D.C. nonprofit aimed at women voters behind deceptive N.C. robo-calls (Clinton ties?)

[tiptoe]

Source: Facing South

FACING SOUTH EXCLUSIVE:    D.C. nonprofit aimed at women voters behind deceptive N.C. robo-calls

By Chris Kromm
Facing South

Who's behind the mysterious "robo-calls" that have spread misleading voter information and sown confusion and frustration among North Carolina residents over the last week?

Facing South has confirmed the source of the calls, and the mastermind is Women's Voices Women Vote, a D.C.-based nonprofit which aims to boost voting among "unmarried women voters."

What's more, Facing South has learned that the firestorm Women's Voices has ignited in North Carolina isn't the group's first brush with controversy. Women's Voices' questionable tactics have spawned thousands of voter complaints in at least 11 states and brought harsh condemnation from some election officials for their secrecy, misleading nature and likely violations of election law.
...
Some have also questioned the ties between Women's Voices operatives and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton. Gardner, for example, contributed $2,500 to Clinton's HILLPAC on May 4, 2006, and in March 2005 she donated a total of $4,200 to Clinton, according to The Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org. She has not contributed to the Obama campaign, according to the database.
...

Read more: http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2008/04/facing-south-exclusive-dc-nonprofit.asp

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(emphases mine...posted under premise of LBN Rule#: "5. ... Do not link to blogs, vanity sites, or blatantly biased sources, except in cases where reputable mainstream sources are not available. Please make an effort to link directly to the original source of an article ...")

Reader comments follow article.

[grytpype]

1. I'm not surprised Hillary is using Repug voter-suppression tactics.

She is obviously an admirer of Karl Rove and his methods of stealing elections.

[tiptoe]

2. NB: These are African-American households in NC being targeted

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2008/04/facing-south-exclusive-bogus-nc.asp

As reported yesterday...African-American households are receiving anonymous robo-calls with misleading information about voting. Facing South has now learned that those calls are very similar to tactics recently used in Virginia and Ohio, suggesting they may be linked to a national voter deception strategy.
...

http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/elections_board_hunting_robocaller

Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, said in a news release that the calls were being made to African American households. The good government watchdog posted audio of the call.

"This is another in a long line of deceptive practices used in North Carolina and elsewhere that particularly target African-American voters," Hall said. "In our view, this phone message plainly violates North Carolina law. We ask the Attorney General, State Bureau of Investigation, and the State Board of Elections to investigate, expose, and prosecute the sponsors of these calls."

Hall said that in North Carolina, it is a Class I felony for any person "to misrepresent the law to the public through mass mailing or any other means of communication where the intent and the effect is to intimidate or discourage potential voters from exercising their lawful right to vote."
...

83% Blacks in NC would vote Obama, only 9% Clinton according to latest, April 28 NC Presidential Primary poll by PPP. The NC Primary is next week, May 3.

[tiptoe]

10. May 6 is the NC Primary. Schedule here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5676299&mesg_id=5676299

[cbayer]

3. Here is WVWV response

http://www.wvwv.org/2008/4/30/mail-registration

This has been posted multiple times today and I am not going to join in the fray at this point. I just thought their response should be included as this is now posted as LBN.

[tiptoe]

4. thank you...and likewise for the link to an "interesting interchange" between posters & a WVWV rep:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/nonprofit_womens_voices_women.php

(source: "I am not necessarily defending them.")

[cbayer]

5. Can't tell from your tone whether you are being sarcastic or not,

but, yes, I did post that as well.

[tiptoe]

6. sorry, my bad...changed the wording a bit...thanks again! nt

[tiptoe]

11. k

[Raine1967]

7. According to Source watch

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Maggie_Williams
Maggie Williams is on the leadership team of Woman's Voices, Woman's Votes.

And Page Gardner is listed on the WVWV bio site:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070706100052/http://www.wvwv.org/aboutwvwv/index.cfm?id=3

[tiptoe]

8. New development: "North Carolina AG Opens Investigation of Robo Calls"

North Carolina AG Opens Investigation of Robo Calls

By Paul Kiel - April 30, 2008, 6:22PM
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/north_carolina_ag_opens_invest.php

And yet another development on those calls by Women's Voices Women Vote.

North Carolina's attorney general has just put out a press release (pdf) saying that he's investigating the calls and taking credit for having them stopped. "Regardless of the motivation, the robo-calls violated the law and they needed to stop," Roy Cooper said. He also includes a correspondence with the group's lawyer. In the letter, Cooper requests a variety of information about the calls.

Sarah Johnson, the group's spokeswoman declined to comment on the correspondence, referring questions to the group's lawyer. But she did say that the calls occurred last Thursday and Friday in North Carolina as they did in all the other 24 states (pdf) targeted by the group this April.

[Infinite Hope]

9. If they're spreading misinformation, they're infringing on one's voting liberties. Jail them. n/t

[tiptoe]

12. Update: "Women's Voices had promised to stop anonymous robo-calls in February"

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2008/05/womens-voices-had-promised-to-stop.asp

Two and a half months before the D.C. group Women's Voices Women Vote began making illegal, anonymous robo-calls to voters in North Carolina, they had promised to stop the practice nationally, after being investigated by state police in Virginia.
...
It was 11 weeks later -- over two and a half months -- that Women's Voices began blanketing North Carolina with anonymous robo-calls from a fictitious caller named "Lamont Williams." As a tape recording of the North Carolina calls show, the calls in no way identify their source. Recipients of the calls tell Facing South that the phone number of the caller was also blocked.

Yesterday, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper confirmed that the Women's Voices robo-calls were illegal because of the lack of identifying information, and left open the possibility of criminal sanctions against the group.

Did Women's Voices lie to the Virginia State Police when they promised to stop making anonymous robo-calls? Or were the illegal, anonymous calls in North Carolina just another "accidental omission?"

[tiptoe]

13. "Vote suppression in North Carolina?"

Vote suppression in North Carolina?
http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2008/04/vote_suppression_in_north_carolina.php
Posted by Mark Kleiman, April 30, 2008

Women's Voices, Women's Votes is a 501 c(3) nonprofit devoted to registering unmarried women to vote. It has lots of connections to the Clinton campaign; as of a year ago, the "leadership team" included Maggie Williams, her business partner Pat Griffin, and Hal Malchow, now the direct-mail honcho of the Clinton campaign.

WVWV paid for a bunch of robo-calls to black voters in North Carolina — men as well as women — in which someone identified only as "Lamont Williams" said that a voter registration packet was on its way to them and that they should sign it and mail it back to be registered to vote. The calls went out after the mail-in registration deadline, but before the deadline for one-stop registration and early voting; any voter who relied on the information in the call would wind up being disenfranchised for the upcoming primary. In addition, many of the recipients were already registered, and the calls were well-designed to cause them to doubt whether they could vote before receiving the promised package in the mail.

The calls came from an "ID blocked" number and included no reference to WVWV, which makes them illegal in North Carolina. WVWV has been caught doing similar things in black neighborhoods just before other primaries this year, including in Virginia.

So: Was this an amazing set of good-faith mistakes, or was it a series of attempts by people friendly to the Clinton campaign to suppress the black vote in order to benefit HRC against Obama?

Considering the illegal anonymity ("Lamont Williams" does not exist), the targeting of black neighborhoods rather than women (and the use of a streotypically "black" name for the caller), the unlikelihood that a well-funded, highly professional voter-registration group would not know about the registration deadlines and be unable to restrict its mailings to people not yet registered, the national pattern, and the amazingly lame response by WVWC after they were caught, what do you think?