Got a text yesterday from “Ylonda with Progressive Turnout Project”, asking me if I wanted to make some money:
“We’re paying Democrats like you $250/week to rally your friends and family to vote! Interested?”
Aside from the fact that I don’t need to be paid to rally everyone I know to vote, this feels … off. A quick Google doesn’t specifically tell me that paying someone to encourage others to vote is against the law, but it sounds periliously close to voter fraud, to me. And the fact that she specified “Democrats like you” seems a little sus.
It also sounds like a dirty trick, which Republicans in Georgia are not above using - a decade ago, a lot of Republicans voted in the Democratic primary, to vote down a particularly wacko Democratic candidate for Congress. The state GOP made robocalls warning Republicans that voting in the other party’s primary was illegal, which it most certainly isn’t (I did the very same thing in the spring, to keep a couple of obnoxious Trumpies off the Republican ballot). My parents got one such call.
This text has something of that same flavor, I feel. Or am I being paranoid? Progressive Turnout Project seems to be a legit PAC, and I left a voicemail asking about this. But I’m interested in what the Dope thinks about it.
I can’t say whether the communication you received is a scam or not, but the Progressive Turnout Project is a legit organization. I also can’t say whether they’re up to shenanigans, but I imagine that everything they do is by the book, at least technically.
Best bet is to contact the organization directly through their website, and not through any link given in the text you received.
Note that if this was a full-time 40 hour a week job, that’s a paltry $6.25 per hour, a buck below the Federal minimum wage. So, depending on how much work they expect you to put in, the compensation might not be all that great. They’re not promising enough money to make that part suspicious.
Which number did you you? The one the text came from, or something you found on their website?
It would be trivially easy to just claim to be from this organization in a spam text message. I could see someone like Project Veritas trying to set people up so they can make a video about how “Democrats were willing to get paid to violate voting laws!” or some such thing.
Sounds legit to me. It’s not like paying you to intimidate opposing party voters at the polls, or stuffing ballot boxes. They are just hiring people to help get out the vote. Happens every election since we started having them.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. I went to the group’s website from Google, to get the phone number - I haven’t responded to the text.
Okay, I’m being paranoid. That’s good to know. A little paranoia is not unwarranted when you’re a Democrat in Georgia, but you, I trust. Thanks for putting my mind at ease.