“Ballot” mailed to Marylanders is illegal, AG’s office says

BALTIMORE. Some Marylanders have expressed concern that they’ve recently been receiving letters showing their neighbors’ voting records and their own voting history.

They say it’s voter intimidation, and Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown agrees.

It orders the nonprofit Voter Information Center/Vector Participation Center (CVI/VPC) to stop sending the letters, calling them illegal under state and federal law. Brown’s office announced last night that they had sent a cease and desist letter to the D.C.-based organization.

The letters are labeled “Voting Roll” and include the following comments: “We will review these records after the election to determine if you have joined our neighbors in voting.”

Brown is ordering the organization to “immediately stop sending letters to Maryland voters that threaten to publicly expose those registered voters who did not vote in this year’s election, to refrain from sending threatening messages in the future, and to agree not to follow through on the threats.” to embarrass non-voters by publishing this information to their neighbors.”

Dorothy O’Bannon, president of the Langston Hughes Community Association in Northwest Baltimore, was outraged by the correspondence.

She said the voting history information in her newsletter was not even true. She said many young people follow her and she doesn’t want them to be banned from voting if they see – mistakenly – a letter saying their neighbors are not voting.

O’Bannon, who noted that she is 60 years old and has voted since she was 18, called herself a “super voter” and said that voting is extremely important to her.

It’s part of privacy. It’s nobody’s business whether I voted or not… I cussed and cussed on social media because my vote is more important than my money.

The attorney general said sending a copy of a voter registration list with voter turnout history is legal, but state law prohibits actions aimed at “influencing or attempting to influence the decision of a voter” to go to the polls to vote or vote by other lawful means “by use of force, fraud, threats, threats, intimidation, bribery, rewards or offers of rewards”.

An attorney for the Voter Information Center/Center for Election Participation said in a response to Brown that there was nothing illegal about the mailings, which used “very standard messages (vote) using typical ‘social pressure’ language…

Attorney Scott Thomas also wrote:

More troubling than these attempts to stifle GOTV’s constitutionally protected activities is the use of quoted statements that did not come from VPC or CVI mail or text messages. Neither VPC nor CVI has sent text messages in Maryland or elsewhere during this general election season. It is reckless and disrespectful to baselessly claim that the VCC or CVI sent mail or text messages saying “go to the polls to vote”. or vote in any other way” and “We will share a post-election report with those who did not vote.”