[{"_1":2,"_88":-5,"_89":-5},"loaderData",{"_3":4,"_26":27},"root",{"_5":6,"_17":10,"_18":19,"_20":21,"_22":10,"_23":-5,"_24":-5,"_25":10},"user",{"_7":8,"_9":10,"_11":10,"_12":-5,"_13":-5,"_14":15,"_16":-5},"roles",[],"isAuthenticated",false,"isPremium","planName","subscriptionStatus","featureFlags",{},"insightsBudget","isDevelopmentHost","userPreferences",{},"recaptchaSiteKey","6LcvOJcUAAAAAHsB-gPGfGktcRlKpH7OTIU_dMTD","isImpersonating","impersonation","affiliateStatus","isFreedomPortal","routes/v2/article/layout",{"_28":29,"_30":31},"notFound",true,"relatedArticles",[32,76],{"_33":34,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":40,"_41":42,"_43":44,"_45":46,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":52,"_53":54,"_55":56,"_57":58,"_59":60,"_61":62,"_63":64,"_65":66,"_67":68,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":74,"_75":74},"mediaId",6103918,"mediaKeyId","2792730-fa5925fb18ce1d62afeddf2d719a45a9","parentId",2792730,"title","Researcher tells committee that large nonprofit voter‑registration networks have partisan ties and big payments to political firms","audioSeconds",885,"startMs",2865000,"endMs",3750000,"viewUrl","/Search/View?dp=1&key=2792730-fa5925fb18ce1d62afeddf2d719a45a9&start=2865&end=3750","thumbnailUrl","https://assets.pipeline.soar.com/2792730-fa5925fb18ce1d62afeddf2d719a45a9/thumbnail_2865000.jpg","articleUrl","/articles/6103918/Michigan/Researcher-tells-committee-that-large-nonprofit-voterregistration-networks-have-partisan-ties-and-big-payments-to-political-firms","mediaUrl","https://secure.pipeline.soar.com/6103918-b92685d97fb837345e3aeb91e398445e/orig.mp4?Expires=1770997891&Signature=eL3E5rVIxGvTD9ki8i3qk3KNlDQr4ogWOhU3C9oWbUni7vTb8uqhYtHYGJswWxn6yYlmMLZQV5KlYKpsA842WwYnhSh-Alj9SG7Qylpi7P8W9wawIMiYZxm5I2kPN6BkevCq2ifxqYAggVnxrgS7s2Tt4Svw1Y~4T0ZHInXk0QZDL8c9N-e7LjRxGZB35430-w9RGE3~u~1XgIUqxTMjXZ6eOR-MA0aIaeN5CBfIyKv7cidm8k5sWli1d-hMiGNyo97CEREcvFDJ71cum5mTALyT0OZJuHS5-3cqvbSZXqUKfF2mc92F9aPXH0wG6AM0PwFj~DTEg0Jax2Flk7LDXw__&Key-Pair-Id=KUT5TJCACFTXG","author","House Election Integrity Committee","date","2025-03-18T00:00:00Z","article","The House Election Integrity Committee also heard testimony from Parker Thayer, a researcher with the Capital Research Center, who presented research alleging that a national industry of nonprofit voter-registration groups has substantial partisan links and large monetary flows to political consulting firms.

Thayer told the committee he studies the “nonprofit voter registration industry” and presented industry‑level estimates and specific case studies. He said published estimates put the national ecosystem that self-identifies as voter registration and education at roughly $760 million in 2022; based on his research he said the full national total could be closer to $1 billion.

Thayer outlined a history and network of organizations he described as central to large-scale voter-registration efforts. He said the Voter Registration Project (VRP), the Everybody Votes campaign and the Voter Participation Center (VPC) together form a network that in 2023 raised tens of millions of dollars and contracted substantial work to commercial canvassing and consulting firms. Thayer cited a 2020 IRS Form 990 in which the Voter Registration Project reported paying GBI Strategies about $2.5 million for voter-registration consulting.

Thayer summarized portions of internal planning documents and emails he said show political intent behind early plans that later were rephrased to fit 501(c)(3) descriptions. He described internal drafts and tracked changes that, he said, convert language about changing election outcomes into language about “participation” or “competitiveness.” He also cited a leaked memo from a Democrat-aligned fundraising vehicle that he said urged donors to channel funds to Everybody Votes and VPC because those organizations were effective at generating net Democratic votes.

Using public filings and reporting, Thayer identified specific financial flows in Michigan: he said the Michigan Center for Election Law and Administration reported receiving about $12 million in 2020 from the Center for Election Innovation and Research (a grantmaker funded in part by Mark Zuckerberg) and that most of that money, he said, was paid to firms he described as Democratic political consultants (he named Waterfront Strategies and Alper Strategies as vendors in those filings). He presented those payments as an example of how nonprofit voter‑registration funds were routed to partisan firms.

Thayer also referenced other investigations and enforcement actions in other states: he noted local inquiries into suspicious registration forms tied to GBI Strategies in Muskegon in 2020 and ongoing reporting on registration irregularities in several counties tied to Everybody Votes–funded contractors; and he cited a January administrative fine assessing $300,000 against the New Georgia Project for partisan electioneering in Georgia.

In committee questions, Representative Song asked whether Thayer’s proposal to bar all charitable organizations from doing voter-registration work would harm voter participation. Thayer replied that political parties, PACs and private actors can conduct registration work and that his concern was the fungibility of funds and apparent partisan practice among some taxpayer-subsidized charities; he said private and political actors have sufficient incentives to register voters without 501(c)(3) tax-subsidized activity.

Representative Fox and others asked whether the Everybody Votes network’s claim of registering 7,000,000 voters over its lifetime indicates fraud; Thayer said he had no direct evidence that every claimed registration was fraudulent but said the scale and the payments merit closer scrutiny and that some contractors have been the subject of local investigations. Thayer offered to provide documentation to the committee and told members he would respond to written questions.

The committee did not vote on legislative changes at this hearing. Thayer urged lawmakers to consider tighter restrictions or greater enforcement of existing IRS/charitable-sector rules and to require greater transparency about nonprofit funding and vendor contracts that support voter-registration activity.","mediaType","Video","parentTitle","House Election Integrity Committee Tuesday, March 18, 2025","oneSentenceSummary","The House committee heard from Parker Thayer, a researcher with the Capital Research Center, who said nonprofit voter-registration networks have large funding flows and pay substantial sums to political consulting firms, and that those arrangements should be examined to ensure compliance with 501(c)(3) rules.","taxTitle","Elections, House of Representative, Committees\t\t\t\t\t, Legislative, Michigan","taxId",27387,"location","Michigan","headline","","shortSummary",{"_33":77,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":78,"_41":79,"_43":80,"_45":81,"_47":82,"_49":83,"_51":84,"_53":85,"_55":56,"_57":58,"_59":86,"_61":62,"_63":64,"_65":87,"_67":68,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":74,"_75":74},6103922,"Election Integrity Force tells House committee it found registration and absentee-ballot irregularities in Michigan",1643,182000,1825000,"/Search/View?dp=1&key=2792730-fa5925fb18ce1d62afeddf2d719a45a9&start=182&end=1825","https://assets.pipeline.soar.com/2792730-fa5925fb18ce1d62afeddf2d719a45a9/thumbnail_182000.jpg","/articles/6103922/Michigan/Election-Integrity-Force-tells-House-committee-it-found-registration-and-absentee-ballot-irregularities-in-Michigan","https://secure.pipeline.soar.com/6103922-66a72afc7f8aabaa40c9ff91dddc4502/orig.mp4?Expires=1770997892&Signature=IIcH5vHZmQkTK~bREDxYnEixry4yxTOtkfqawSraUPmj-tBqZPTedtiCeMMMUpcD0aO~WVt1tVa0Nja4gADn7XyhA-Fic-tV6qMgkZ07mxuiHJ7wO9ZHWAQUpjGC0ObaFG5tc2snbJYrwsClHwEXCY-8OZlPIuyUSuuuIXmoF-LtQ70mmWbZp~w4hGgGusMltt-asrrZgbNFoJObv-GJeqJTqhQtVCOlOSmOMe3rUuR1oCockBj~00w2DPeJYoeLi2EHQI7s91~uWhN859y3GVobeZuXGorrFhEuVnQfc~q6YAptnbn3NY6sGudEFPAuvFOYc6KV6BwyYoU6LuK1Qg__&Key-Pair-Id=KUT5TJCACFTXG","The House Election Integrity Committee heard from Chris Kayala, a representative of Election Integrity Force (EIF), who told the committee on Zoom that his volunteers’ analysis found what he described as widespread irregularities in Michigan’s Qualified Voter File (QVF) and in absentee voter (AV) ballot records.

Kayala said EIF is a statewide, unpaid volunteer group that conducts canvassing and data analysis to check election records. “We don't care who gets elected, what we care about is whether the process is good,” he told the committee during his presentation, adding that his group’s work focuses on “transparent and trusted elections.”

Kayala said his analysis found a large and unexplained increase in registrations in multiple counties after 2020, and characterized many registrations on the QVF as “dead wood” that should be cleaned from the rolls. Using Muskegon County as a case study, he said the county’s registration file showed a gain of roughly 17,000 registrations in 2020 that he and local canvassers judged implausible given the area’s population growth. He said EIF could not account for roughly 6,000 voters reported as having voted in 2022 whose records later appeared to be missing from the county’s history file.

Kayala described several specific data problems he said the group documented: records with birth years in the 1800s; registrations that moved with a voter to another county so that local history files no longer reflected where people voted; and records showing multiple addresses for a single voter ID. He said clerks sometimes cannot or do not obtain full QVF details that would let local officials reconcile those discrepancies.

Kayala told the committee that in the 2024 election his team observed about 108,000 voter IDs that were associated with more than one AV ballot (he gave a “grand total” of 208,000 ballots affected across the state). He said the largest county-level counts in the data he showed were about 34,000 in Wayne County, about 20,000 in Macomb County and about 17,000 in Kent County, and that smaller counts appeared across most counties. He said state staff attributed the issue to a “programming glitch.”

On access and oversight, Kayala urged the committee to seek QVF transaction logs and LDF files (user/login audit files) that would show who entered or changed records in the state system. He said third parties such as ERIC and several nonprofit groups have read/write access to parts of the state voter file, and that the combination of shared administrative logins and external access makes tracing edits difficult. He said the Michigan State Police investigated alleged suspicious registration activity tied to a private canvassing firm and that some matters were referred to the FBI.

Committee members asked questions during and after the presentation. Representative Sarah Colazar (state representative) noted that numerous audits after 2020 found no evidence of widespread fraud and asked whether Kayala accepted the 2020 results. Kayala replied, “I accept the results of it,” and said his concern is that audits and recounts did not look in the places his team identified as problematic. Representative Song asked whether the 2024 results were unreliable given the duplicate-AV-ballot figures; Kayala limited his response to the data shown in his presentation and said the duplicates warranted corrective action and transaction-log review.

Kayala also told lawmakers he had been denied routine access to electronic poll-book snapshots and a consistent, timely QVF export. He said the secretary of state’s office changed the way it delivers QVF data and that EIF members and some clerks have been unable to obtain the same reports on schedule in recent years.

The committee earlier adopted the minutes for its March 11 meeting by unanimous consent on a motion from Representative Outman. The committee received a second presentation after Kayala’s testimony and then adjourned.

What Kayala asked lawmakers to do included obtaining transaction logs and user audit files from the state QVF (which he said would show who made changes), documentation on AV ballots that were issued and any corrective actions taken, and access to electronic poll-book data for reconciliation. He said those materials are necessary, in his view, to determine whether the observed anomalies reflected administrative errors, programming issues, or worse.

The presentation was largely an appeal for further investigation and for greater transparency in how the QVF and AV reporting are managed. Kayala repeatedly emphasized clerks’ workload and funding constraints while pressing for access to system logs and poll-book exports he said would let volunteers and local officials reconcile anomalies.","The House Election Integrity Committee heard from Chris Kayala, a representative of Election Integrity Force (EIF), who told the committee on Zoom that his volunteers’ analysis found what he described as widespread irregularities in Michigan’s Qualified Voter File (QVF) and in absentee voter records.","actionData","errors"]

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Researcher tells committee that large nonprofit voter‑registration networks have partisan ties and big payments to political firms

Election Integrity Force tells House committee it found registration and absentee-ballot irregularities in Michigan