George Soros' Foundation to Promote Open Society provided $450K for "VoteShield" startup in 2018, which now closely monitors voter registration changes in 24 states
George Soros' Foundation to Promote Open Society provided $450K for "VoteShield" startup in 2018, which now closely monitors voter registration changes in 24 states
Why has DC-based "Protect Democracy" purchased 68 updates of the Kansas voter registration file since 2020 for its VoteShield project?
Updated, March 26, 2023.
DC-based “Protect Democracy” purchased 68 copies of the Kansas voter registration file since 2020 for its VoteShield project — much more often than all other groups involved in Kansas politics.
The 68th copy was due to be delivered today to Protect Democracy, which was the 27th weekly file ordered on May 23, well before the August primary election. These orders were discovered while reviewing open records obtained from the Kansas Secretary of State’s office.
VoteShield now provides “coverage” in 24 states, so similar voter data files purchases likely can be found in those other states through open records requests.
An online video from Oct. 2020, Keeping Democracy Safe in the 2020 Election, explains the purpose of VoteShield:
Vote Shield is a tool for election administrators to track changes to their voter databases using statistics and machine learning. …
… enabling a wide range of election officials, academics, and analysts to collectively monitor the data.
Who are the academics and analysts that can use VoteShield to affect elections in addition to the election officials? Is the VoteShield resource also available to donors or political “friends and family” of Protect Democracy?
The VoteShield web page shows an Overview and a Fact Sheet. “VoteShield is made available free of charge exclusively to election administrators.”
The video also highlights Tiana Epps-Johnson and Whitney May, co-founders of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, who were responsible for about 2500 grants to local election offices that totaled around $350 million from money provided by Mark Zuckerberg via the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
Outside third-parties offering free resources to election offices are hard to turn down. But these groups affect elections by introducing subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, unfair advantages to some voters and not others. What happened to the 14th Amendment requiring “equal protection of the laws?”
Unanswered questions
The following questions were sent on Oct. 14, 2020 by email to Protect Democracy staff members, Quinn Raymond and Dagney Crepeau, who were listed on the order forms filed with the Kansas Secretary of State.
No response has been received to date to these questions:
How will your purchase of weekly Kansas voter files help the people of Kansas? Do you do something similar in other states?
Do you share or sell this Kansas data to any government, non-profit or business groups in Kansas? Or in other states?
Who funds your efforts? The Foundation to Promote Open Society reported a $450,000 grant to you in 2018-2019. Have they given you additional grants?
Any response will be added when received.
VoteShield early funding
Why does so much political funding for election-related matters often trace back to George Soros?
VoteShield LLC started with funding from various sources via the Protect Democracy 501(c)(3) non-profit. Comments found in IRS 990s filings indicated contributions to Protect Democracy were for a “VoteShield” project, which was initially the name of contractor.
George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society provided $450K of funding for VoteShield in 2018 and 2019 via Protect Democracy, which can be found in the details in the Open Society Foundations Awarded Grants page. Soros also provided over $1 million in funding to a sister 501(c)(4) organization, United to Protect Democracy, during the same time.
Influence Watch explains Protect Democracy Project “is a left-of-center litigation organization created to oppose the policies of President Donald Trump” and United to Protect Democracy is an “advocacy affiliate.” Protect Democracy explains the difference here.
VoteShield state coverage maps
Why is VoteShield coverage so blatantly political? VoteShield coverage in 2020 included the “battleground” states: Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.
Were some states like Colorado and Kansas included because they had Democratic governors up for re-election this year?
Expansion states since 2020 included: California, Oklahoma, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia.
In 2020 VoteShield founder, Quinn Raymond, offered his expertise about voter data in several states on an Election SOS page (funded primarily by the left-leaning Democracy Fund, which was founded by former eBay executive Pierre Omidyar).
Many orders for Kansas voter data
An open records request to the Kansas Secretary of State revealed the names of those buying Kansas voter registration since 2020.
An out-of-state “Protect Democracy” group caught my eye since today (Nov. 21, 2022) they are receiving their 68th copy of Kansas voter registration data. They have made far more requests than any other group.
Here is a summary of the processing dates for the many Protect Democracy orders for Kansas voter data:
23 files in 2020: 1/7, 2/14, 3/2, 4/9, 5/6, 6/3, 7/7, 8/12, each Monday from 8/17 till 11/16 (14 files), a final order for the year on 12/28
13 files in 2021: 1/6, 2/5, 3/5, 3/23, 4/7, 5/5, 6/8, 7/9, 8/3, 9/9, 10/7, 11/4,12/13
32 files in 2022: 1/4, 2/8, 3/11, 4/12, 5/9, 27 Mondays from 5/23 through 11/21 today
From 2020 through 2022 Protect Democracy ordered 23 + 13 + 32 = 68 copies of Kansas voter registration files, which each cost $200. The total cost was $13,600 for Kansas voter data.
An open records request to the Kansas Secretary of State in Jan. 2019 showed 42 purchases of Kansas voter data in 2018. One of those purchases was by Quinn Raymond from the address 11 Schermerhorn St, 1WF, Brooklyn, NY 11201.
An open records request to the Kansas Secretary of State in Dec. 2012 showed only 23 purchases of voter data in 2012 prior to the November general election.
VoteShield LLC: contractor to Protect Democracy, then acquired
IRS 990s from 2018, 2019 and 2020 show VoteShield was a contractor to, but later was acquired by, Protect Democracy.
Consistent with the diagram shown above, VoteShield LLC received total funding of $1,079,356 from Protect Democracy in 2018 and 2019. Apparently, about $160K of funding is still not known.
Known Donors
Foundation to Promote Open Society
From Influence Watch: “The Foundation to Promote Open Society (FPOS) is one of two major grantmaking foundations funded by liberal financier and billionaire George Soros. It is closely affiliated with the Open Society Foundations.”
From the Open Society Foundations Awarded Grants page, there were two grants that totaled $450K to VoteShield at Protect Democracy:
Eric and Wendy Schmidt Foundation for Strategic Innovation
The IRS 990-PF filed by former Google executive’s foundation shows $300K to VoteShield.
San Francisco Foundation
Is the purpose given in the IRS 990 from the San Francisco Foundation a misstatement or brutal honesty? What was meant by “for corrupting elections”?
FOR GENERAL OPERATING SUPPORT. FOR CORRUPTING ELECTIONS AND VOTESHIELD PROJECT AREAS AND OTHER WORK AS NECESSARY TO PROTECT DEMOCRACY. FOR GENERAL OPERATING SUPPORT.
George Gund Foundation
Oregon connection?
Oregon is not shown on the VoteShield “coverage” map but an Excel file “Voter List Requests 1-2018 to 8-2022.xlsx” found on the Oregon Secretary of State’s web site shows several purchases of Oregon voter registration data.
Is Protect Democracy buying voter registration data in your state? Ask your Secretary of State.
Related
Availability of state voter files, Ballotpedia, Aug. 2022.
The growing use of ‘voter files’ in studying the U.S. electorate, Pew Research Center, Feb. 2018.