verafirma is a technology company whose
projects include the use of electronic signatures for politics. The firm
is featured on Catapult Strategies’ website as a “related company.”
On the Catapult site, Allen’s bio refers
[xi]
to Democratic connections too, “Peter has dedicated the past few years
developing a rich understanding of online social media tools and how
they can be used to empower and mobilize people on behalf of a candidate
or cause. He saw this potential come to fruition as an organizer on
Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential campaign ….” Allen was on the
Obama campaign’s payroll in May 2008.
It is important to note that in a
September 26, 2012 email to Civitas
[xii],
Don Wright insisted that the SBE had not been contacted by any
campaign, candidate, legislator, or political party. That looks like
another word game. Catapult Strategies could easily pass for the
outreach and new media wings of the Obama Campaign.
There’s a money trail too: from
October 2, 2012 to
October 24, 2012,
according to Federal Elections Commission data, there were 12 separate
payments from the Obama campaign to Allpoint Voter Services, Inc. (See
table below.)
Moreover, the number of payments raises another question. That is,
there isn’t a single fee or two, but a series of fees of varying sizes
as Allpoint collected signatures. Was the Obama campaign paying Allpoint
Voter Services for each registration collected? Doing so would be a
violation of NCGS 163‑82.6 (a) (2), which states “To sell or attempt to
sell a completed voter registration form or to condition its delivery
upon payment” is a class 2 misdemeanor.
SBE attorney Don Wright, in response to inquiries as to whether there
was any discussion with Allpoint Voter Services in reference to
payments for registrations, said that he had no direct contact with the
company but Gary Bartlett, Veronica Degraffenreid and Marc Burris were
the staff members who talked directly with the company. According to
Wright, the company was never asked if they were being paid for each
registration delivered.
We do know that not all forms completed on the site were accepted.
Some users were told to print and mail the form on their own. This shows
that they were not intending to serve all citizens, but only ones that
met a preselected criterion.
After a few short emails over a matter of a few days, but without
ever having talked to the company himself, Wright produced a legal
opinion approving the Allpoint Voter Services voter registration
technology in North Carolina. His opinion dated
September 16, 2011 [xiii]
claimed it was reviewed by the North Carolina Attorney’s General
Office, which concurred in it. That statement is untrue (as you will see
later), but since this appears to be an internal SBE staff document it
went unchallenged at the time.
On
September 19, 2011, Bartlett forwarded Wright’s
opinion to Peter Allen. The same day, Allen emailed back and asked for
the point person they will be working with to make the SBE’s part “as
painless as possible.” Bartlett responded that Degraffenreid and Burris
would be the points of contact going forward.
[xiv]
Election Year Revelations
A year went by without evidence of discussion about the new voter
registration technology, however. No documents for the period from
September 19, 2011 to September 11, 2012
were turned over as part of our public records request, almost a year
of silence on this by the SBE staff. This silence was broken with less
than two months to go before the General Election.
Betsy Meads, a former Pasquotank County BOE member, was the first
person to ask about the online voter registration process. It was a
happenstance that her son ran across the gottaregister.com website. The
next day,
September 11, 2012, Betsy Meads sent an email
[xv]
questioning Don Wright as to the legality of the President’s online
voter registration site. She wrote, “This is contrary to the Statute as
I read it, and as I was just in Chapel Hill at training for local board
members August 14
th, I’m sure I didn’t hear anything about
electronic registrations in NC being allowed.” The SBE held the Annual
Training for Elections Officials on
August 13-14, 2012.
[xvi]
On
September 13, 2012, Wright delivered an answer to
Meads – which was also the answer he gave later to Civitas and one
other person who would ask the question about registering to vote online
in North Carolina: “There is no online voter registration
[xvii] allowed in North Carolina ….” He also forwarded Ms. Meads the legal opinion he had written in
2011 which stated that the North Carolina Attorney’s General Office had concurred in it.
As previously referenced, the statement that the AG’s office had
concurred is false. In an email I received from the Attorney General’s
office, dated
September 18, 2012, Susan Nichols informed Don Wright that she did
not concur
[xviii]
in that decision. In fact, before she had taken her post with the AG,
the AG’s office ended the procedure of allowing attorneys to state they
concur in an opinion they did not author.
By the time Wright received Nichols’ email, revelations about the online registrations were breaking into the open.
In what appeared to be a move to head off any problems at the local level, on
September 18, 2012
the SBE notified the 100 counties to expect a new kind of voter
registration. Veronica Degraffenreid sent the email to the County
Directors
[xix],
explaining, describing and defending the new registrations. This email
explanation went out just over a month after the SBE had election
representatives from across the state at a training session in Chapel
Hill – at which they never mentioned this new kind of registration.
Her email went out a day after Gary Bartlett received an email from
George Gilbert, Guilford County BOE Director, reporting that they had
received “a good number of registration forms from Allpoint Voter
Services.” Gilbert went on to say they contained signatures that were
“immediately suspect.
[xx]”
The timing of the responses to Meads and to the counties raises the
question of when, if ever, the state SBE would have brought the online
registrations to the notice of the counties. Were SBE bureaucrats hoping
no one would bring up the online registrations until after all the
votes were certified?
Subsequently other counties questioned these forms and offered some
observations about problems with them. For example, the Duplin County
BOE Director said, “The part we find the most questionable is the
similarity of all the signatures ….” Rockingham County wrote, “The forms
have info typed in and the signatures all resemble each other and it
appears the envelope was addressed with the same marking pen.”
Rockingham County also noted one signature did not match the voter’s
registration with the DMV.
There are many problems and questions about the decision that the SBE
bureaucrats’ made in relation to registering to vote online. For
instance, Betsy Meads used gottaregister.com to change her party
affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated. Once she “signed” her
iPhone, she was informed that her registration would be forwarded to her
local BOE. That didn’t happen: 36 hours later she received an email
with a link to her registration. She was told to print the form, sign
it and then mail it to the SBE. Did the Obama Campaign prioritize
registrations? Did they send some registrations directly to the
elections board and decide that others could be sent to the voters?
Perhaps most disturbing, the SBE staff apparently tried to keep this
all from the view of the public and even county elections boards until
mere weeks before the election, which raises the disturbing question of
whether those involved were aiding a last-minute registration surge
planned by the Obama campaign.
This is not an isolated incident
[xxi],
but just one more example of how the SBE staff flouts the law, the
legislature and their own board in order to further a partisan agenda.
All North Carolina citizens should be aware of the importance of
reforming the SBE so that it carries on its duties in a transparent
manner, with full regard for the democratic process and in a way that
instills trust in the North Carolina election system.
| cand_nm |
recipient_nm |
disb_amt |
disb_dt |
recipient_city |
disb_desc |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$5,932.50
|
10/2/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$4,886.00
|
10/2/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$7,091.00
|
10/5/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$10,076.50
|
10/5/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$10,591.00
|
10/10/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$7,840.00
|
10/12/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$9,355.50
|
10/15/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$9,345.00
|
10/18/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$11,725.00
|
10/18/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$15,512.00
|
10/18/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$1,568.00
|
10/22/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
| Obama, Barack |
ALLPOINT VOTER SERVICES, INC. |
$973.00
|
10/24/12
|
OAKLAND |
COMPUTER SOFTWARE |
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I don’t understand why you say I didn’t name a source for the polls I quote. Before my first qt. from the polls, I write that I’m quoting “the documents Blueprint admits sending to the state’s left-wing network. One is a fancy (and expensive) ‘Key Messaging Points’ presentation prepared by a national polling firm.” Earlier, I gave a link to those documents — it’s http://www.wral.com/asset/news/state/nccapitol/2013/02/21/12136671/packet1.pdf
Second, you don’t seem to understand that House Democratic Leader Larry Hall did not “quote” a paragraph from the pollsters’ messaging memo; he plagiarized it, speaking the very words the pollsters had secretly urged the Left to use to maximize the chances their policies would be adopted.
Third, you say that I am “niave” (sic) to think even one (c)(3) exists that is “not partisan,” and that “being partisan is not the same thing as operating illegally.” Both claims are incorrect. Plenty of nonprofits simply don’t go near anything partisan or even politically ideological. And it most certainly is illegal to operate a (c)(3) as a partisan organization, as anyone in the sector should know, and as I quote from the IRS website. Such legal prohibitions explain why even Blueprint North Carolina takes the vow of nonpartisanship on its website that I quoted (however dubious their claim may be).
As for the broader point you seem to want to make, i.e., that nonprofits “working on social change” are likely to lean to a left or right ideology, that’s true, but it doesn’t change the fact that a (c)(3) public charity, and the donors who receive tax deductions for their support of it, should not violate the law’s limits on how such a group may translate its left or right ideology into political partisanship.
And it seems niave that the author would think there are c3 nonprofits out there who are not partisan or that partisanship per se is taboo among nonprofits. How can one not be partial to a left or right ideology when working on social change? Being partisan is not the same as operating illegally. Or even unethically, unless you vow to be nonpartisan.