Voting Group that Targets Welfare Recipients Tied to Warren Campaign

The Boston Herald today reported that the daughter of Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren chairs a non-profit group called Demos, which pushes state governments to spend taxpayer money to register welfare recipients to vote. The president of Demos, Miles S. Rapoport, has donated to Warren's campaign against incumbent Republican senator Scott Brown.

Here's more on Demos and Warren's daughter, from the Herald:

Demos, a group founded in the late 1990s to counter conservative think tanks, has a board chaired by Amelia Warren Tyagi. It also counts President Obama as a founding board member.

The group in May successfully sued to force the Bay State to send out nearly 500,000 voter registration cards to those on welfare at a cost of $276,000. It also has sued nine states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Louisiana.

Their Bay State lawsuit, filed in conjunction with the ACORN offshoot New England United for Justice, comes as Warren faces a tight battle with [Republican] Scott Brown in a nationally watched battle that could decide which Party controls the Senate.

Brown said he supports getting those who can legally register to vote signed up, but said officials shouldn’t do so with taxpayer dollars.

Rapoport has denied any connections between Warren's campaign and the group's efforts to register welfare recipients and maintains that Demos is strictly non-partisan. "Amelia Warren Tyagi has been a superb Demos Board Member or Board Chair since 2006," Rapoport said in a statement. "She has served in these unpaid position with tremendous integrity and thoughtfulness, and she would not, and did not, encourage any work in order to benefit her mother's campaign. Demos was doing NVRA work well before Amelia came on our board, and we are going to continue it long after this year's election is over."