Nonprofit Voter Group’s Mailing List Includes Pets and Dead People

Residents and election officials in several states have reported receiving mailings from a nonprofit voter-registration organization addressed to noncitizens, animals, and deceased people, according to the Associated Press.

The group, the Voter Participation Center, targets African-Americans, Latinos, single women, and other Democratic-leaning blocs and has recently touted its distribution of some 5 million voter-enrollment forms.

The center said its databases of possible voters are imperfect because they are developed from commercially collected lists of names, and that it expects people who receive misdirected or oddly addressed mailings to throw them away.

But such mailings could raise political hackles this year, as Republican leaders push for voter-identification laws they say are aiming at curbing fraud but that Democrats contend will disenfranchise minorities, the AP writes.