‘It’s just creepy.’ Who’s behind those mailers that tell you if your neighbors voted?

Central Kentucky residents have been confused recently by letters sent to their homes claiming to be part of a study and revealing whether they and their neighbors have voted in the last few elections. The letters warn that future mailings will out them if they don’t vote on Tuesday.

“This chart shows the names of people you know and their election histories,” read one of the letters sent in late October to some Lexington residents, above a chart identifying 10 registered voters by name and showing their voting histories — but not how they voted — in the 2014 and 2016 primary and general elections.

The letter’s masthead identified it as a “Kentucky State Voter Report,” and it gave a Pewee Valley return address.

“After the Nov. 6 election, we intend to mail an updated chart,” the letter continued. “You and your friends, your neighbors and other people you know will all know who voted and who did not vote.”

Although individual votes are private, it’s a matter of public record whether someone is registered to vote in Kentucky and with what party and whether they showed up on Election Day. That doesn’t mean everyone appreciates a peek in their neighbors’ windows.

“It’s creepy, OK? It’s just creepy,” Lucinda Baker of Lexington said Monday. “Every person I know who has gotten one of these tells me it feels vaguely threatening, and I agree. My mind went immediately to whether they’re trying to scare people from going to vote.”

The letters list different organization names and addresses from around Kentucky, but the Herald-Leader traced them back to a single office on L Street Northwest in Washington, D.C, four blocks from the White House. That office is used by a collection of Democratic-affiliated nonprofit groups that say they are working to get out the vote on Tuesday among single women, people of color and young Americans.

The lead group, the Voter Participation Center, raised and spent $42.6 million from 2012 to 2016, with much of that money going to letters sent through one of the country’s top Democratic direct mail consultants, according to its tax return. The group did not disclose its donors.

A related group at the same Washington address, the Center for Voter Information, was known as the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund until it changed its name last year. In 2016, Women’s Voices Women Vote campaigned against Republican Donald Trump in the presidential contest, according to campaign finance reports.

Calls to Page Gardner, the $190,000-a-year president of the Voter Participation Center, and Lionel Dripps, its managing director, were not returned. Dripps is a former Democratic Party campaign operative and field organizer.

In a prepared statement, spokesman Jim Popkin wrote that the mission of the Voter Participation Center and the Center for Voter Information — which he described as “sister groups” — is “to encourage people to vote — especially those most likely to drop off as voters between presidential and mid-term elections.”

The groups sent 330,000 letters in Kentucky this year, Popkin wrote.

“Whether someone voted in an election is public record,” Popkin wrote. “As a civic-engagement group, we use public records to help voters understand their voting records. Those who can vote — and have previously participated — often are inspired to vote when shown their record. It’s a way to provide some meaningful benchmarks and encourage greater involvement in our democracy.”

Complaints about the confusing nature of the groups’ mailers have become common in recent election cycles, as state officials stress that they have nothing to do with the letters.

In the 2008 Democratic primary in North Carolina, the state chapter of the NAACP filed a complaint after Women’s Voices Women Vote — which was tied to Hillary Clinton in her battle against Barack Obama — paid for anonymous robo-calls to black voters. The calls urged voters to wait for their voter registration packets to arrive in the mail, although the registration deadline had passed, confusing some voters who believed themselves already to be registered. The group later told NPR the calls were a mistake.

If these letters are meant to encourage voting, they’re badly done, said Baker, the Lexington woman who received one, along with at least a half-dozen of her neighbors. The letters sounded ominous rather than educational, she said.

“They should be ashamed of themselves,” Baker said. “There are a lot better ways you could spend your money if you wanted to get people to vote.”

This story was originally published November 5, 2018 at 1:49 PM.