A lawyer representing a voter participation nonprofit said that a cease-and-desist letter from the Maryland Attorney General was “troubling,” defending its mailers showing the recipients’ voting history as a constitutionally protected get-out-the-vote effort.

The letter to Attorney General Anthony Brown noted that the Center for Voter Information was not planning on sending additional mailers in Maryland ahead of Election Day on Tuesday, but chided the office for alleging its “social pressure” strategy was intimidating voters.

The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Voter Information and the Voter Participation Center sent “voting report cards” to Marylanders that described whether they voted in the previous four elections. The report cards also listed the voting histories of two neighbors on the same street while redacting their names and addresses.

Brown’s office sent a cease-and-desist letter to the nonprofits on Thursday, alleging that the mailers “intimidated and threatened” Maryland residents and threatened to “expose” them if they didn’t vote.

“Let me be clear: these unnerving letters are unacceptable, and Maryland voters should know that their decision to vote this Election Day is entirely theirs to make,” Brown, a Democrat, said in a news release.

The mailers also contain a statement that the center “will be reviewing these records after the election to determine whether or not you joined your neighbors in voting.”

“It is not ‘intimidating’ or ‘threatening’ to promote voting by discussing neighborhood participation rates and stating that the records will be reviewed after the election to determine whether the recipient joined their neighbors in voting,” attorney Scott E. Thomas wrote in his response to Brown’s letter.

He called Brown’s cease-and-desist message an “effort to suppress constitutionally protected GOTV activity,” and noted that Attorney General’s office had included quotes from text messages not affiliated with the nonprofits.

Maryland law permits a requester to receive a copy of the voter registration list with voters’ election participation history but prohibits actions designed to influence or attempt to influence a voter’s decision to vote through the use of force, fraud, threat, menace, intimidation, bribery, reward, or offer of reward, according to the release.

“The recipients to whom our office has spoken have uniformly described feeling intimidated, threatened, shocked, and ill-at-ease by this mailing,” the attorney general’s office said. “This threat to publicly expose the recipient’s voting record violates both Maryland and federal laws.”

The nonprofits have described their mail and digital campaigns as encouraging voter participation and making it easier for people to register. Information about voter registration and participation is public in most states, including Maryland, and is often used by political groups and other get-out-the-vote efforts. That data does not include for whom the voters ultimately voted.

The groups described themselves as nonpartisan, though their founder, Page Gardner, and CEO, Tom Lopach, are both former Democratic strategists. Their strategies have more commonly been targeted by Republican officials across the country.

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