Posted on 10/27/2026 7:22:22 AM PDT by Red Badger
Voter Protection Corps wants social-media monitoring treated as core election infrastructure, backed by lawyers and networks that deliver rebuttals before voters encounter the claims.
=======================================================================
A group founded by an Obama campaign veteran has built a program to recruit lawyers to help get election posts removed from social media ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The organization, Voter Protection Corps, is combining volunteers who flag election content with attorneys who review posts and help prepare requests for platforms to take them down.
Its September 8 recruitment notice spells out why it wants lawyers involved: “lending legal credibility to formal removal requests.”
That creates an organized route from a volunteer flagging a post to an attorney helping seek its removal. The group’s broader plan calls for making monitoring a permanent part of election operations, alongside networks that challenge anticipated claims before voters encounter them.
VPC’s September 8 recruitment notice seeks legal volunteers for monitoring and rapid response. This listing is marked closed.
=======================================================================================
Making monitoring part of election infrastructure
The group’s January 2026 report states the ambition plainly:
“Treat social media monitoring as core election infrastructure.”
The next recommendation calls for another standing network:
“Build and sustain trusted messenger and prebunking networks.”
Recommendations 3 and 4 in VPC’s January 20, 2026 reportplace continuous monitoring alongside organized messenger and prebunking networks.
=======================================================================================
Prebunking means delivering an advance rebuttal before people encounter a claim. The report recommends investing early in community-based communicators whom voters already trust.
Its detailed recommendations compare monitoring to legal hotlines and election-day observers: trained personnel would track claims across platforms and relay information to election officials.
For prebunking, it proposes recruiting local leaders, faith organizations, student networks, veterans’ groups, ethnic and multilingual media, and nonpolitical content creators into an “organized amplification corps.”
VPC’s current program description says it coordinates same-day counter-messaging and prebunking through channels voters already trust.
The model combines continuous monitoring, coordinated messaging and attorney-supported removal requests. Prebunking seeks to shape how voters assess claims; removal requests ask platforms to take particular posts down.
How the removal program works
The 2026 attorney posting describes three connected jobs: monitor election content, assess flagged posts against platform rules, and help prepare formal removal requests.
Training includes the monitoring tool Junkipedia and partners including Common Cause. Volunteers are asked to remain available during critical election periods. Previous election-law experience is not required.
The notice was posted by Voter Protection Corps Education & Advocacy Fund on We The Action, a platform connecting lawyers with volunteer opportunities. That particular listing is now closed; other recruitment materials describe the program’s continuing schedule.
VPC’s registration form lists Tuesday evening monitoring shifts from September 15 through October 27, followed by five two-hour shifts on November 3. The first starts at 6 a.m. Eastern; the last ends at 8 p.m.
The form, sponsored by Voter Protection Corps Foundation, asks participants to confirm whether they have completed training, registered for it or plan to use the self-paced version.
VPC’s volunteer sign-up form describes monitoring social media, flagging concerning content and supporting rapid response before and on Election Day.
======================================================================================
Lawyers for Good Government’s October newsletter invites attorneys and non-attorneys to participate and says an election-disinformation specialist supervises each shift.
The 2025 Virginia pilot shows how the process was rehearsed. Roughly 50 people participated in training, and seven monitors were deployed. On Election Day, they monitored from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. and communicated with the state election-protection coalition’s command center.
Flagged posts went to reportdisinfo.org. VPC prepared removal-request templates tailored to individual platforms and arranged for an attorney to “add his name to post removal requests.” It called 2025 a “useful dry run.”
VPC identifies reportdisinfo.org as Common Cause’s election-disinformation tip line. Its public guide, developed with the International Digital Accountability Council, urges people to report misleading material without increasing its reach through comments or shares. It also recommends private conversations and fact-checking.
The posts its report labels disinformation
The report also shows the material being collected and classified. Its examples include Elon Musk’s criticism of New York City’s ballot, a MAGA Voice post repeating it, and a Gunther Eagleman post featuring footage of a White House briefing.
Under “NYC Ballot Design Disinformation,” VPC reproduces a Musk post calling the ballot a scam and objecting to voter-ID rules, candidates appearing more than once and Andrew Cuomo’s placement. It also includes posts from MAGA Voice and Grok.
Under “Vote By Mail Disinformation,” it displays Eagleman’s post alleging California mail-ballot fraud, accompanied by an image from Fox News’ coverage of the White House briefing.
A third example, labeled “Insinuating Violence,” shows MAGA Voice alleging widespread voting-machine outages in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and a stolen election, alongside an image of a man with firearms displayed behind him.
Page 7 of VPC’s report. The category labels are the organization’s own; this page does not document whether the pictured posts were submitted for removal or taken down.
====================================================================================
The people and legal networks behind it
VPC’s founder, Quentin Palfrey, led voter-protection work for John Kerry in New Hampshire in 2004 and Barack Obama in Ohio in 2008. He became Massachusetts Democrats’ nominee for lieutenant governor in 2018.
Senior strategist Tim Karpoff worked on Kerry, Obama and Michael Bennet campaigns and held Obama administration positions between 2009 and 2013.
Executive director Jesse Littlewoodpreviously worked at Common Cause. So did Raelyn Roberson, the consultant now leading VPC’s 2026 counter-disinformation training, monitoring shifts and Election Day response.
Roberson is also listed as a campaign manager at Free Press, where her work includes researching online election-manipulation narratives and developing campaign strategies and educational materials.
To recruit lawyers, VPC’s program page names two national partners: Lawyers for Good Government and We The Action.
L4GG was advertising the joint remote program in August, ahead of the September attorney posting.
We The Action joined Civic Nation in 2021. Civic Nation’s announcement described its origins in the final years of the Obama-Biden administration and its role as a nonprofit home for several administration initiatives.
Civic Nation’s board is chaired by Valerie Jarrett. Tina Tchen serves as secretary; Cecilia Muñoz and Pete Rouse are also members. Anna Chu leads We The Action.
That places VPC’s attorney recruitment inside a Civic Nation initiative. The posting identifies VPC as the organization seeking volunteers.
The program also recruits through local activist networks. Central New Hampshire Indivisible promoted an October 22 training hosted by VPC and the New Hampshire Campaign for Voting Rights, covering online monitoring and documentation of concerning content. No previous experience was required.
VPC lists New Hampshire, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey and Iowa as priority states. Its descriptions range from active planning to preliminary discussions.
The legal connections have supported other election-protection work. VPC says that in New Jersey in 2025 it connected coalition organizers to legal help through We The Action and helped establish contact between the ACLU of New Jersey and election-law experts.
The donor money and the monitoring software
The VPC entity recruiting attorneys has received substantial support from Sixteen Thirty Fund.
The donor’s 2020 tax filing reports a $341,000 grant to Voter Protection Corps Education and Advocacy Fund, a 501(c)(4), under a broad civil-rights and advocacy category.
Sixteen Thirty Fund describes its mission as supporting progressive changemakers.
New Venture Fund’s 2024 filing reports a separate $50,000 grant to Voter Protection Corps Foundation, a 501(c)(3), also classified under civil rights and advocacy.
The monitoring software has its own funding network. Junkipedia lists support from Omidyar Network, Reset.tech, Knight Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Packard Foundation and Bright Data.
Developed by the Algorithmic Transparency Institute, a project of the National Conference on Citizenship, it advertises analysis across 15 platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X, TikTok and Telegram.
Users can track accounts and keywords, collect posts, follow images and videos, and obtain automated video transcripts. The product advertises access to more than 20 million social-media channels.
The earlier campaign that claimed hundreds of takedowns
Two of VPC’s current leaders appear in the record of an earlier monitoring campaign that reported getting posts removed.
Common Cause’s July 2023 report credits Littlewood with editorial assistance and Roberson with leading its monitoring volunteers.
For the 2022 election cycle, the report claims 2,202 monitors, 3,825 flagged items and more than 300 Facebook and Twitter removals. More than 200 reported removals concerned manipulated, threatening “ballot mule” posts targeting an individual.
The group also briefed reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, AP, Reuters, Bloomberg and ProPublica. It credited stories in Bloomberg and ProPublica with helping secure takedowns and policy changes.
Its description of the result was explicit:
“we successfully pressured platforms to both remove the posts and implement new rules.”
A separate April 2023 account describes volunteers supplying tips and analyst Emma Steiner approaching platforms about purported violations. Partners received updates about emerging narratives.
Common Cause also worked with the Civic Listening Corps, led by the Algorithmic Transparency Institute’s John Schmidt, on joint shifts, lists of alleged disinformation sources and access to Junkipedia.
The group claimed its broader efforts helped create an environment “so inhospitable to election deniers that they choose to concede.” That was its assessment of its influence; the account does not prove monitoring caused a candidate’s concession.
VPC reports securing some removals in 2024, without supplying a total. Its account describes state-specific toolkits, targeted digital outreach, an Election Day tip line, reports to platforms and documentation of material left online.
The plan extends beyond the midterms
The report also discusses misinformation surrounding real incidents, including New Jersey bomb threats and Pennsylvania pollbook omissions.
The New Hampshire training announcementsays participants would learn to distinguish concerning content from “ordinary political speech” and respond proportionately.
The underlying requests would show how that distinction is applied: which posts were flagged, what rule they allegedly violated, and what lawyers asked platforms to do.
VPC’s longer-term plan calls for year-round monitoring capacity, programs transferable between states, and lasting relationships with legal partners, funders and volunteers. Preparations for 2028 begin once the 2026 results are in.
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Everything is political speech. Even “Green Eggs & Ham”.
“Prebunking means delivering an advance rebuttal before people encounter a claim”
If it isn’t real then how do you know in advance what to say about it?
Me “Good Morning”
Him “What’s good about this Morning while he is president? That’s political speech.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.