Virginia may be the most important swing state in 2012. According to The Richmond Times-Dispatch, Virginians complained to their State Board of Elections about a group called the Voter Participation Center. The group sent voter registration mailers to felons, animals, children, and dead people. Mitt Romney’s campaign asked Virginia to investigate the matter.
Judicial Watch, the public interest watchdog group, has recently discovered that the group in question has ties to some of the highest officials in the political left’s establishment.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told Breitbart News this “very troubling” case is yet another example of radicals working in cahoots with the Obama administration to the point where distinctions are tough to draw.
“The Story of the Obama administration is that radical activists have taken over and essentially become the establishment,” Fitton said.
A Judicial Watch investigation found that the Voter Participation Center (VPC) is a Washington, D.C. nonpartisan group that was initially called “Women’s Voices, Women Vote.” WVWV was created in 2004 and top Democrats, such as John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and one of the founders of the liberal think tank, Center for American Progress, were on its board of directors. The group changed its name in 2011 and registered with the IRS as a non-profit and non-partisan group under its current name, the VPC. Many of ACORN’s branches changed names after James O’Keefe and the late Andrew Breitbart put them out of business. The group, though, is run by Amy Young, a top-level operative on the left who has worked with the SEIU and the AFL-CIO.
Fitton said Judicial Watch would continue to investigate the situation to “find out how widespread the problem is.” Fitton conceded the damage may already have been done in Virginia because the group sent out over 200,000 third-party registration forms and has registered over 15,000 voters as of July 18. He called the mailings and subsequent registration of voters a case of “garbage in, garbage out” and said more investigations need to be conducted to figure out where ultimately the information of many of these private citizens are going.
Those returning VPC forms most likely do not know their information is being routed to post office boxes and winding up in the hands of officials from left-wing organizations such as MoveOn.org.
The VPC’s website says the group will target the “Rising American Electorate,” which they say consists of “the unmarried women, people of color, and 18- to 29-year-olds who make up 53 percent of the people in our country eligible to vote.” These are liberal constituencies, and and Judicial Watch has discovered similar “political organizing” activities taking place in key swing states such as New Mexico, Florida and Wisconsin.
Though Fitton said the VPC’s actions represent a broader patten on the left of trying to tip the scales in elections, he said support of Voter ID laws is a nonpartisan issue because it ensures the integrity of elections and polls have shown bipartisan support for the laws.
Fitton said organizations like VPC, ACORN, and Project Vote can run amok because they know they will not be held to account by a Justice Department that more than often enables their activities.
“These groups are working with the Justice Department hand in glove,” Fitton said. “The DOJ is in their back pocket.”
Fitton said the “grassroots” on the right care deeply about voter fraud and that helps puts pressure on Democrats. But Fitton said radical liberal politicians can use these groups as front groups because they know their side runs the Justice Department.
“It’s like having the mafia advise the FBI,” Fitton said.
That is why it is incumbent upon organizations like Judicial Watch to conduct the investigations liberals in the government and the mainstream media will not do and continue to monitor how seemingly-benign organizations on the left evolve.