Fallout from Facing South's investigation of illegal and deceptive election activity
Facing South's investigation into illegal robo-calls in North Carolina and deceptive election tactics in 10 other states by Women's Voices Women Vote has had quite an impact.
Here are some of the major developments since we put up our first post at 9:32 am Tuesday morning looking into the issue:
* Yesterday, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper publicly denounced the group's tactics, declaring their anonymous robo-calls to be illegal and ordering that they be stopped.
* Also yesterday, voting rights advocates Democracy North Carolina successfully persuaded Women's Voices to delay until after the primaries a deceptive mailing to 276,000 North Carolina households that would have further confused voters.
* Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama addressed the illegal robo-calls in a press conference yesterday, calling them "extremely disturbing."
* Women's Voices Women Vote board member John Podesta, President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, has publicly stated that Women's Voices "will conduct a full and prompt accounting of the circumstances of the voter registration program."
* The investigation has been widely covered in the media and brought greater attention to deceptive election practices. So far, the controversy has been picked up by NPR, ABC News, CNN, The Economist, Harper's, Talking Points Memo, Time, TPM Muckraker, The Week and Wired.
We hope that this investigation and others keep the issue of illegal and deceptive campaign practices in the spotlight.
Here are some of the major developments since we put up our first post at 9:32 am Tuesday morning looking into the issue:
* Yesterday, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper publicly denounced the group's tactics, declaring their anonymous robo-calls to be illegal and ordering that they be stopped.
* Also yesterday, voting rights advocates Democracy North Carolina successfully persuaded Women's Voices to delay until after the primaries a deceptive mailing to 276,000 North Carolina households that would have further confused voters.
* Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama addressed the illegal robo-calls in a press conference yesterday, calling them "extremely disturbing."
* Women's Voices Women Vote board member John Podesta, President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, has publicly stated that Women's Voices "will conduct a full and prompt accounting of the circumstances of the voter registration program."
* The investigation has been widely covered in the media and brought greater attention to deceptive election practices. So far, the controversy has been picked up by NPR, ABC News, CNN, The Economist, Harper's, Talking Points Memo, Time, TPM Muckraker, The Week and Wired.
We hope that this investigation and others keep the issue of illegal and deceptive campaign practices in the spotlight.
Labels: democracy north carolina, north carolina, robo-calls, voting rights, women's voices women vote
8 Comments:
I need to ask yet again if Podesta's "full and prompt accounting" will include their press strategy, in particular a press release sent to the Craig, Colorado, Daily Press dated Tuesday, April 29 and republished as an article in that paper on Wednesday, April 30, and then REPUBLISHED on the WVWV website that same day that makes it seem as if this is all just some sort of standard practice, happening equally in all states, yet not mentioning robocalls or the fact that the organization was criticized by the Colorado Secretary of State last year for poor practices.
Thanks so much for your work on this. The net at its best.
The spin and tap-dancing by WvWv are world-class. Which only confirms you're on a hot trail.
Stick with it. This is a Watergate burglary event, with all sorts of strings leading to the puppet maestros.
-- stan
This is a statement from James Rucker, ED of ColorOfChange.org:
There have been clear errors in planning and execution on the part of Women's Voices Women's Votes, and those errors have led to a situation where Black voters in North Carolina may be dissuaded from voting in a hotly contested and important primary election. This is a major problem and point of concern. To continue in the important role they've played in past elections, Women's Voices Women's Votes must fix the damage done and prevent it from happening in the future--working to restore the faith of the community protecting access to the vote by all people. It is essential that groups doing voter registration operate within the law and that they ensure that they do not confuse voters in to the process of doing their work.
At the same time, the accusations that the errors made by Women's Voices Women's Votes are part of a conspiracy to help Senator Clinton, appear to be false and reckless. Women's Voices Women's Votes has a history of registering voters of color, and the facts as we understand them, simply don't point to such a conspiracy. As Women's Voices Women's Votes takes deserved heat for whatever damage they've caused, it's not productive for them to be unfairly maligned as working to harm or help one of the presidential primary candidates.
As an organization that is tirelessly fighting voter suppression in the Black community where a history of disenfranchisement necessitates a raised level of scrutiny, we must take any accusations seriously, but in doing so rely on the facts.
Please tell me why the Atty General doesn't file charges on the laws that WVWV has broken so far?
What kind of message is he sending by not filing charges now?
Can't he add charges as more crimes become apparent?
I hate to ask this, but is it political?
Hi jerimee:
Can you please ask James Rucker why the suggestions that these calls were in an effort to help Sen. Clinton are "reckless," particularly given the WVWV leadership's role in her campaign - including her campaign manager?
Can you further ask him how he knows them to be "false"?
And finally, can you ask him how on earth WVWV could have repeated this same, awful mistake in Virginia before THEIR primary a couple of months ago?
Finally, was he contacted by WVWV and encouraged to put out this statement (which I don't see on their website)?
Jonathan, the answers I've seen to these question aren't very satisfying.
I think the idea is that WVWV is a vital part of the progressive movement, and that to criticize WVWV is cutting of our nose to spite our face.
Here is a response by Jane Hamsher of firedoglake:
There were 20 million single women who were not registered to vote during the 2004 election. They are reliable Democratic voters and had they been registered, it could have changed the outcome of the election. WVWV has taken on the task of trying to reach them. There were certainly mistakes made here and WVWV need to provide answers about how and why they happened. But feeding them (and anyone associated with them) through the wood chipper of candidate advocacy right now will have bad consequences for all of us down the road.
There are real, serious concerted efforts to disenfranchise voters, as with the recent Indiana Voter ID act that was waved through the Supreme Court. There is no evidence at this time that what happened in North Carolina falls into that category.
Excuse Jerimee- but you are just flat out wrong.
These people were told over and over -- in TEN other states --that what they were doing was wrong, confusing voters and corrupting the vote. But they continued to do it over and over again.
How can you possibly characterize that as unintentional?
My best guess -- 95% of the people who work there have no idea what is going on, and are merely either stupid or arrogant, but someone in that group has used its overall efforts to benefit Clinton and used his or her employees in the process.
Furthermore, they do not do nearly the amount of good they claim. Why? Because they mostly a huge percentage of their kits to ALREADY REGISTERED voters, who then re-register out of confusion. WVWV then uses those those unnecessary registrations (which cause a lot of work for BOE people!) to artificially inflate their success numbers.
And the millions they are paying to companies owned or run by officers and board members? Disgraceful.
They need to be shut down, I don't care what end of the political spectrum they are on. They give other non-profits a bad name -- and their arrogance in refusing to change their behavior is shameful.
All they had to do to begin with was use their heads and learn the registration laws and deadlines in the states where they were so keen to "do good" -- or work with local groups in those states, a no-brainer for most organizations. But these people? They were too busy lining their pockets to give a crap.
Shut. them. down.
"All they had to do to begin with was use their heads and learn the registration laws and deadlines in the states where they were so keen to "do good" -- or work with local groups in those states, a no-brainer for most organizations. But these people? They were too busy lining their pockets to give a crap."
And then they had the temerity AFTER THE FACT to release a press release to the NC media - pretending it was sent out last week - quoting all these deadlines as if they knew from the start that it could be confusing.
Of course, I guarantee that if anyone receives these registration packets, NO SUCH MENTION will be made of the meticulous detail they included in their fake NC press release.
And, not only did they not working with local groups who actually are doing some GOOD, they are not coordinating with Boards of Elections or Secretary of State offices in advance, either. The Colorado SOS office said that even after the press release was submitted by the state last November, WVWV still didn't return phone calls or attempt to obtain the Voter File that most nonprofits use when doing registration drive.
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