Formal complaint filed against Vote.org by its founder

A messy fight between the current and former leadership of Vote.org is escalating.

Debra Cleaver, the nonprofit’s founder, said she has filed complaints with four states’ attorneys general alleging that the high-profile voter registration group has defrauded donors, including by vastly inflating the number of voters it could register in 2024, financial mismanagement and using charitable funds for the personal benefit of its current CEO.

The allegations follow a wrongful termination suit from Cleaver over her firing in 2019 and have prompted a new threat of litigation from the group over what it called a “sustained and vindictive campaign rooted in misinformation.”

Vote.org counsel Vanessa Avery, a partner at McCarter and English, vigorously denied the claims by Cleaver, saying they were “categorically false.”

In the 28-page complaint, shared first with Morning Score, Cleaver alleged there was no serious plan for the group to deliver on its pledge to register 8 million voters for the 2024 cycle, which would have been more than the total number of voters it had registered during its entire 14-year history. Vote.org ended up registering 2.2 million voters in the 2024 cycle.

Cleaver, who now runs a similar group called VoteAmerica, filed the complaint with the attorneys generals of New York, California, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Score independently verified all filings except the one in Georgia. Among her claims: that the group originally set an internal goal to register 6 million voters, but that was increased to 8 million to avoid the “symbolism of 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.”

“The fact that Vote.org ultimately failed to register 8 million voters is inconsequential to the organization, because that was never the true goal,” Cleaver said in the complaint. “The goal was staying afloat, attracting donor attention, and retaining relevance through the illusion of scale.”

The organization is one of the biggest nonpartisan voter registration vehicles in the country, but it has come under scrutiny in recent years over its internal management. The complaint points to the example of Taylor Swift, who previously worked with the group. But last year, when Swift endorsed Kamala Harris, she directed fans to go to Vote.gov to register instead of plugging Vote.org. The complaint alleges a Daily Mail story on internal turmoil at the group helped cause Swift to avoid touting the organization again. (A Swift spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.) Vote.org’s spending and alleged internal dysfunction was also the subject of a Chronicle of Philanthropy investigation last year.

The complaint also alleges that donor money was inappropriately used to pay for Vote.org CEO Andrea Hailey’s personal travel and notes a jump in expenses on Vote.org’s “travel conferences and meetings” totaling more than $275,000 in 2023. It also notes that IRS documents show that Vote.org spent almost $600,000 on legal fees in 2023 versus $89,000 in 2019 as the organization fought wrongful termination lawsuits from Cleaver and another employee.

In the Cleaver case, she sued Vote.org and one of its human resources vendors. The suit between Cleaver and Vote.org was dismissed with prejudice with both parties dropping their claims and no money was exchanged between Vote.org and Cleaver, according to the settlement agreement. The agreement shows the HR vendor paid her $50,000 in a separate deal which said Vote.org would not reimburse the vendor.

The attorneys general complaints also made claims, which Score has not independently verified, that Vote.org has paid for private security for Hailey even though Cleaver says staff haven’t received any threats against Hailey. Vote.org told the Daily Mail that Hailey did receive threats.

“For the past six years, she has organized a sustained and vindictive campaign rooted in misinformation, aimed at discrediting this organization and its leadership,” Avery, the Vote.org counsel, said in a statement.

“Her wrongful termination lawsuit was withdrawn with prejudice, and she is now resorting to even more desperate and baseless tactics. We will be filing a defamation claim in the near future and will vigorously defend against these lies.” She also said that they have emailed the state attorneys generals to rebut her claims.

Avery defended the high voter registration target for 2024, which Vote.org did not meet. “Successful organizations set ambitious goals -- no one aims for underperformance,” she said. “We set bold targets because the stakes are high.” She said the group has registered more voters than any other organization in American history; Score could not independently verify this.

When asked why she filed the complaints, Cleaver told Score in a statement: “As the founder, I would like nothing more than Vote.org to succeed. Unfortunately, for five years now Vote.org has been racked by a series of financial, governance, and ethical lapses.”

A spokesperson for the New York attorney general’s office said they’ve “received the complaint and are reviewing.” Spokespeople for the other states’ attorneys generals didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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