Local Democratic leader who received Women's Voices robo-call suspects voter suppression
The following comment is from Durham, N.C. resident and local Democratic Party leader Kevin Farmer, who received and recorded the illegal Women's Voices Women Vote robo-call and brought it to the attention of Democracy North Carolina:
I'd like to clear up one discrepancy that has been floating around in relation to this story. I've seen people ask in comments here, and on other sites, why WVWV would target somebody named "Kevin Farmer," obviously a man.
As I've explained to several people, and as was reported on WTVD, the call I recorded and sent out was received at work, on the voicemail line that my wholesesale bread customers use to place their orders. I also received a call from the Obama campaign on the same line, two days prior to the call in question. My hypothesis about this -- and it remains a hypothesis, since I have no further empirical evidence -- is that both the Obama campaign and the WVWV were trolling around for unregistered voters.
The bakery where I work is in downtown Durham, in voting precinct #17, a low registration/high population (if you correlate voter reg w/Census data) district that looks like a hotspot for voter registration, going strictly by the numbers. The Obama campaign targeted this area with a robo call that emphasized same day registration/early vote. It was clear, concise, and contained all the necessary contact information.
The follow-up call from WVWV was anything but, and in my opinion, was designed for one purpose and one purpose alone: to sow confusion and suppress the vote.
I look at it this way. As a poster on another site noted when they posted the script for one of WVWV's radio/tv ads, they clearly know how to construct an informative and effective ad piece. Now let's look at what they did for this robo-call: an organization whose stated mission is registering single women to vote, an organization that notes, on its web site, the sponsorship of several noted female celebrities, this organization did not send out an informative, inspiring ("Hey ladies, it's time for women to stand up and be counted!") call using the voice of Christine Lahti or Julia Louis-Dreyfuss (a couple of their celebrity sponsors). Oh no, they sent out a dull, obscure, and mis-informative call using the voice of.......some guy named Lamont Williams.
Look, I am the Chairman of the Durham County Democratic Party, not a seasoned political veteran working out of Washington. I've done robo calls, both the targeting and the scripts, and I would never in a million years use a call like the one I received to reach the audience WVWV claim they were trying to reach, and their organization is one helluva lot more sophisticated than ours.
I'm sorry, but claims of incompetence just do not cover this at all. In my opinion, this was malfeasance, pure and simple.
Labels: facing south, Kevin Farmer, north carolina, north carolina primary, robo-calls, voter suppression, voting rights, women's voices women vote
8 Comments:
WVWV response:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/1/10121/58318/521/506972
Unbelievable. This is a defense of WVWV posted at Huffington Post today:
"There may have been mistakes made in this particular registration drive in North Carolina, but Women's Voices, Women Vote's motives were not malicious or intended in any way to confuse voters. Ironically, just the opposite. I know the staff is making every effort to right the situation."
By William McNary, President of USAction, Co-Executive Director Citizen Action/Illinois and Board Member of Women's Voices, Women Vote
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I'm sorry, but they have done so much damage that if they aren't criminally negligent, they are outrageously incompetent.
They have interfered with our elections in North Carolina and caused irreparable harm.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-mcnary/womens-voices-women-vote_b_99548.html
More questions for WVWV.
(1) I find your first answer -- to the 'whom are you targeting' question -- insufficiently specific. Please provide documentation. The concern is that you were targeting young women and black women, who are voting in droves for Barack Obama. Is this the case or isn't it?
(2) Please provide a timeline showing how you notified state officials of your activity and *specifically what activity you forewarned them of.* As you are no doubt aware of by now, there are accusations that you did not notify the state of your intend to phone voters at all... and that notification may have come Monday afternoon for activities that began as early as Thursday and Friday. A specific timeline, please.
(3) Was the "mistake" of lack of disclosure on the calls made in other states? Please list the states where you did disclose the name of the group in calls, if any, and the states where you did not do so.
(4) Is WVWV willing to call back all of the inappropriately reached voters to inform them that they are indeed registered to vote?
To add to the comment above, WVWV needs to disclose WHEN their press releases to North Carolina media and other states went out; to whom they went out in each state; and why their press release didn't mention anything about robocalls.
As far as I can tell, all of their press releases went out this week, after the story broke, to make it look like they'd taken care of all the controversies. But in Page Gardner's statement, she's making it sound like she sent the press release last week, along with the letter to the Board of Elections.
Moreover, why isn't any version of this press release posted on their web page listing their press releases?
And given the fact that they're touting AS OF TWO DAYS AGO their voter outreach in Colorado, have they coordinated this time with the Colorado Secretary of State, which issued a press release in November accusing them of confusing voters.
Kevin, because you got a call from Obama as well as WVWV, the likelihood is very strong your bakery phone number was used in the past by someone else. This kind of "old stale data" is very common in phone matching.
As for WVWV, as many political vets know, they are terminally incompetent at everything except getting gullible big donors to give big bucks.
You are quite right, anonymous. Conventional wisdom says that phone numbers, as a general rule, are updated every 2 years, and the bakery has been open for a year and a half. So I did a search for the phone number in question in "Votebuilder," the Democratic Party's database.
......and I found an entry: African-American male, registered in 2004, unaffiliated, has never voted, listed as "Active."
Its so shamfull
Kevin Farmer,
Please make your complaint loud and clear so that the national media has to cover it. As Hillary said yesterday, "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." So lets not be fooled by her. Look, these are seasoned Washington operatives. They know they are creating confusion. Their purpose, getting single women registered, demands knowledge of registration dates, the importance of clear directions, with actual registration deadlines and the targeting of women who had not registered. So how could they claim they did not know the registration deadline, fail to give information about registration laws and then target African American males. Never mind that WVWV was already in trouble for their tactics and cannot claim "oops." Democracy will not endure if we cannot depend upon honest and fair elections. Hillary and her supporters look as if they will do anything to be elected. Please have the courage to do everything you can do to get this story out. Make a difference for our collective future
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