Sky McAdams, an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, says: “We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things. So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially.” McAdams also says direct vote payments are illegal, calls the arrangement a “gray” area, and describes it as “shady as f—.”
Texas Majority PAC funded a program that pays targeted, low-propensity voters to undergo political instruction and mobilize Democratic votes—and a PAC manager candidly described it as a “roundabout way” of paying for votes.
We have previously post on vote buying (here and here).
Legally, federal law prohibits giving money to someone “to vote” or to vote for or against a candidate. It does not generally prohibit paying campaign workers, canvassers, trainees, or organizers for actual services. The decisive question is whether the $25 was bona fide compensation for attendance/work or consideration for voting.
A Texas Majority PAC manager supporting Democratic electoral efforts acknowledged that its $25 voter-outreach payments were ‘like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes.’ The PAC’s filings confirm that so far there is a $500,000 expenditure for the program. At $25 a person, at this point that comes 20,000 people that they could hire.
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