The Voter Participation Center finds itself in the middle of a voter fraud controversy after mailing voter participation documents to ineligible voters .
The voter registration form arrived in the mail last month with some key information already filled in: Rosie Charlston's name was complete, as was her Seattle address.
Problem is, Rosie was a black lab who died in 1998.
A group called the Voter Participation Center has touted the distribution of some 5 million registration forms in recent weeks, targeting Democratic-leaning voting blocs such as unmarried women, blacks, Latinos and young adults.
But residents and election administrators around the country also have reported a series of bizarre and questionable mailings addressed to animals, dead people, noncitizens and people already registered to vote.
Brenda Charlston wasn't the only person to get documents for her pet: A Virginia man said similar documents arrived for his dead dog, Mozart, while a woman in the state got forms for her cat, Scampers.
The Voter Participation Group responded :
The Voter Participation Center works with a vendor that has access to multiple commercial databases that could include people who subscribe to magazines or junk mail using names of their pet, said Page Gardner, the group's president. She said the nonprofit tries its best to target only eligible and unregistered voters but that some other names inevitably get on the final list.
"Is it a perfect process? No," Gardner said. Ultimately, she said they rely on the integrity of people and the security of the system and notes that the same forms are available to anyone at county offices or on the Internet.
How many cats, canines, and dead people will find their way onto voter rolls as a result of these mailings? Only time will tell. Regardless, Team Obama has to be excited about the prospect of new voters who haven’t been paying attention for the past three and a half years entering the system.
This post was authored by Townhall.com editorial intern Kyle Bonnell.