It’s ‘impersonation’: Fort Worth area resident finds voter mailer misleading. It’s legal
When Mark Brann opened his mailbox recently, one piece of mail gave him pause.
In bold, capital letters a card read “immediate attention required” and “official state of Texas forms enclosed.”
Included on the card was a blank Texas voter registration application, along with the address of the Tarrant County Elections Department and where to check his registration status online.
“I set it aside because it looked like the kind of thing you don’t want to throw away, and it had a lot of fine print,” said Brann, a Watauga resident who has lived in Tarrant County since 1986.
But as Brann looked at the mailer more closely, something seemed off. The return address listed was for an “Engage Texas” in Denton, and then he saw the small box in the lefthand corner that read “Pol. Ad Paid for by Engage Texas” along with the group’s website.
Brann, who works in information services, did some digging, which was how he learned that Engage Texas is a super PAC. Formed in June, it’s raised nearly $12 million from prominent Texas GOP donors according to recent Federal Election Commission filings, amassed nearly 300 staffers, and seeks to register Republican voters “to keep Texas red,” according to its website.
“I think they’re using the term ‘official state of Texas’ as a way to convince me that this is a legitimate governmental activity, when it is not. It is an election activity designed for their purposes,” Brann said. “To me, it’s a form of concealment. It’s a form of camouflage. And it’s a form of impersonation.”
But it’s a legitimate way to reach potential voters — even if they feel misled — experts said.
“It’s a group that’s out there trying to register people to vote. There’s nothing illegal about that,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.
Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for the PAC, said the group has sent well over a million of the pieces out, and that with the official disclaimer noting it’s a paid political advertisement, “it is very transparent what that is.”
But Brann, who said he has voted for both Republicans and Democrats over the years, didn’t think that was sufficient.
“The form that is used in the mail piece is a form that is supplied by and authorized by the state of Texas, which is why it looks like an official document,” Sullivan said. “It is a document that has been blessed by the state of Texas.”
Because the form is the Texas Secretary of State’s official voter registration form in its entirety, “it is legitimate to process,” Stephen Chang, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office said in a statement Friday.
“Our office would pay the return postage as we would with any other returned voter registration application and process it as we would any other returned voter registration application,” Chang wrote.
And Engage Texas isn’t the only group that circulates voter registration forms. It’s a common tactic, and in 2018, the Secretary of State’s Office asked the Texas Attorney General to investigate mailers from the Texas Democratic Party that featured voter registration forms with the checkbox indicating the person filling it out was a U.S. citizen already checked.
Rep. Chris Turner, a Democrat from Grand Prairie and head of the House Democratic Caucus, was critical of Engage Texas’ tactics outside of driver’s license offices this past summer. And while he said efforts to register more voters in Texas is ultimately a good thing, he found this method ironic.
“A super PAC is trying to register select voters for their advantage — which is certainly their right,” Turner said. “It’s ironic because it’s Republican leaders in Texas, who have made it so difficult for people to register to vote in this state.”
Sullivan says the group uses “a myriad of methods,” including voter history to identify people who are likely to be conservative voters. While their efforts are statewide, much of Engage Texas’ work is in major metro areas where most voters live, Sullivan said.
And Engage Texas’ tactics are working, he said, citing that over 100,000 people have been registered on the ground through the group’s canvassers.
What’s more, as of Tuesday, a record-breaking 16.2 million Texans are registered to vote, according to the Secretary of State’s website.
“I do think that groups like ours, as well as organizations on the more liberal side of the spectrum who are engaged in similar voter registration efforts, are certainly having a positive effect,” Sullivan said.
But some voters and local elections administrators don’t feel the same. In the counties of Harrison and Gregg on the eastern edge of the state, officials said Engage Texas’ mailers caused some people who had been registered for years to believe they weren’t anymore, and that some people were getting mailers for their dead relatives.
“The mailer has caused much more trouble than it was worth,” Gregg County Elections Administrator Kathryn Nealy told the Longview News-Journal in late December.
A lack of transparency may put potential voters off more than it draws them in, said Joanne Connor Green, a political science professor at TCU.
“What appears to perhaps be a little shady might not speak well to voters, and sometimes that can backfire,” Green said. “A pretty decent number of people would be confused at best, misled at worst.”
While the deadline to register to vote in the March 3 primary has passed, Green said ahead of the November general election voters need to be more diligent than ever about where their political information is coming from.
Brann hopes that his experience inspires fellow voters to give a little more thought to the choices they make. But ultimately, it left him feeling suspicious and deceived with the political process.
“They can make an impression by forming an organization, running it through some attorneys and putting a little pile of cash aside for whatever purpose and mislead people in a way that stays within boundaries of the law,” Brann said. “It just means that it’s not an even playing field.”
This story was originally published February 21, 2020 at 5:23 PM.
