I moved to Indonesia at the very start of the 2008 presidential election cycle, so that makes 5 cycles in a row that I have lived abroad. I also missed the 1980 election while living in Europe. In all that time, I’ve never seen anything like this.
In 2012, I signed up for Ron Paul’s email blasts to keep up with the campaign. After his campaign email stopped, I never thought much about it, until this year. Since roughly March, I’ve been getting waterfalls of campaign begging and cheerleading notices, first from the Trump campaign, and then from scores of folks like RFK and Tulsi Gabbard, and various Republican glitterati. Every time I unsubscribe, two more entities pop up. At the moment, it’s quiet. I think I sprayed them all, but there’s still a month or so to go, and the nits are notoriously hard to get.
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Then, in the last week, YouBoob has been flooded with ads for some NGO called Center for U.S. Voters Abroad (CUSVA). I mean literally every 5 minutes. And it’s not just me, my Canadian buddy is seeing them, as are Mrs. FarSide and two Indonesian friends, so this is not a targeted nor cheap campaign, which causes my FarSidey Sense to twitch.
I’ve never heard of this organization before, nor have I ever seen such a wall-to-wall bombing campaign specifically targeting US voters overseas. All expats know you can go to the nearest embassy or consulate to register and vote, but only for president. State elections are unavailable overseas. Anyway, I did a little scratching around on this CUSVA group.
Turns out, there is almost nothing about them outside of their website, though I did find a curious blurb on the Guadalajara Post site, of all places. There are no lists of donors or grants of PAC money that I can find. They are registered as a 501(c)(4), under the Center for U.S. Voters Abroad Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3). It sounds as if it was formed after the 2020 election, but that’s just an inference.
The CUSVA website states that the CUSVA was formed as part of a larger initiative under the Act Now Project, another nonprofit organization. It aims to “assist” U.S. citizens living abroad in navigating the often-complicated process of registering to vote and casting absentee ballots in U.S. elections. The CUSVA is also part of a broader effort that includes the Act Now Coalition, yet another nonprofit initiative.
Regular readers will know what I think about QGOs/NGOs, especially when they team up in a web of money laundering efforts.
Two things, no make it three, bother me about this: 1) NGOs are dangerous; 2) Act Now sounds all Bumbledickery; and 3) the process of registering and voting at the embassy is not an overly complex process and there are plenty of excited staff on hand to help.
Registering involves filling out a standardized post card application. Once approved, you get an email telling you where and when to pick up your absentee ballot, which can be mailed to your registered Secretary of State, or sent through the embassy mail system.
Naturally, I looked up the Act Now Project…
The Act Now Project, according to its propaganda, is a nonprofit organization under the UN that operates in both 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) forms. Its mission is to “create innovative, data-driven solutions to urgent social and political problems, leveraging technology and user-friendly data products to inform decision-making.” One of its key initiatives includes The Center for U.S. Voters Abroad.
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The Act Now Project was notorious during the COVID-19 pandemic through its platform “Covid Act Now,” which provided real-time data to help governments corral and detain…er, communities make informed safety decisions.
The Act Now Project’s broader focus includes environmental advocacy, climate change solutions, and public health data modelling, demonstrating its aim to weaponize issues that require accurate, accessible, and impactful information to subdue humanity.
Yup, I thought I smelled Bumbledick all over this thing.
Back to CUSVA, all you have to do is tell them what state you last resided in, and they’ll apparently “help” you figure out what address you were living at (!). Overseas absentee ballots do count towards a state’s popular vote, and thus the Electoral College results, with most states having a winner-take-all system except for Nebraska and Maine.
In other words, this whole effort has the fragrant odor of voter fraud about it, based on what it offers and who’s involved. If all I have to do is give them a random address in one of the states, then it sounds like this operation could be enabling fraud, and given the UN connection and lack of transparency, that’s a pretty good bet. Some information I’ve found says I don’t even have to have lived in the states at any point in my life (whiff, whiff).
