How A Democrat Donor-Led Voting Group Allegedly Pushed A Chinese National To Cast His Ballot

When Haoxiang Gao saw a crowd gathered at the University of Michigan’s early voting center, a worker handed him a registration form, according to documents obtained by The Federalist. In just minutes, he allegedly registered and voted illegally. 

Gao is a green card holder who was studying at UM, as The Federalist previously reported. He allegedly cast his ballot on Oct. 27 and now faces two felony charges: false swearing to register to vote and trying to vote as an unqualified elector. According to documents obtained by The Federalist, a worker at the voting center — run by Democrat donors — encouraged Gao to vote.

Gao registered and voted from a “get out the vote” site at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), according to The Detroit News. As The College Fix previously reported, the center — which served as a “one-stop-shop” for boosting voter turnout on campus — was run by Democrat donors. 

In a written, first-person account of what happened, Gao — who goes by “Neil” — wrote that he and his roommate were passing the crowded voting station and stopped by “out of curiosity.” 

“It’s near election and you get asked to vote by volunteers everywhere you go on the street,” Gao wrote. “A lady asked me if I am here to register or to vote, before I said anything and was still figuring out what is the relationship between registering and voting, she passed me a form and a pen. I took it naturally without asking myself what I am doing, and start filling out the form.”

Gao’s roommate, a Chinese freshman named Nan Xiang, confirmed that volunteers were passing out voter registration applications, according to a police report. 

“Nan told the employee that he is an international student and is not able to vote. Nan was surprised that the person did not even ask if he was a United States citizen prior to giving him the Michigan Voter Registration Application,” wrote UM Police Sgt. Ryan Cavanaugh in a report. “Neil began to fill out the State of Michigan Voter Registration Application as he stood next to him.” 

Xiang said Gao had mentioned voting beforehand, according to the report. According to Gao’s account, he saw the section on the forms asking whether or not he was a citizen, and previous experiences led him to believe “I am a citizen, and I can vote,” as the Michigan Enjoyer reported.

A copy of the voter registration form notes “MCard Wolverine Access” on the upper-left corner, as Gao used a student identification to satisfy state ID requirements. 

For the Chinese national, voting was a “quick” 15-minute task, according to his account. But after he went back to his dorm, he began to second-guess his actions. His roommate told Cavanaugh that after arriving in the dorm room, Gao “posted something on a Chinese app” about voting — and then learned it was illegal for a green card holder to vote.

Gao reported himself to Ann Arbor police, UM police, and the city clerk’s office. According to a university report, he also tried calling the voting station, which “said there was nothing they could do” but report the illegal voting. 

Days afterward, Gao considered trying to cancel his voter registration, according to his account. But he was only removed from Michigan’s voter rolls by February this year, according to Qualified Voter File data from Check My Vote Co-Founder Phani Mantravadi — even though The Federalist exposed this issue in December. 

A Leftist Vote Mill

Hannah Smotrich and Stephanie Rowden, associate professors at the Stamps School of Art and Design, ran the on-campus “election hub” at UMMA where Gao reportedly voted. Together, they have given more than $17,000 total to Democrats and leftist causes, according to OpenSecrets data.

Smotrich has given more than $12,000 to Democrats and leftist groups, including Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Sen. Raphael Warnock, and former President Joe Biden since 2020. And since 2017, Rowden has given more than $1,800 to such causes, including Slotkin and the left-wing group Voters Not Politicians. 

The Democrat donors’ group, the supposedly nonpartisan Creative Campus Voting Project, partnered with the Ann Arbor city clerk and UMICH Votes to operate the voting station that enabled Gao to vote. Such get-out-the-vote groups often target likely-Democrat voters, and Pew Research found last year that 66 percent of college-aged voters leaned Democrat and just 34 percent leaned Republican. 

Creative Campus Voting Project has hosted various get-out-the-vote campaigns and “election hubs” in the past, starting with a 2018 project called “Voting is Sexy.” The project referred students to leftist group Vote411, which harvests data for left-wing groups, as The Federalist reported. 

The Creative Campus Voting Project registered more than 9,300 voters and captured more than 13,000 ballots in 2020 and 2022, and nearly 15,000 votes in 2024, according to its website.

Leftists have repeatedly taken advantage of supposedly nonpartisan get-out-the-vote activities. Perhaps the most prominent example is the “Zuckbucks” scandal of 2020, when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shuttled nearly $350 million through leftist nonprofits to election offices to boost Democrat turnout. In 2024, then-President Joe Biden co-opted federal agencies to engage in a similar effort, which took the nickname “Bidenbucks.” The latest effort was ultimately not enough to overcome now-President Donald Trump’s landslide victory. 

Democrats routinely enable noncitizen voting — like in Oregon, where the DMV registered thousands of voters of unknown citizenship, as The Federalist previously reported. They also constantly oppose voter ID laws, claiming noncitizen voting doesn’t really happen that often. Should it come as a surprise, then, that this Democrat donor-led get-out-the-vote operation apparently helped a Chinese national vote? 

Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He is a spring 2025 fellow of The College Fix. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.

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