The Left Wants Dead People and Dogs to Vote. Missouri Is Fighting Back.

Left-wing activist groups are fighting to block a Missouri law that would prevent them from mass registering voters.

On October 21, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey posted on X: “NEW: Today, we delivered closing arguments at trial to secure Missouri’s elections . . . . We also put on evidence exposing people registering DOGS to vote. Not on our watch.”

The Missouri Voter Protection Coalition (MOVPC), Advancement Project, the ACLU of Missouri, the Missouri NAACP State Conference, and the League of Women Voters (LWV) of Missouri have tied up Missouri election integrity law HB 1878 in litigation for over two years, hoping to have it declared unconstitutional.

(RELATED: Radical Leftist League of Women Voters Fakes Nonpartisanship)

Jason Lewis, general counsel in the Missouri A.G.’s Office, stated in a September 6 podcast interview that the law seeks to correct a situation in Missouri where third-party groups registered non-existent individuals, dead people, and—in at least one case—a dog to vote.

The law signed by Gov. Mike Parson (R) on June 29, 2022 stipulates that only volunteers registered to vote in Missouri may solicit voter registration. Those volunteers must register with the Secretary of State’s Office if they solicit more than 10 applications. It also stipulates: “No individual, group, or party shall solicit a voter into obtaining an absentee ballot application” and that “absentee ballot applications shall not have any information pre-filled prior to being provided to a voter.”

The LWV of Missouri and the Missouri NAACP sued for a preliminary injunction against these measures, arguing that they violate free speech, free association and due process

But the law doesn’t ban people from registering or soliciting people to register to vote, even in a partisan manner. They just have to be registered Missouri voters, and they can’t be paid, which reduces the incentive for groups to abuse the tax code.

Lewis noted that the Missouri legislature based the law on reform recommendations from the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission to fix problems the state faced since the ACORN was active in the state—referring to the leftist network that shut down in 2010 after accusations of voter fraud and other illegalities. 

He said ACORN activists—like paid voter registration solicitors vexing Missouri today—created confusion and extra work for understaffed election offices. Although election officials often catch registration errors, the sheer number of illegal registrations caused by these third-party groups allows many to slip through the cracks. 

Restoration News recently reported the nonpartisan election integrity organization Fight Voter Fraud found nearly 300,000 double-registered voters in numerous states between 2016 and 2022, including thousands who were registered in up to four states and double-voted up to four times.

Cole County Circuit Court Judge Jon Beetem, however, sided with the plaintiffs, on November 4, 2022, claiming the state showed insufficient evidence of voter fraud in Missouri or that outside nonprofits were likelier to engage in it.

Lewis argued that groups arguing that there’s no evidence of voter fraud use narrow definitions, often limiting it to conviction cases, which are rare. Because voter fraud is hard to prove, he said the state is trying to craft laws that make it less possible. 

He said that in the weeklong bench trial, which occurred from Aug. 19–23, 2024, his office presented samples of the most egregious voter registration errors uncovered, mostly from Jackson County and Cape Girardeau. 

This included instances of solicitors keeping the registration cards in their cars and turning them in late or never turning them in at all. This disenfranchises voters who believe they registered until they try to vote. Lewis mentioned it also opens the door to hired scammers who can use peoples’ personal information for their employer’s mailing lists.

He said third parties often mail voter registration cards by simply looking through the phonebook or online registries, not knowing if the people lived still there. As a result, residents receive voter registration forms with their deceased spouse’s information pre-filled. 

In one case, the Jackson County Board of Directors received a voter registration form for “Maisy” with a last name. It contained a note, stating the pre-filled information was wrong for two reasons—Maisy was dead, and she was the family’s dog.

Besides being dead, Maisy wouldn’t have broken any glass ceiling if the guilty third party had registered her. In 2000, St. Louis discovered someone registered a 13-year-old Springer Spaniel named Ritzy Meckler by mail. Ritzy never cast a vote, and no one was ever prosecuted, which, according to liberals, shows a lack of evidence for the need of photo ID or—according to Judge Beetem—HB 1878.

(RELATED: Inside Democrats’ Best-Kept Secret—Mass Nonprofit Voter Registration)

Charity Means Getting Out the Vote?

Targeted voter registration as a means of political activism is big business in the leftist nonprofit world. Since 2011, nonprofits funded by mostly Democratic mega donors have issued 60,000 grants for things like “voter education,” “voter registration,” and “civic participation” to 15,000 organizations, totaling nearly $6 billion.

The IRS bars 501(c)(3) nonprofits from registering voters in a way that would have the effect of favoring one political party or candidate over another. The Left, however, shamelessly targets likely Democratic voters using tax-deductible donations—something right-leaning organizations refuse to risk.

After fighting fair and losing the 2004 presidential election, leftist donors concocted a new strategy to win the White House. This included building a nonprofit infrastructure to funnel “charitable” donations into GOTV efforts. 

In 2005, the Proteus Fund, a leftist donor-advised fund (DAF) provider, created the “Voter Engagement Evaluation Project” to convince donors to fund voter registration efforts as a form of activism. The project produced a 2006 report acknowledging donor reluctance to contribute this way because of the perceived illegalities. But the report spun it as charity because it would empower “disenfranchised communities.” It also recommended using paid voter registration canvassers rather than unmotivated, unreliable volunteers.

Also in 2006, Denise Lieberman, MOVPC’s General Counsel, began serving as national director of Power and Democracy for Advancement Project, which focuses on mobilizing “communities of color” to vote and claims voter integrity measures are “efforts of white supremacy to entrench itself.” Advancement Project received a donation from the Proteus Fund during the 2016 election.

It’s easy to forget that Colorado—today a reliably blue state—was a Republican-leaning swing state not that long ago. The Funders Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP), a prominent leftist DAF, aggressively coordinated its affiliates to fund voter registration and GOTV efforts in Colorado, despite its members being legally barred from intervening in elections.

Those who lived in Democratic-majority areas during the 2020 census may remember the aggressive media and signage campaigns there, encouraging census participation. As early as 2013, FCCP promoted a get-out-the-count campaign for the 2020 census in blue states to limit the Congressional representation they would bleed as voters flee to more productive red states.

In its infamous tell-all about the “fortifying” of the 2020 election, Time credited the Voter Participation Center (VPC) for mailing ballot applications to 15 million people in “key states,” prompting 4.6 million to return them.

Writing about VPC in 2012, liberal journalist Sasha Issenberg admitted in his book The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, “Even though the group was officially nonpartisan, for tax purposes, there was no secret that the goal of all its efforts was to generate new votes for Democrats.”

Crypto felon Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother, Barbara Fried, praised VPC for its “efficacy” in a memo she co-authored to donors of the left-wing super PAC Mind the Gap that she co-founded. The memo advised “nonpartisan voter registration” by charities was “2 to 5 times more cost-effective at netting additional Democratic votes than the tactics that campaigns will invest in” and shamelessly suggested treating it as tax-deductible charity would make it “4 to 10 times more cost-effective.”

In 2015, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager and former VPC board member John Podesta requested a “nonpartisan” voter registration plan to help Democrats win the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020. He ultimately chose Emily’s List president Stephanie Schriock’s $106 million “Everybody Votes” plan. 

Fried’s memo promised to split 90 percent of Mind the Gap’s donations among “Everybody Votes,” VPC, and the Center for Voter Information.

The Voter Registration Project (VRP), a 501(c)(3) former ACORN affiliate, ultimately raised a tax-deductible $193 million from Democratic mega donors for the “Everybody Votes” plan. It funded and trained over 50 local community groups across the country that carried out the registration work, using Democrat-aligned microtargeting firms to canvas traditional Democrat-leaning neighborhoods and demographics such as Latinos, blacks, unmarried women, and young people. In 2022, VRP bragged of registering 5.1 million voters, of whom 76 percent were “people of color,” 56 percent women, and 47 percent under 35 years of age. Capital Research Center estimates this generated between 1 and 2.7 million swing-state votes for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.”

Abusing the country’s charity laws has become a honeypot for the left. It’s no wonder groups like LWV, Advancement Project, and MOVPC are fighting so hard in Missouri to preserve the tactic.

Leftist nonprofits skirt the law by soliciting voter registration in a partisan manner. Intentionally or not, this sometimes leads to disenfranchisement, double registrations, registering dead people, or, as in Missouri, registering a dog. Leftist litigation delayed HB 1878’s implementation until after the election. But the law serves as a model for ending plausible deniability for voter registration solicitors, paid for by billionaires’ “charity” schemes to increase Democratic votes.

(RELATED: Leftists Want Partisan Groups to Run our Elections)