BALTIMORE — Some Maryland residents have expressed concern about recently receiving letters showing their neighbors’ voting records and their own voting history.

They say it’s voter intimidation — and Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown agrees.

It orders the nonprofit Voter Information Center/Voter Participation Center (VPC) to stop sending the letters, calling them illegal under state and federal law. Brown’s office announced last night that it had sent a cease and desist letter to the Washington-based organization.

The letters are titled “Ballots” and include comments such as: “We will review these records after the election to determine whether or not you joined our neighbors in voting.” »

Brown orders the organization “to immediately stop sending letters to Maryland voters that threaten to publicly denounce registered voters who do not vote in this year’s elections, to refrain from sending threatening communications to the future and to agree not to follow through on threats. to embarrass non-voters by publishing this information to their neighbors. »

Dorothy O’Bannon, president of the Langston Hughes Community Association in northwest Baltimore, was one resident angry about the mailing.

She said the voting history information in her mail wasn’t even true. She said many young people followed her and she didn’t want them to be prevented from voting if they saw – falsely – a letter claiming their neighbors weren’t voting.

O’Bannon, who said she is 60 years old and has been voting since she was 18, called herself a “super-voter” and said voting was extremely important to her.

The attorney general said it’s legal to send a copy of the voter registration list with voter participation history – but state law prohibits conduct intended to “influence or attempt to influence influence a voter’s decision”, if he or she has to go to the polls to vote. vote, or vote by other legal means, “by use of force, fraud, threat, intimidation, bribery, reward or offer of reward.”

The attorney for the Voter Information Center/Voter Participation Center said in a response to Brown that there was nothing illegal about the mailers, which use “very standard messages (get out the vote ), using typical ‘social pressure’ language…

Attorney Scott Thomas also wrote: