A “Conservative think tank leader” is now calling for “banning charities from voter registration efforts,” or so a recent USA Today headline reads. The “Conservative think tank leader,” my boss, Scott Walter, has very good reasons for calling for this, though if you read the article in full, you might be uncertain what those reasons are. That’s because the reasons were not discussed at all. Instead, the article is full of platitudes from the worst partisan offender in the “charitable” get-out-the-vote industry, the Voter Participation Center (VPC).
It’s the now-classic “conservatives seize” or “Republicans pounce” framing, a narrative trick that the American media is famous for, wherein the reaction to a scandal — rather than the scandal itself — is portrayed as the center of a story (but only if that scandal makes a figure or group on the left look bad).
In this case, the “pouncing” occurred in response to a story by Andrew Kerr of The Washington Free Beacon. The story broke the news the VPC had purchased “register to vote” ads on Facebook and Instagram that were specifically filtered so that they would not be shown to users interested in topics and hobbies commonly associated with Republican voters. “Excluded” topics included NASCAR, Duck Dynasty, Ted Nugent, modified Jeeps, and the PGA Tour. Letters from multiple Republican legislators inquiring about an investigation into the VPC soon followed.
Did USA Today mention these obviously partisan ad filters? Of course not — even though IRS rules clearly state that charities
