Voter Registration, GOTV, & Candidate Forums
Before law school, I ran field operations for a statewide get-out-the-vote effort funded by an independent expenditure group. Fresh out of college, I spent the campaign focused on turf, call sheets, and door counts. I had no visibility into the compliance infrastructure sitting behind the operation: the legal boundaries that let an independent expenditure group spend explicitly to elect one candidate, walled off from any coordination with the campaign itself. That infrastructure exists for a reason. An IE group is built to be partisan. A § 501(c)(3) is built to never be. The mechanics – phone banks, door-knocking, rides to the polls – look identical from the ground. What separates a lawful nonprofit voter-engagement program from a taxable political expenditure is everything happening one level up, in documentation most staff and volunteers never see.
Core Doctrine: Three Permitted Activities
As previously discussed, § 501(c)(3) organization is absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, a candidate for public office. Three specific voter‑engagement activities are nonetheless permitted, provided each is carried out in a nonpartisan manner.
1. Candidate forums. A public forum involving several candidates qualifies as exempt educational activity, unless it is operated in a way that shows bias for or against a particular candidate.
2. Voter registration drives. An organization may register voters, provided the activity does not indicate a preference for any candidate or political party.
3. Get‑out‑the‑vote drives. The Internal Revenue Service applies the same neutrality standard to GOTV activity that it applies to voter registration. The two are treated as a single category, not separate tests.
Nonpartisanship is the dividing line for all three. Intent does not substitute for it. An organization that believes its voter engagement is neutral, but has not documented that neutrality against the factors in the next section, has not actually established the safe harbor.
The Facts-and-Circumstances Test
When reviewing voter‑engagement activity, the Internal Revenue Service uses a facts‑and‑circumstances test, set out in Revenue Ruling 2007‑41 and illustrated through twenty‑one factual situations. The presence of every favorable factor does not guarantee an activity is permitted, and the absence of some factors does not guarantee it is prohibited. Whether intervention occurred turns on the totality of the circumstances. An organization should treat the factors below as a documentation checklist for its own protection, not as a statutory safe harbor it can check off and forget.
Candidate forums. The IRS weighs whether all legally qualified candidates were invited, whether an independent, nonpartisan panel prepared and presented the questions, whether the topics covered a broad range of issues of public interest, whether each candidate received an equal opportunity to present views, whether candidates were asked to agree or disagree with the organization’s own positions, whether the moderator commented on the questions or otherwise implied approval or disapproval of a candidate, and whether the moderator stated that the views expressed were the candidates’ own and did not represent the organization.
Inviting a candidate to speak, in a candidate capacity. The IRS weighs equal opportunity for candidates seeking the same office, whether the organization indicated support or opposition, whether any political fundraising occurred at the event, whether the individual was selected for reasons unrelated to candidacy, whether the organization maintained a nonpartisan atmosphere, and whether the organization’s announcement of the appearance identified the capacity in which the candidate appeared without mentioning the candidacy or the election.
Inviting a candidate speaking in a non‑candidate capacity, for example as an officeholder or subject‑matter expert. The IRS similarly considers whether the individual spoke only in the non‑candidate capacity, whether anyone mentioned the candidacy or election, whether any campaign activity occurred in connection with the appearance, why the individual was selected, whether the atmosphere remained nonpartisan, and whether the organization’s own communications avoided any reference to candidacy or election.
Voter registration and GOTV drives. The IRS asks whether candidates are named or depicted on an equal basis, whether any political party is named for a purpose other than identifying each candidate’s affiliation, whether the activity is limited to urging registration and voting and describing the times and places to do so, and whether registration or turnout services are offered without regard to the voter’s political preference. A charity that runs a phone bank and then offers rides to the polls only to voters who agree with a favored candidate’s position has engaged in prohibited intervention, regardless of how the phone bank itself was conducted.
No post‑2007 guidance has modified this factor set for § 501(c)(3) organizations. A 2013 proposal to replace it with a bright‑line “candidate‑related political activity” category applied only to § 501(c)(4) organizations, was never finalized, and Congress has since barred the IRS from funding such a rule. The Service’s own Political Activity Compliance Initiative examinations illustrate how the test is applied in practice rather than in theory. In the 2004 election cycle, it reviewed 110 cases, issued written advisories in 69, finding intervention but declining to penalize, generally because the conduct was one‑time or the organization had relied in good faith on counsel, and revoked exempt status in 5. That ratio, roughly 5 revocations out of 110 examined organizations, reflects how the totality‑of‑circumstances standard actually resolves in enforcement, not merely in guidance.
Jurisdiction-by-Jurisdiction Breakdown (CT, DC, MA, NY)
In all four jurisdictions, a genuinely nonpartisan nonprofit faces no state‑specific registration, licensing, or reporting regime for voter registration, GOTV activity, or candidate forums beyond the federal rules already described. Every statekeys its campaign‑finance registration, reporting, and disclaimer obligations to activity that promotes or opposes a candidate, party, or ballot measure. Nonpartisan voter engagement falls outside that trigger in each jurisdiction, and each jurisdiction expressly or effectively carves out bona fide candidate forums. An organization operating a nonpartisan program in these CT, DC, MA, or NY does not need to separately register it at the state level.
Connecticut. Connecticut imposes no third‑party voter‑registration‑organization or canvasser registration requirement. But it does impose one operative duty. Under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 9‑23g(b), a person who accepts a completed registration application for return to the registrars must immediately mail or return it. Connecticut’s “expenditure” definition separately excludes a lawful communication by a § 501(c)(3) organization, effective June 9, 2025.
District of Columbia. The District’s voter‑registration‑agency obligations, including the ten‑ or five‑day return deadline for completed applications, apply only to designated District government agencies, not private nonprofit drives. DC law defines “Debate” narrowly as the government‑run event under the Fair Elections Program and imposes no requirement on a private nonprofit’s sponsorship of a candidate forum.
Massachusetts. Massachusetts contemplates individuals and organizations conducting voter registration returning completed affidavits to local registrars, but imposes no registration, licensing, or return‑deadline obligation on the organization itself. Massachusetts also provides the clearest statutory forum carve‑out of the four states. Its “electioneering communication” definition expressly excludes bona fide candidate debates or forums and the advertising or promotion of them, removing nonprofit‑sponsored forums from that regulatory category entirely.
New York. New York has no dedicated third‑party voter‑registration‑organization registration requirement, and its “political committee” definition expressly excludes organizations formed for the discussion of political questions without connection to any vote. New York separately excludes candidate debates or forums from its definition of “independent expenditure.”
Candidate Forum Design Failures
A nonprofit does not lose its exemption for hosting a candidate forum. It loses the protection of that forum if there biased moderation, inconsistent candidate exclusion, or fundraising tied to a candidate’s appearance. Each has been the subject of direct IRS enforcement, and none requires a large or sustained violation to create exposure.
Biased moderation. A forum operated to show bias for or against a candidate, including through biased questioning procedures, is prohibited intervention. The safe harbor requires a moderator whose role is limited to enforcing ground rules, who does not comment on the questions or otherwise imply approval or disapproval, paired with an opening and closing disclaimer that the views expressed are the candidates’ own. The clearest applied failure involved an organization whose forum process produced a final report that rated candidates in “box score” style. See I.R.S. Tech. Adv. Mem. 9635003 (Aug. 30, 1996). The Service held that eliciting and broadcasting candidate information stayed within the exemption, but publishing the rating crossed into providing political editorial opinion to the public, converting the organization into one engaged in intervention. A separate Second Circuit decision confirms that even an objective‑seeming, nonpartisan candidate rating is prohibited intervention. Ass’n of Bar of City of New York v. Comm’r, 858 F.2d 876 (2d Cir. 1988). A poor rating offers a candidate no comfort merely because the process that produced it was nonpartisan.
Selective candidate exclusion. All legally qualified candidates must be invited, and each must receive an equal opportunity to present views, judged by the nature of the event and not merely the manner of presentation. An organization that invites one candidate to speak at a well‑attended annual event, while relegating the opposing candidate to a sparsely attended meeting, has likely violated the prohibition even if each individual presentation was neutral. Limiting a forum to fewer than all legally qualified candidates is not automatically a violation. It is permissible where inviting every candidate is impractical, the organization adopts reasonable and objective criteria for who is included, applies those criteria consistently, and other factors confirm neutrality. For example, an organization that limited a forum using objective criteria, such as major‑party status combined with a polling threshold, may not have violated the prohibition through the exclusion itself. See I.R.S. Tech. Adv. Mem. 9635003 (Aug. 30, 1996).
Fundraising tied to a candidate appearance. Fundraising at an event where a candidate appears is one of the factors the Service weighs, but the line turns on equal availability rather than on the fundraising itself. Renting a hall to a candidate for a fundraising event at standard, first‑come‑first‑served rates is not intervention. But renting a mailing list to one candidate’s committee while declining another’s is. In the clearest applied example, an organization’s fundraising letters, sent contemporaneously with an election and biased toward one set of candidates, violated the prohibition even though the organization described its own work as nonpartisan. I.R.S. Tech. Adv. Mem. 9609007 (Mar. 1, 1996). The Service held the organization’s motivation was irrelevant, and that even minor intervention forfeits the exemption.
No de minimis exception. These three failure modes carry exposure regardless of scale or intent. Exemption is lost through participation in any political campaign, and that participation need not form a substantial part of the organization’s activities to matter. A single biased forum, one inconsistent exclusion, or one fundraising tie‑in may be sufficient to create both revocation exposure and excise‑tax exposure under the framework described in Section 8.
Staff and Board Personal Political Activity
Federal tax law and state campaign‑finance law draw the identical line, from two different directions. Under federal law, an individual’s personal political activity is unrestricted, but the organization may not support that activity in any way. The moment organizational resources are used, the activity is attributed to the organization itself. Under state law, an individual’s own uncompensated volunteer activity is excluded from the definitions of “contribution” and “expenditure,” but using organizational resources, including paid staff time, to aid a candidate becomes an in‑kind organizational contribution. The practical rule is the same everywhere: personal, uncompensated, and free of organizational resources is permitted; paid work time, letterhead, the organization’s accounts, mailing lists, or facilities converts the same conduct into organizational activity.
The two federal failure points that arise most often are the ones that feel incidental rather than deliberate. An endorsement placed in an organization’s own newsletter is attributed to the organization even where the individual fully reimburses the cost of publishing it. Reimbursement does not cure the use of an official publication. Campaign‑related work performed by an organization’s employees, at the organization’s offices, during regular business hours, is treated as inseparable from the organization’s own operations, even where the employees state they are not acting on the organization’s behalf. A verbal disclaimer does not overcome the use of paid time and organizational resources. The same attribution logic extends to an organization’s own website and social media accounts. Linking to content that shows a preference for or against a candidate can itself create exposure, regardless of who controls the linked content.
State law reaches the same conduct as an in‑kind contribution, but the consequences differ by jurisdiction, and the differences matter operationally.
Connecticut excludes a typical nonstock 501(c)(3) charity from its “business entity” corporate‑contribution ban, but its contribution definition separately reaches compensation for personal services rendered without charge to a candidate, which is the operative hook for paid staff time. Uncompensated individual volunteering remains excluded, and a narrow de minimis carve‑out covers voluntary, uncompensated social media or email content up to $100 in value.
Massachusetts is the most restrictive of the four. Its corporate‑contribution ban prohibits any officer or agent acting on behalf of a corporation, including a nonprofit corporation, from directly or indirectly giving money or any valuable thing to aid a candidate. Violation exposes the organization to a fine of up to $50,000 and exposes the individual officer or agent personally, with fines up to $10,000 or imprisonment.
New York bars a corporation from using money or property for or in aid of a candidate, but permits organizational expenditures, including contributions, up to $5,000 in the aggregate per calendar year. New York’s independent‑expenditure definition expressly names letterheads and public‑facing websites, and treats a communication the candidate requested or cooperated in as a coordinated contribution rather than a protected independent expenditure, which is directly relevant to any coordinated use of organizational channels.
The District of Columbia has no blanket nonprofit contribution ban. Instead, a nonprofit may contribute subject to per‑office dollar limits, and its contribution definition expressly includes furnishing goods, advertising, or services below their normal rate, which is the textual basis for treating organizational letterhead, mailing lists, facilities, or paid staff time as an in‑kind contribution counting against that limit.
For an organization operating across these four jurisdictions, the operational takeaway is uniform even though the penalty structure is not. Treat any staff or board member’s election‑season activity as organizational the moment it touches paid time, an official account, or organizational property, regardless of which state the activity occurs in. Massachusetts carries the sharpest personal liability exposure for the individual who directs the activity. The others cap or condition it, but none of the four exempts it.
Enforcement and Liability
A violation of the prohibition through any of the activities described above exposes an organization to two independent consequences that need not occur together: revocation of exempt status, and excise tax under I.R.C. § 4955. The excise tax functions as an intermediate sanction, an alternative or supplement to revocation, and the legislative history suggests Congress generally favored the tax over outright revocation where the conduct did not warrant the more severe remedy.
Section 4955 imposes a two‑tier tax reaching both the organization and the individuals who manage it.
First, the organization owes 10 percent of each political expenditure, with no cap. An organization manager who knowingly agreed to the expenditure owes 2.5 percent of it, capped at $5,000 per expenditure, but only where the organization is taxed, the manager knew the expenditure was political, and the agreement was willful and not due to reasonable cause.
Second, if the expenditure is not corrected within the taxable period, the organization owes an additional 100 percent of the expenditure, with no cap, and a manager who refused to agree to the correction owes 50 percent, capped at $10,000 per expenditure. Liability among multiple managers is joint and several.
The second‑tier tax is avoided by correcting the expenditure within the taxable period, meaning the organization recovers what it reasonably can and puts safeguards in place to prevent recurrence. It need not pursue legal recovery that would likely be futile. The first‑tier tax itself can be abated or refunded if the organization or manager shows the expenditure was not willful and flagrant, and was corrected.
The tax reaches voter engagement specifically, not only lobbying. The legislative history accompanying the 1987 statute that extended this excise tax to public charities states directly that expenditures for voter registration, voter turnout, or voter education that constitute campaign intervention are political expenditures under § 4955, while the neutral version of the same activities is not and does not trigger the tax. That distinction is the same nonpartisanship line running through the entire framework above.
The leading court decision illustrates how directly these consequences can follow from a single episode of voter‑engagement conduct, not from a sustained lobbying program. Four days before a presidential election, a church placed newspaper advertisements urging voters not to support a named candidate, based on his position on several issues, while soliciting tax‑deductible donations to cover the cost. The Internal Revenue Service opened an examination, revoked the church’s exempt status for the first time in its history for political involvement, and the D.C. Circuit affirmed. The Service’s own internal analysis of that matter concluded separately that the same conduct warranted excise tax under § 4955, applying the same facts‑and‑circumstances analysis described in Section 5 to treat the campaign‑intervention expenditure as a taxable political expenditure. Revocation and the excise tax are not alternative remedies the Service must choose between. The Service has applied revocation alone, the excise tax alone, both together, or resolved a matter through a closing agreement, depending on the facts.
Practical Takeaways
Each of the steps below can be completed before the fall calendar fills up. None of them requires a new legal judgment: each one builds the record that shows your voter engagement was nonpartisan in fact.
1. Adopt a written candidate‑forum protocol before invitations go out. Invite every legally qualified candidate for the office, or write down the objective criteria you will use to limit the field (for example, major‑party status combined with a polling threshold) and apply them the same way to every candidate. Have an independent, nonpartisan panel prepare the questions, cover a broad range of issues, limit the moderator’s role to enforcing ground rules, and read a disclaimer at the opening and close stating that the views expressed are the candidates’ own.
2. Review every voter‑registration and GOTV script, flyer, and post before it is used. Confirm that each one urges only registration and voting and describes when and where to do so, names candidates only on an equal basis, and mentions a party only to identify a candidate’s affiliation. Offer rides, reminders, and registration help to everyone, and tell volunteers in writing not to screen voters by political preference. If your drive collects completed registration applications in Connecticut, build in a step to return them to the registrars immediately.
3. Keep an event file for every forum, drive, and candidate appearance. Record who was invited and why, how questions were developed, and, for any candidate who was not included, which criteria applied. Keep the event announcement (which should identify any candidate’s capacity without mentioning the candidacy or the election), the final script or run of show, and the terms of any fundraising, rental, or list‑sharing connected to the event.
4. Adopt a staff and board political‑activity policy and collect signed acknowledgments. The policy should state that personal campaign activity is permitted only on personal time and without organizational resources: no campaign work during paid hours or at the office, and no use of letterhead, accounts, mailing lists, facilities, the website, or social media accounts. It should also bar endorsements in the organization’s newsletter even if the individual offers to pay for the space, and bar links from organizational channels to content that favors or opposes a candidate. In Massachusetts, where the officer or agent who directs the activity faces personal exposure, walk the board through the policy directly.
5. Set equal‑terms rules for rentals, and have a correction plan ready. Rent space or share lists with candidates only on the same standard terms offered to every candidate, and put that rule in writing before a campaign asks. Name the person who will act if a problem surfaces, and plan now for how the organization would recover what it reasonably can and add safeguards against recurrence, since prompt correction is what avoids the second tier of the excise tax.
Before Your Next Event
The infrastructure I could not see on that GOTV campaign is exactly what an examiner looks for in a nonprofit’s file years later: not what you intended, but what you can document.
Before your organization launches its next voter‑registration drive, GOTV canvass, or candidate forum, ask one question: if the IRS examined this activity a year from now, could you show, from records created at the time, how it measures against each of the facts‑and‑circumstances factors described above? If the honest answer is anything other than yes, the gap is in execution, and the time to close it is before the event, not after.
This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading this article does not create an attorney-client relationship. For advice specific to your organization's situation, contact Commonlight Legal LLP.
Alex Booker is the Managing Partner of Commonlight Legal LLP, a boutique law firm serving nonprofits in Massachusetts, DC, New York, and Connecticut. He advises nonprofit boards and executive directors on advocacy compliance, employment law, and governance.
Before founding Commonlight, Alex served as an Attorney Advisor in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of General Counsel, where he oversaw a portfolio of federal legislation and coordinated policy positions across agencies — experience that shapes how he advises nonprofits navigating the boundary between mission-driven advocacy and legal compliance. He is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and Washington, DC.