The August 31 email subject line is direct, and congratulatory: "Congrats—You’ve been selected to participate."
A report card for President Joe Biden is due September 1, and the president needs your help to get his rating up. You've been "hand-selected," one of only five Democrats in your state, to give feedback. Will you click through?
The email, from People Not Profits, a shadowy PAC based in Florida, directs the reader to a website—still functional despite the September 1 deadline—where one is expected to grade Biden as president and commander in chief.
Then, the reader is asked if Biden is a better president than his predecessor, Donald Trump, and whether or not Democrats should fight to keep Congress. That last question is given only one answer: "Yes, of course!" The PAC then launches into its sell, asking for donations to help People Not Profits deliver Democrats an enduring majority, claiming they are "experts at boosting voter turnout right at the moment Democrats need it most."
"We’ve been at the forefront of winning historically tight races," the group continues. "Our methods are proven and our results are HUGE."
Those claims, however, are hard to substantiate.
People Not Profits hasn't been a major factor in national elections, and the group appears to only exist to solicit donations. The PAC's site has a landing page that simply asks for donations without any other information—typing in variations on the page (appending "about" and "home" to the site's url) turns up a number of similarly false "petitions" and "polls" that only ask for money.
The PAC is over-promising and using a so-called "Report Card" to do so. The lesson for donors here is pretty simple. Not only are the claims too good to be true, they're frontloaded with a deceptive, manipulative ask by a group that bets enough people will buy-in.
Whenever you're told your input is needed, exclusively, for a poll or questionnaire, approach with skepticism.