Reports continue to surface nationally about problems with Women's Voices Women Vote, in the wake of Facing South's investigation two weeks ago after concerns about deceptive election practices in North Carolina.

This week's Willamette Week -- a paper in Portland, Oregon -- looks at Women's Voices in its "Rogue of the Week" column with a report on what's happening in that state, which has a primary on May 20:

Women’s Voices, Women’s Vote is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that aims to register single women to vote across the country.

So Portlander Jennifer Elder and her husband of 11 years, Paul Collins, were surprised when she got two WVWV letters April 29, the last day to register for the May 20 primary, saying: “If you have moved, you must update your voter registration in order to vote.”

“My first impression was, ‘Oh, are we not registered?’” says Collins, who opened the mail. “I could swear we were registered for this address. And of course we were.”

Thousands more registered Oregon voters have been just as confused by WVWV letters since last year, according to Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. His office has been calling and sending “please-stop-doing-this-you’re-insane” letters since then to WVWV, according to Bradbury spokesman Scott Moore.

The message is, “Assuming your intentions are good, you’re causing more harm than good,” Moore says.

“They’ve been completely unresponsive,” Moore says. “It’s an absolute nightmare.”

Labels: facing south, oregon, voting rights, women's voices women vote

The controversy that recently erupted in North Carolina over confusing, misleading and at times illegal voter registration tactics used by Women's Voices Women Vote has not discouraged the D.C. nonprofit from continuing similar efforts in Appalachian states with primaries this month.

Officials in West Virginia and Kentucky, which hold primary elections today and May 20 respectively, tell Facing South that the group is causing similar confusion among the prospective voters it's contacted in those states -- many of whom are already registered to vote.

As documented in our recent investigation into the group's activities in North Carolina, Women's Voices racked up official complaints from elections officials in Arizona and Colorado as long ago as November 2007. In February, the group was the target of a police investigation in Virginia that resulted in Women's Voices promising to stop making anonymous robo-calls. But two months after making that promise, the group showed up in North Carolina and again made anonymous robo-calls in the week and a half before the primary, telling people they'd receive a voter registration packet in the mail.

The calls and mailers raised concerns among North Carolina voting rights advocates because they gave registered voters the impression that they were not properly registered. In addition, the robo-calls were illegal under the state's laws because they did not identify the group making them, leading North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to issue a cease-and-desist order. The N.C. NAACP filed a formal voter-suppression complaint with Cooper and notified the U.S. Department of Justice, in part because of the differences in the calls that went to black voters (listen to the call here) vs. white voters (audio file here).

Now Facing South has learned that Women's Voices Women Vote has gone on to engage in some of the same problematic behaviors in West Virginia and Kentucky.

In West Virginia, Secretary of State Betty Ireland issued a press release [pdf] on Thursday, May 8 cautioning voters about Women's Voices "potentially misleading" registration efforts. The warning came after the organization began mailing voter registration forms to more than 16,000 unmarried women across the state right before the primary election, but after the April 22 deadline to register for that election had already passed.

"I do not want registered voters to be confused by this mailing," Ireland said in the press release. "If you were already registered to vote, you do not need to re-register. If you were already registered but recently moved, it is best to contact your county clerk to make sure you vote in the correct precinct on Election Day."

Secretary of State spokesperson Sarah Bailey told Facing South her office had received about 300 returned forms as of May 7 -- but many of them from people who were already registered. The same problem has occurred in many of the 24 states where Women's Voices is working, and in North Carolina the resulting confusion led some to believe it was was an attempt to suppress votes -- a charge that Women's Voices has denied.

Chaos in Kentucky

In Kentucky, Women's Voices has been causing problems for elections officials for about eight months now. Last week, Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson issued a warning that the nonprofit's confusing materials risk leading registered voters to mistakenly think they're not.

The Kentucky official also noted that Women's Voices was conducting confusing robo-calls, two and a half months after they had pledged to end the practice:

The State Board of Elections has also heard from voters and from county clerks that WVWV have been sending automated calls encouraging people to register to vote which does not explicitly state that the voter registration deadline has passed for the May primary election.

"We are unfortunately familiar with this group," Sarah Ball Johnson, executive director of the Kentucky State Board of Elections, told Facing South. "We started communicating with Executive Director Joe Goode last year to help them understand what it's like on our end, but it hasn't helped."

Johnson first encountered Women's Voices prior to the state's gubernatorial election last November, when the group began sending out voter registration mailings. In fact, Women's Voices established a mail permit in the board's name, making the state office a target for confused and angry recipients.

"The mailer looked like it came from us," Johnson reported.

After the elections board complained, Women's Voices stopped using its name. But the nonprofit hasn't always been so willing to cooperate with frustrated local officials. For example, Johnson says she has repeatedly asked to preview Women's Voices materials before they're mailed out out but was told no. She's concerned because the materials contain misleading language -- that, for example, "federal law requires you to fill this out to vote," which is not true.

Johnson observed that many of the forms that are returned are not even properly completed but instead contain "hateful messages" or are simply left blank, presumably because the recipient wants to cost the group postage.

Another "unfortunate coincidence?"

The boilerplate letter [pdf] that Women's Voices Women Vote sent to West Virginia election officials -- identical in almost every respect to letters it has sent in other states -- reads in part:

Unfortunately, West Virginia residents will receive this [Women's Voices voter registration letter] after the deadline for registering to vote to participate in the upcoming primary election. [...]

We hope this unfortunate coincidence of timing does not lead to any confusion or aggravation for either your state's voters or registrars.

But given the mayhem that has transpired in 12 other states -- including national controversy from their North Carolina experience -- Women's Voices is well aware that their oddly-timed mailings will lead to "confusion and aggravation."

It's no mistake or "coincidence" -- so why do they keep doing it?

Women's Voices states on its website that it "started with one goal in mind: Improving unmarried women's participation in the electorate and policy process." Working closely with Catalist -- makers of a large, widely-used voter database created by Harold Ickes, a lead strategist for Sen. Hillary Clinton -- Women's Voices says its mission has expanded to target a wide range of unregistered voters, including African-American and Latino families.

But in the states Women's Voices works, other nonprofits registering voters are baffled by the group's tactics. Facing South spoke to representatives of over a dozen groups with decades of experience registering voters in Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia; not one endorsed the methods used by Women's Voices.

"Operation Chaos," was how one elections watchdog described their tactics. "They're at 30,000 feet, bombing away with these calls and mailings" and unconcerned about the consequences on the ground, said another. "I couldn't think of a worse way to register voters if I tried," said another.

In the 12 states where Women's Voices' tactics have generated controversy, the group has typically responded by "apologizing for the confusion," chalking it up to "mistakes." In recent statements, however, Women's Voices seems to acknowledge their approach is deliberate -- and claims that it won't confuse voters. In an interview at DailyKos, Women's Voices president Page Gardner compared their approach to "Motor Voter" registration that happens at state agencies: "We do not believe this confuses people that are already registered to vote," she said.

Voting rights advocates don't buy it. "Anonymous robo-calls and confusing mailings have nothing in common with a guy at DMV offering you a voter registration form," said a long-time voting rights advocate in North Carolina.

Indeed, in North Carolina the confusion generated around the state's critical May 6 primaries was especially baffling given that the state had a much simpler alternative: one-stop registration and voting, the method advocated by every state voter registration operation Facing South contacted.

Women's Voices says the confusion and controversy is worth it in the end because they get results. A recent statement claims Women's Voices has registered 600,000 voters since 2004, making it "among the top two or three voter registration organizations in the country."

The voting rights advocates Facing South spoke to doubt whether the use of deceptive and even illegal tactics justify the ends. But even the voter registration numbers that Women's Voices points to are in question.

Guy Zeigler, clerk of the Franklin County Board of Elections in Frankfort, Ky., estimates that about half of the forms from Women's Voices that are returned to his office come from people who are already properly registered to vote -- raising questions about how the nonprofit measures its success.

"They apparently judge their effectiveness by how many mailing forms are used by voters, but that's a false positive," said Johnson in Kentucky. "Time and time again, we've told them there are many duplicates."

Of the remaining 2008 primaries, Women's Voices has efforts underway in three of them aside from West Virginia: Kentucky, Oregon, and South Dakota.

-- Sue Sturgis and Chris Kromm

UPDATE I: Over at DailyKos, Adam B notes that, in his recent interview with Women's Voices president Page Gardner, she said all of the group's robo-calls nationally were conducted April 24 and 25. Furthermore, on May 3, the group said in a statement that:

We have concluded that, in this context, we will not in the future mail or call during the window between close of registration for the primary and the primary election.

The first statement doesn't specifically reference mailings, and it's unclear what the phrase "in this context" refers to in the second. But it is important to note that, if the WVWV letters in Kentucky and West Virginia were sent by Women's Voices before May 3 -- which is very likely -- they would have held to their pledge. This would be different than their pledge in February to stop robo-calls, which was not honored.

Some follow-up questions: In North Carolina, WVWV worked with Democracy North Carolina to pull some of the confusing mailings before NC's May 6 primary, with some success. Did Women's Voices attempt similar efforts to ensure confusing mailings did not reach voters in WV and KY, and were they successful?

Also, in WV and KY, Women's Voices had much more time to pro-actively take steps to clarify their efforts and avoid confusion among voters. What steps did they take before the WV and KY primaries?

UPDATE II: I just spoke with a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State's office in South Dakota, who forwarded the below press release. She said a key problem in SD is that WVWV's mailing "was deceptive because it said voters must re-register if they move," which is "not the law in South Dakota." She believes the mailing was sent in late April.

For Immediate Release: May 7, 2008

Contact Chris Nelson, 773-3537, for further information.

Secretary of State Chris Nelson is warning South Dakotans that a Boston, Massachusetts, organization called the “Voter Participation Project” is sending mailings into South Dakota telling our citizens that under “state law” they need to re-register to vote. The mailing lists the Secretary of State’s address, adding the appearance of credibility.

Nelson says, “The language in this mailing is not true. This organization is misleading our citizens into thinking they need to fill out another voter registration form in order to vote. Many South Dakotans have complained to me about receiving these mailings. Some mailings have gone to folks who are deceased asking them to register to vote. My elderly mother received a mailing and was concerned that she needed to fill it out in order to vote.”

“Any South Dakota voter can check to see their voter registration status by going to www.sdsos.gov and clicking on the Voter Information Portal. That site will show where you are registered, where your polling place is located, and show you your sample ballot for the primary election.”

“Voters are not required by law to re-register when they move. We encourage re-registration upon a move, but it is not required by law.”

Labels: facing south, kentucky, primary, voting rights, west virginia, women's voices women vote

In the ongoing controversy surrounding Women's Voices Women Vote and deceptive voter registration tactics, Adam Bonin of DailyKos conducted an interview with Page Gardner, founder and president of WVWV. As he notes in his introduction, "Ms. Gardner was able to answer some of my questions, but not all of them."

1. Your latest press release states that "We do not believe that people who are in fact registered to vote jump to the conclusion that they can't vote simply because they are offered another opportunity to register." Given that there were published news reports and statements from elections officials in multiple states that already-registered voters were in fact confused by hearing phone calls and receiving new registration applications which suggested that without filling out new forms they couldn't vote, what was the basis for that belief?

Every state's Department of Motor Vehicles is tasked under the so-called "Motor Voter" law with providing registration for anyone coming in for a driver's license or other DMV service. They do that every day they are open for business. They don't have a voter file there to look up whether or not you are registered when they offer you the opportunity to register and they offer the opportunity to everyone that comes in. We do not believe this confuses people that are already registered to vote. Moreover, this occurs whether the primary is more than 25 days away or less than 25 days away. Similarly, when people are approached at a shopping center and offered the opportunity to register, they are offered the opportunity whether they are already registered or not, and the groups conducting these registration efforts are not generally accused of confusing those people that are already registered to vote.

2. After Virginia, WVWV promised to stop placing robocalls anonymously and didn't. Your spokesperson said this was a "mistake". How did this mistake occur?

[No response.]

3. When was the Board made aware of the complaints as to voter confusion and the anonymity of your robocalls?

[No response.]

4. How did you arrive at your list of target states? What criteria were used? And on what dates were voters in each state called?

Target states were arrived at using criteria that included the number of unmarried women in a state that were not registered to vote or were registered to vote and had not voted compared to the same criteria for married women. In other words, what was the marriage gap in electoral participation between married and unmarried women in the state. We also wanted states from every region of the country, as well as states that have same day registration and states that do not. We also wanted some states with women elected officials at high levels (governor, US Senator) and states without. All of the pre-calls drawing people's attention to our mail and its voter registration form were delivered on the same two days, Thursday and Friday, April 24 and 25.

[According to her 5/5 diary these states were Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.]

5. Your April 24 letter to Gary Bartlett (NC Board of Elections) speaks exclusively of your work with unmarried women, not men. Why is that?

[No response.]

6. After the NC situation became public, what steps did WVWV take to inform NC voters (a) that if they were already registered, they could vote without a problem and (b) if they were not registered, they could still register and vote in person via the one-stop process? If no such steps were taken, why not?

[No response. However, in her May 5 diary, Gardner stated, "WVWV offered to make corrective follow-up calls, but upon further consideration and consultation with individuals in the state, concluded that additional calls should not be made."]

7. Are African American males the only group covered by the Voter Participation Center not already covered by WVWV? In what states has VPC (or WVWV) attempted to register male voters?

The Voter Particpation Center attempts to register under-represented demographics including African American men, African American married women and married Latinas so these are the other targets for our voter registration other than all unmarried women regardless of ethnic or racial background.

The Voter Participation Center attempts to register these under-represented demographics in every state that WVWV operates, so in the most recent mailing that meant 24 states from coast to coast.

8. For how long has VPC been involved in registering male voters? Are there print materials, or materials sent to (potential) contributors, reflecting this?

The Voter Participation Center was created as a project of WVWV by the Board of Directors in 2007 following the testing of using our direct marketing techniques to register other under-represented demographics in 2006.

9. How is VPC funded?

As a project of WVWV, the VPC is not separately funded. It is funded out of WVWV funds.

10. Was your husband's company involved as a vendor for these projects? If yes, through what kind of process was this contract awarded, and was the Board made aware of the potential conflict of interest and involved in approving such contracts?

[No response.]

Labels: adam bonin, dailykos, facing south, robo-calls, voting rights, women's voices women vote

Yesterday, Pam Spaulding -- who runs the popular blog Pam's House Blend, and also blogs for sites like FireDogLake and BlueNC -- posted the following comments on Facing South's investigation into voting rights in North Carolina and Women's Voices Women Vote. Full disclosure: Pam is a board member of the Institute, although we concluded this wasn't improper given that WVWV board members have been given a forum on blogs like Huffington Post and OpenLeft. The piece can be found here.

There has been a strong progressive defense of the actions of WVWV. What seems to be difficult to swallow is that an organization has, like it or not, engaged in the illegal robo-calls in multiple states that affect a specific slice of potential voters. And as Facing South pointed out, in North Carolina, it occurred yet again. An unknown number of low-information minority voters are left confused, and possibly deterred, from voting, whether or not it was ineptitude by the organization.

We should hold our organizations to an extremely high standard. Blacks (and whites) died to ensure that blacks had right to vote in the South; the call for further public investigation is both necessary and relevant to 1) get to the bottom of the illegal calls and 2) reassure voters that this cannot happen again. I don't care who is on the board or running the org, or how much good work was/is being done by WVWV in other arenas, if this were a Republican-run organization, we'd be tearing it to shreds.

If silence on this for "the good of the party" is more important than investigating a illegal practice affecting an individual's right to vote (on purpose or repeatedly by mistake), it's a sad state of affairs. Just because the Republicans do it more, or have a more systematic interest in doing it doesn't change the fact that this was wrong on so many levels -- and airing dirty laundry is the least of the issues in my mind. Apologies are meaningful, but given the spotty history of WVWV robo-calls, there is a stench still in the air, and that's why the investigation is moving forward.

There seems to be an undercurrent out there that registering more voters, particularly single, low-information women of all colors using illegal methods multiple times (why didn't WVWV care enough about its rep to clean up its "administrative problems" after so many official red flags?) is worth the potential result of confusing an unknown number other, low-information voters in a way that could deter them from voting.

WVWV could have as an emergency corrective measure, embarked on a second set of robo-calls to inform those voters that they received incorrect or confusing information; that seems like a logical thing to do. The action taken, to try to stop the mailing of the registration packets, does little to directly inform call recipients waiting for those packets to arrive to fill them out and send back before voting.

Chris Kromm and the Institute for Southern Studies dove into investigating this robo-call not knowing what they would find. ISS continued to dig regardless of the organization and made those results public. When wagon-circling occurs because of bruised egos on our side takes precedence over focusing on those targeted by the robo-calls, many belonging to a demographic historically disenfranchised time and again, it's problematic. If we're going to say every vote must count, then we have to mean it.

What I fear most is that this WVWV debacle will unravel into a feminist vs. black issue (the underlying assumption that it is also a Clinton-supporter vs. Obama-supporter issue). The left has such discomfort dealing with color-arousal or race matters (not racism, mind you, since that word is nuclear), that it will largely go undiscussed because of fear of getting shocked by the third rail. Sometimes naming the unmentionable tension can clear the air, but it requires cool heads. We're in a world of intertubes hotheads on all sides of the equation, with raw nerves exposed.

The bottom line is to take responsibility, clean house, move forward. Sunlight is the best disinfectant -- on the left and the right.

(Emphasis in original)

Labels: facing south, north carolina, robo-calls, voting rights, women's voices women vote

It has been six days since Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies published our first investigation into the mysterious "Lamont Williams" robo-calls (listen to the audio file here) that blanketed North Carolina on the eve of the state's critical primary elections.

Over the past week, our ongoing investigation has ignited a national firestorm. We'd like to take a moment to reflect on what brought us here, and offer our best sense of where the issue stands.

First, a little background. Voting rights has always been a special focus for us. Since our founding by civil rights veterans in 1970, we have published dozens of ground-breaking investigations into African-American voter suppression and other threats to democracy, including a series looking at the role of the Department of Justice's "voting integrity" policies in the 2004 elections (see an example here [pdf]).

When we started looking into the North Carolina robo-calls a week ago, they had generated widespread complaints from African-American and other voters -- and outrage from voting rights advocates and the progressive community nationally -- who believed the tactics were, at the very least, confusing and deceptive. At worst, many saw in them the elements of a sophisticated voter suppression campaign.

That's why we were as surprised as anyone to learn from the Virginia State Police -- who had investigated similar anonymous robo-calls made in that state last February -- that they had identified the source in Virgina as a D.C. non-profit with a strong voter registration track record named Women's Voices Women Vote.

When Facing South contacted Women's Voices about their voter outreach efforts in Virginia and North Carolina, the group seemed reluctant to provide information. When asked about the content of their robo-calls, for example, spokeswoman Sarah Johnson said she "didn't know," because "they were handled by an outside vendor" -- a puzzling answer, especially given that Women's Voices had been using the same 20-second robo-calls since November 2007.

We were eventually able to confirm, however, that Women's Voices Women Vote was the source of North Carolina's now-infamous "Lamont Williams" robo-calls, and we published our findings on Wednesday, April 30.

The response to our investigation was sudden and dramatic. In North Carolina alone, our investigation had immediate impact:

* That same day, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper denounced the robo-calls as illegal, called on Women's Voices to stop conducting them, and held out the possibility of legal sanctions. His investigation is still ongoing.

* Election advocacy group Democracy North Carolina pressed Women's Voices to pull 276,000 confusing mailings out of the mail stream, although it's believed that about 100,000 still made their way to voters.

* This weekend, the N.C. NAACP filed a formal voter suppression complaint to N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper, and notified the federal Department of Justice of their concerns.

The story also launched a national debate about election tactics and voting rights, with major stories based on Facing South's investigation appearing on ABC News, CNN, The Economist, NPR, Time, TPM Muckraker, The Washington Post, The Week, Wired and other major media outlets. Groups like the Center for Investigative Reporting followed up with reporting that expanded on themes raised in Facing South's coverage.

The blog world also erupted, bloggers drawing their own conclusions from the facts presented in our investigation. Opinions gravitated towards extremes: One side quickly concluded that Women's Voices was part of an official, orchestrated effort by Sen. Hillary Clinton to suppress African-American voters, who have disproportionately supported her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.

An opposing faction leaped to Women's Voices' defense, echoing the group's line that the "confusion" their efforts had created in multiple states was merely an "oversight," at worst constituting a "stupid mistake" or "screw-up" resulting from "incompetence."

To be clear: In the course of our investigation, we have not found evidence that would substantiate either of these claims.

Our original investigation laid out four basic sets of facts -- facts that, to date, have not been refuted, and in fact have been buttressed by subsequent coverage at Facing South and elsewhere:

(1) ILLEGAL ROBO-CALLS IN NC: Our investigation last Wednesday revealed that Women's Voices Women Vote was the source behind illegal, anonymous and misleading robo-calls in North Carolina. It's important to remember that this was a major revelation at the time. As of late Monday, April 28, the Raleigh News & Observer was reporting that the State Board of Elections was still "hunting [the] robocaller," and Women's Voices had not stepped forward to claim or clarify the calls.

Since we revealed that information, Facing South has uncovered other important facts. One of the most surprising was that, after similar robo-calls in Virginia were investigated by state police last February, Women's Voices had pledged to not use the tactic again, anywhere. As the Virginian-Pilot reported February 9:

Sarah Johnson, communications director for the organization [Women's Voices Women Vote], said Friday that not including information about the source of the voter registration effort was "absolutely an accidental omission."

She said the group was changing its nationwide phone alerts to make clear who is coordinating the effort.

Yet two and a half months later, Women's Voices began the illegal "Lamont Williams" calls in North Carolina.

Johnson's statement to The Virginian-Pilot also came three months after Women's Voices had used nearly identical confusing robo-calls in Ohio -- making their claim that the anonymous nature of their Virginia calls were an "accidental omission" clearly untrue.

(2) PROBLEMS IN 11 STATES: Facing South also revealed that North Carolina wasn't an isolated incident; that Women's Voices had been charged with carrying out confusing, legally questionable, and deceptive voter registration tactics in 10 other states. It has since been reported that there were also concerns in Oregon.

It is important to acknowledge that many of the problems associated with Women's Voices' efforts are the kind that plague any voter registration operation, especially issues that result from voter registration lists that are notoriously riddled with errors.

But our research found that Women's Voices has also consciously decided to employ tactics that are unique in their potential to mislead and discourage voters. Their decision to use anonymous, confusing robo-calls first surfaced in Ohio in November 2007. Their failure to communicate and coordinate with state election officials and local advocacy groups has cropped up in several states. They've been rebuked by state officials for mailing voter registration packets that in some cases wrongfully stated that returning the forms was "required" -- a tactic that, in addition to being legally untrue, confused and angered voters who received them after the voter registration deadline.

Women's Voices hasn't addressed these drawbacks in their public statements, except to apologize for the "confusion" and point to the number of people they've registered. The implication is that their controversial tactics are a necessary evil in the quest to register more voters; the ends justify the means.

That is a matter of opinion, but we'll note that the voting rights advocates Facing South talked to have serious concerns about the potential of Women's Voices' tactics to discourage and possibly disenfranchise voters. As the legal battle over the North Carolina robo-calls demonstrates, it also opens them to legal challenges.

(3) IMPACT ON NORTH CAROLINA AND VIRGINIA PRIMARIES: Facing South has also documented that Women's Voices' tactics have had an especially disruptive role in the Virginia and North Carolina primaries.

In at least these two states, Women's Voices' approach has been to wait until after the voter registration deadline has passed, and then -- as the day of the election primary approaches -- pump out hundreds of thousands of anonymous robo-calls, followed by voter registration packets in the mail. They have consciously used this strategy despite knowing from experience that their lists contain numerous errors and will result in confusing many already-registered voters.

Women's Voices has defended this practice in various forums by saying that, with public interest in elections high during primary elections, that is an ideal time to register voters.

But that doesn't explain their use of anonymous robo-calls and confusing mailings -- especially in North Carolina, where every other voter registration group that Facing South contacted had been encouraging voters to use One-Stop Registration and Voting.

The availability of that easier and less disruptive voter registration option in N.C. makes it especially curious that Women's Voices continued with the robo-calls and mailings, which Women's Voices president Page Gardner seemed to acknowledge would cause problems in a letter to the N.C. State Board of Elections dated April 24 (pdf) -- but not faxed to the SBOE until 5:50 p.m. on April 28, after the robo-calls had been made and the mailings had been sent:

Unfortunately, North Carolina residents will receive this mail after the deadline for registering to vote to participate in the upcoming election ... We hope this unfortunate coincidence in timing does not lead to any confusion or aggravation for either your state's voters or registrars.

But of course, Gardner and Women's Voices must have known from their experience in other states -- most recently Virginia -- that this "unfortunate coincidence" of timing would have the precise effect of leading to "confusion" and "aggravation" of voters and election officials alike -- which is exactly what happened.

(4) TIES TO SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: Although not the focus of our original investigation, Facing South has documented several close connections between Women's Voices Women Vote and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Since then, National Public Radio, the Center for Investigative Reporting and other media have done further reporting and identified more close relationships between Women's Voices and the Clinton family, including Women's Voices' founder/president and the executive director (you can find the Center's chart here, which looks at 10 such connections).

As Facing South clearly stated last Thursday, "We don't suggest, and have no evidence to suggest, that Women's Voices is formally connected to the Clinton campaign." We have strenuously avoided drawing any conclusions regarding this relationship. We have also reported that a smaller number of individuals associated with Women's Voices are supporters of Sen. Barack Obama (four board members).

We find it odd that some have criticized Facing South, NPR, the Center for Investigative Reporting and others for documenting the connections between Women's Voices and the Clintons. When a right as fundamental as voting is at stake, we believe the public is entitled to know all of the evidence. No group, no matter how well-connected or well-intentioned, should consider itself above scrutiny. If anything, groups like Women's Voices have a special obligation to ensure their efforts safeguard voter's rights and avoid the appearance of impropriety.

We are encouraged that our investigation has helped bring greater attention to the critical issues of controversial election tactics and voting rights this hotly-contested election season. We will continue to follow these vital issues closely in the coming months.

-- Chris Kromm and Sue Sturgis, Facing South

Labels: facing south, voting rights, women's voices women vote

In the wake of national controversy surrounding Facing South's investigation into the use of illegal and deceptive robo-calls in North Carolina by Women's Voices Women Vote, actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus -- who had appeared in a Public Service Announcement for the group -- issued a widely-circulated statement this weekend clarifying her role with the group.

In the statement, Louis-Dreyfus states:

The news reports [of Louis-Dreyfus' involvement] came about because there was evidence that an individual or a small group of individuals affiliated with WVWV may have issued misleading robo-calls in North Carolina designed to suppress voter turnout in African American neighborhoods. I find these activities appalling and hope WVWV will immediately disassociate themselves from such individuals and denounce such actions.

Louis-Dreyfus also stated that "I am not affiliated with WVWV in any way other than participating in this PSA campaign," and noted that she is "proudly supporting" Sen. Barack Obama for president.

Labels: facing south, julia louis-dreyfus, north carolina, robo-calls, voter suppression, voting rights, women's voices women vote

The North Carolina NAACP has filed a formal complaint of possible voter suppression against Women's Voices Women Vote, the D.C. nonprofit that as we revealed earlier this week was behind the deceptive and illegal robo-calls made to state residents. The N.C. NAACP hand-delivered its complaint today to state Attorney General Roy Cooper and State Board of Elections Executive Director Gary Bartlett. It's also alerted the U.S. Department of Justice that it's collecting more information from its national network and is contemplating filing a formal complaint with that agency.

N.C. NAACP President Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (center in photo) announced the filing of the complaint at a press conference held this afternoon outside the N.C. Department of Justice. He was joined by his group's attorney, Al McSurely (left), and Bob Hall (right) of Democracy North Carolina. The state Attorney General's office is already investigating Women's Voices, but the N.C. NAACP and Democracy North Carolina want to be parties to that investigation.

"When you mess with the right to vote, you're messing with everything that is fundamental in our democracy," Barber said.

Here is the full text of the group's complaint, dated May 2. When it refers to "Ex. 1," that is the WVWV letter to Gary Bartlett available here [PDF]; "Ex. 2" directs readers to news reports at DailyKos, Facing South and NPR. "HKonJ" refers to Historic Thousands on Jones Street, a statewide coalition of some 70 social justice groups organized by the N.C. NAACP; Jones Street is where the state legislature is located in Raleigh.

RE: Voter Suppression Activity Targeting Black Voters in North Carolina

Dear General Cooper and Mr. Bartlett:

On behalf of the North Carolina Conference of over 100 NAACP Branches across North Carolina, I file this formal complaint against an organization out of Washington, D.C. called Women's Voices Women Votes (hereafter "WVWV") that has engaged in a pattern of massive robo-calls and mass mailings that appear to be designed to suppress and dilute voter participation, with a peculiar focus on African Americans.

One of our HKonJ Partners, Democracy North Carolina, made a request to both agencies earlier this week, to investigate automated telephone calls with misleading information about the voting process made to African Americans. We now know the source of the calls to be WVWV and we know from this group's own admission in a letter faxed to Mr. Bartlett on 28 April 2008 that it knew these messages would confuse voters. The Attorney General has taken initial action to stop the illegal calls, but there needs to be a much more aggressive investigation into WVWV's intentions and aims and the effects of its massive efforts to confuse voters.

Who was targeted? Why? How could a national organization be ignorant of the dates of one of most important primaries in the history of our State? How could a national organization give such wrong-headed directions to unregistered voters during the exact same period when they could easily register through our one-stop early voting procedure? Does the evidence show that WVWV violated NC General Statute 163-275(17),which makes it a felony crime to communicate misleading information about the voting process with the "intent and the effect" "to intimidate or discourage potential voters from exercising their lawful right to vote." Democracy North Carolina joins with us in requesting a much more aggressive investigation of the actions of the group. Here are some of the areas we urge you to look into:

1. The WVWV told Mr. Bartlett in its 28 April 2008 letter that it was about to mail voter registration information to 276,118 unmarried women in North Carolina and that it was sending similar mailings to "unmarried women not just in North Carolina, but around the country." (See Ex. 1) A comprehensive examination of the mailing list must be done to determine how many of these letters wnet to "unmarried women" as opposed to African Americans and other people of color, how many of each group were registered or not registered, and which misleading message each group received.

2. Although in this same letter the WVWV said it was only targeting unmarried women, three days later, on 1 May 2008, after Democracy North Carolina had raised the issue of possible targeting of African Americans, the WVWV denied it only targeted unmarried women. In a written answer it said: "While our focus is on unmarried women, we have worked to target other under-represented groups through our project, the Voter Participation Center." (Ex. 2) To what extent does the WVWV discriminate in how it communicates to African Americans in contrast to unmarried women? We cite as one example the contrast in the automated telephone messages sent to black versus white households in late April.

To speed your investigation (it is probably too late to prevent or remedy the damage done to voter turnout during early voting and on Tuesday, May 6th, but we trust a solid investigation will prevent similar misfeasance in future elections), permit us to share with you the information we have gathered since we first became aware of the confusing robo-calls and mailings a few days ago:

1. WVWV admitted it made thousands of automatic calls to North Carolina residents on 24 and 25 April 2008. (See Ex. 2) On calls, apparently to white women, a woman said: "Hi. Just a reminder. Your voter registration form is in the mail to you. Your voice counts and your vote [indecipherable]. Sign it, date it and send it in. Thanks!"

2. An African American man, who identified himself as Lamont Williams (hereafter "Lamont") gave the following message to other homes: "Hello. This is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter-registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is fill it out, sign it, date and return your application. Then, you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return your registration form when it arrives. Thank you." According to WVWV, "Mr. Williams is a professional voice talent," and his calls only went to men and a woman was used to contact women."

3. Lamont's calls tell people that are registered that they are not and that the only way they can vote is to wait a few days, get a form in the mail, fill it out and mail it back in. As one commentator said, "Whether the result of deliberate design or massive negligence on the part of WVWV and/or its vendors in terms of the timing of the calls and the determination of who would be called, the end result is something which rightly raised suspicions about the intent of this program."

4. Contrary to North Carolina law, there was no identification of the organization who had paid for the call, WVWV, or its "project" organization, Voter Participation Center, nor did Lamont provide any way for the receivers of his misleading message to check on it, if they had questions.

5. Mr. Kevin Farmer, in Durham, N.C. has an original tape of Lamont's message, which was apparently aimed at a young African American male voter who had registered to vote for the first time in 2004, and whose 2004 telephone number was reassigned to the store where Mr. Farmer now works.

6. Rev. and Mrs. Nelson Johnson received Lamont's message three times. Neither are unmarried women--they are African American civil rights activists in Greensboro.

7. When Lamont's messages were sent to hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians on April 24th and 25th the deadline to register for the May 6 primary had passed if you tried to register by mail. You could easily register--and Vote! by going to a one stop early voting place. WVWV focus has been on unmarried women. (See Ex. 1)

8. WVWV sent Mr. Bartlett its fax from the Institute of Women's Policy Research which has the same address, 1707 L Street NW, Suite 750, Washington, DC 20036 as the Women's Voices. The letter was dated April 24, but the fax was sent late in the afternoon of April 28, which was the same day the mailing was scheduled to leave the mail house for North Carolina.

9. In the letter to Mr. Bartlett, the WVWV explained its massive 276,118 mailing that was about to be sent, but did not mention Lamont's calls or any other calls, presumably to the same people, telling them to look for the mailer. (Ex. 1)

10. Copies of the mailing pieces were not sent to Mr. Bartlett for his review or even as a courtesy. Some of the messages on the mail pieces are misleading while others appear to misrepresent North Carolina law regarding the registration process. For example, some say, "The deadline for voter registration is approaching," but the mail-in deadline has ended two weeks earlier. Some say, "state law requires you to update your voter registration records," but voters who move within a county are allowed to vote without previously changing their registration.

11. WVWV has said they have tried to delay the 276,000 pieces of mail destined for North Carolina and that "a majority of the mail that was going to North Carolina will not be delivered, and our folks are continuing to try to make sure that as much of the NC mail as possible is held until a later date." (Ex. 2) Based on conversations with WVWV's vendors and postal officials on Friday, approximately 110,000 pieces are still being delivered this week, most heavily in Eastern North Carolina.

12. WVWV said it "was a mistake" for Lamont not to identify the sponsoring organization and "we regret the error and will ensure it does not happen again." WVWV has repeatedly been challenged on the inaccurate and misleading mass robo-calls and mass mailings in other states, and it merely apologizes, and says they will do better in the future. Months ago, we understand, WVWV pledged to identify the source of Lamont's calls. This promise was broken.

13. The robo-calls in N.C. were part of a massive set of calls and mailings in 24 states in late April 2008 that included Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Oregon--all states where the voter registration deadline has passed and the primary is approaching. Two months earlier, on 6 and 7 February during other primary campaigns, Lamont, or someone acting for WVWV, made millions of calls in 22 states, including Virginia. At that time, the registration deadline had passed in Virginia and the primary was days away. The resulting chaos led to an investigation by the State Police and more promises from WVWV to change its deceptive practices.

14. WVWV says it was fully aware of the closing of the registration rolls in North Carolina, the availability of one-stop registration/voting, and other important voting factors that would influence the impact of its call/mailing operation. In its letter to Mr. Bartlett, WVWV apologized for the confusion its poor timing caused, but dismissed the timing as an "unfortunate coincidence."

15. Voters in Virginia, Oregon, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Michigan complained to the WVWV that the anonymous calls probably caused voter confusion and frustration. The Institute for Southern Studies found media or other reports about complaints regarding WVWV calls or mailings in at least 10 states in the past five months.

By copy of this letter we alert the U.S. Department of Justice that the NC NAACP is collecting more information through our national network in contemplation of filing a formal complaint about this issue. We also copy this letter to our National NAACP leadership, which has approved these complaints. Through our national organization, we will see information about how these confusing robo-calls and mailings affected minority voter participation in other states, such as West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky, as we continue our discussions about our next steps to expose efforts to confuse and mislead voters in key primary states. We will also be consulting with two national Election Protection hotlines that are monitoring the primary election in North Carolina to evaluate whether their findings shed additional light on the actions of WVWV.

The letter is signed by Barber and copied to Julian Bond, chair of the NAACP's national board; NAACP Interim CEO Dennis Hayes; Angela Ciccolo, NAACP's interim general counsel; and Christopher Coates, acting chief of the U.S. DOJ's Voting Section.

To listen to WVWV's Lamont call, click here. For the call with the woman's voice, click here.


(Photo of Al McSurely and Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II of the N.C. NAACP and Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina by Sue Sturgis)

Labels: democracy north carolina, department of justice, facing south, NAACP, north carolina primary, robo-calls, roy cooper, voting rights, women's voices women vote

In response to our investigation of Women's Voices Women Vote and their illegal and deceptive voter outreach in North Carolina before the critical state primaries, some have defended their voter registration approach.

No one seems to be defending Women's Voices' use of anonymous, illegal robo-calls in North Carolina, or their decision to do those calls in North Carolina two and a half months after they had told a newspaper in Virginia that they vowed to stop the practice nation-wide.

But some have defended their strategy, which in North Carolina had a two-part approach: (1) the now-infamous, illegal "Lamont Williams" robo-calls, followed by (2) mailing of a "voter registration packet" which many voter engagement groups have said is confusing and has the potential to discourage many from voting, because it makes registered voters believe they aren't. (Thanks to our investigation and the work of public interest advocates like Democracy North Carolina, at least some of these were stopped from going into the mail stream.)

This strategy -- which Women's Voices conceded could cause problems, in a letter they faxed to the N.C. State Board of Elections on Monday -- is all the more curious given that every organization Facing South spoke to that has been involved in voter registration in North Carolina has been using a much easier alternative: One-Stop Early Voting.

This voting reform, passed last year, allows North Carolina voters to register and vote all at once at over 200 One Stop voting centers across the state. Representatives from Democracy North Carolina, the NAACP, and the N.C Democratic Party all tell us they have been pushing almost exclusively for One-Stop Voting, because of its ability to capitalize on interest in elections created by the primaries, but also avoids the potential of discouraging and disenfranchising voters inherent in Women's Voices' approach.

For example, as Damon Circosta of the N.C. Center for Voter Education said to Facing South:

“Ever since the register-by-mail deadline passed, nearly every voter engagement group in the state has been pushing one-stop early voting, where you can register and vote at the same time without mailing anything in. To be pushing mail-in registration at this time is either a blunder of comedic proportions or a deliberate attempt to confuse.”

Labels: north carolina, one-stop voting, same day registration, voting rights, women's voices women vote

Will Evans with the Center for Investigative Reporting has compiled a helpful chart documenting in detail the connections between the principals of Women's Voices Women Vote -- the nonprofit we discovered behind illegal election robo-calls in North Carolina -- and the various presidential campaigns.

As we have already noted, many of the group's top leaders have worked for Bill and Hillary Clinton in some capacity. Founder and President Page Gardner, for example, served as the deputy political director for the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign and worked on his presidential transition team. Executive Director Joe Goode was a pollster for Bill Clinton, and former Women's Voices leadership team member and strategic planner Maggie Williams is now Hillary Clinton's campaign manager.

The Center breaks new ground by showing just how heavily and disproportionately Women's Voices principals have invested in the Hillary Clinton campaign. According to the chart, they have donated a total of $34,800 to Hillary Clinton or HillPAC since 2000. At the same time, they have donated only $3,600 to the Obama campaign and $2,300 to John Edwards.

[ADDENDUM: Evans also has a piece posted at the NPR website (click here and scroll to the bottom) about questions raised by charity watchdogs over the fact that in 2006 Women's Voices paid $800,000 -- 16 percent of its budget -- for phone services to Integral Resources Inc., whose CEO and founder, Ron Rosenblith, is Gardner's husband. The organization also paid several million dollars more to companies run by five other members of the nonprofit's leadership team.

Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy in Chicago, said that's a concern as it gives the appearance of a conflict of interest. Rick Cohen, former executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and a national correspondent for Nonprofit Quarterly magazine, added that such relationships create "the image, if not the reality, of self-dealing."]

Labels: Center for Investigative Reporting, facing south, hillary clinton, north carolina primary, Page Gardner, robo-calls, voting rights, women's voices women vote

For those following Facing South's big story this week of illegal and deceptive election practices in North Carolina on the eve of the state's critical primary, you can hear more on WUNC 91.5's show The State of Things at noon today:

In the run-up to the May 6th primary, some North Carolina voters have been getting automated voice messages that are misleading and illegal. Chris Kromm, director of the Institute for Southern Studies, joins host Frank Stasio to explain the controversy behind a robo-call and mailing campaign by the non-profit group Women’s Voices, Women Vote, and the serious issues it raises about voter deception.

For those out of the listening area, you can listen via live feed at WUNC's site.

NPR's Peter Overby gave the story national coverage on All Things Considered yesterday; you can find their story here.

Labels: all things considered, chris kromm, facing south, frank stasio, institute for southern studies, north carolina primary, npr, robo-calls, the state of things, women's voices women vote, wunc

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.

Labels: democracy north carolina, north carolina, robo-calls, voting rights, women's voices women vote

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

In a statement posted yesterday to the website of Women's Voices Women Vote, the D.C. nonprofit behind the illegal and deceptive robo-calls placed to North Carolina residents, President Page Gardner claims her group notified the N.C. State Board of Elections about their activities in the state before sending out registration forms to voters:

In advance of the mail, a letter was sent to Gary Bartlett in the North Carolina Board of Elections Office. A copy of the letter and a press release sent to North Carolina media announcing the registration effort is attached.

There is no copy of a letter or press release attached to the posted statement. But more important, the group did not notify state elections officials about their registration effort in advance, as Gardner claims -- at least not the whole of that effort. The following e-mail was sent today, May 1, by Board of Elections attorney Don Wright to Joyce McCloy, an elections watchdog with the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting:

As of yesterday's mail, this office had not yet received a mailed copy of the Women's Voices, Women Vote letter. The attached faxed copy was faxed to me around 5:50 pm on Monday April 28th. As you can see, it does not say anything about automated phone calls, and informs this office that the voter registration mailings "will arrive in homes the week of May 1st". Prior to this fax, this organization had not communicated to this agency about its current actions.

We are aware of the statement posted on their website and the fact it refers to attachments that are not available.

Don Wright
General Counsel

Gardner's faxed letter [PDF] leads one to believe that the group is making an effort to notify the state elections officials about their activities in North Carolina. However, as Wright points out, it mentions only the mailings and not the robo-calls, which were already being placed to residents by the time the group faxed its letter to the Board of Elections.

McCloy is urging the state Attorney General Roy Cooper to file charges against the group.

Labels: facing south, Joyce McCloy, N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting, N.C. State Board of Elections, north carolina, Page Gardner, robo-calls, roy cooper, voting rights, women's voices women vote

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.

As The Virginian-Pilot reported:

State Police, working with the State Board of Elections, began an investigation after more than a dozen reports from residents across the state saying they had received unsolicited phone calls Wednesday and Thursday about registering to vote. [...]

"The messages did not specify who or where the packets were coming from," [police spokeswoman Corrinne] Geller said. [...]

By Friday, however, investigators obtained some of the packets and tracked them to the source.

Women's Voices Women Vote, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Washington, made the calls and sent the mailings, Geller said.

The group said it is part of an "unprecedented" effort to register women. Trouble was, it was largely unheard of. The calls to potential voters started even before the effort was announced. [...]

Sarah Johnson, communications director for the organization , said Friday that not including information about the source of the voter registration effort was "absolutely an accidental omission."

She said the group was changing its nationwide phone alerts to make clear who is coordinating the effort.

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?"

Labels: facing south, north carolina, robo-calls, roy cooper, sarah johnson, virginia, voting rights, women's voices women vote

Women's Voices Women Vote has responded in several forums to the issues we raised in yesterday's investigation about their illegal and deceptive voter outreach activities. The main response came from group founder and president Page Gardner, in a statement titled: "Confusion Surrounding Robo-Calls in North Carolina."

First, it's important to note that Gardner's statement in no ways refutes, or even addresses, any of the basic facts put forward by our investigation:

* In North Carolina, Women's Voices has been conducting a robo-call and mailing campaign that the state Attorney General has confirmed is illegal, that has been secretive and deceptive, and will likely have the effect of confusing and discouraging North Carolina voters.

* Our report documents that, in at least 10 other states -- Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin -- Women's Voices has drawn condemnation from election officials and voters. The group has been accused of misrepresenting election law, using secretive and dishonest tactics and generating widespread confusion among voters -- again, threatening to dampen voter participation.

* The role Women's Voices has played in the Virginia and North Carolina primaries has been especially disruptive. In both cases, they launched deceptive robo-calls -- some apparently targeting African-American zip codes -- just before major primaries, leading residents to think they weren't registered to vote.

* Women's Voices has a number of ties to Sen. Hillary Clinton; we provide additional examples here. We don't suggest, and have no evidence to suggest, that Women's Voices is formally connected to the Clinton campaign. However, we do believe such close ties deserve scrutiny.

Ms. Gardner's statement addresses none of these documented issues. Confronted with evidence of repeated deceptive and even illegal actions, Gardner says only, "We apologize for any confusion our calls may have caused."

Unfortunately, this is typical: As we found in our investigation spanning 10 states, every time problems have emerged, Women's Voices responds by "apologizing for confusion." A Google search of "Women's Voices Women Vote" and "confusion" brings up 412 hits. A newspaper in Michigan quipped that Women's Voices media staffer Sarah Johnson seemed "confused by the confusion."

But chalking up serious election law violations and misleading practices to "mistakes" and "confusion" doesn't answer the questions; it just raises more of them. Women's Voices is doing itself no favors by refusing to directly address the facts and issues at hand.

For example, does "confusion" explain Women's Voices' illegal and deceptive robo-calls in multiple states? Does it pardon the group's misleading and legally inaccurate mailings to hundreds of thousands of voters?

Does "confusion" account for their disruption of the primaries in North Carolina and Virginia? I asked Johnson why the group launched its confusing voter registration campaign in Virginia when they did -- two weeks before the big primary, but two weeks too late for anyone to actually register. She stumbled through several explanations before landing on, "We wanted to make sure they were registered for the general [election] in November." Really? The first week in February, probably the worst time to be dropping a misleading robo-call and mailing campaign in Virginia, was the only week available?

Also: Is it really a "mistake" or "confusion" when you get the same complaints in 10 or more states across the country over the course of at least five months? After a while, the "confusion" defense runs out of steam.

But in this case, it's never been a strong defense. Women's Voices is made up of some of the most seasoned and sophisticated political operatives in Washington. Their staff bios show decades of experience at the highest levels, all the way up to presidential campaigns for Bill Clinton.

Does such a well-connected, deeply-funded and All-Star cast of high-level operatives really make "mistakes" like carrying out illegal robo-calls and forgetting the presidential primary calendar?

At some point, that explanation is no longer plausible, and Women's Voices Women Vote owes voters a real explanation.

Labels: facing south, hillary clinton, north carolina, north carolina primary, Page Gardner, robo-calls, sarah johnson, virginia, voting rights, women's voices women vote

In our earlier investigation revealing the outfit behind the misleading and illegal robo-calls made to North Carolina voters just days before a critical primary election, we reported that questions have been raised about the connections between that group -- the D.C.-based nonprofit Women's Voices Women Vote -- and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

We noted, for example, that WVWV Founder and President Page Gardner has donated generously to Clinton and to HILLPAC, but has given nothing to the Obama campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org. We also noted that WVWV Executive Director Joe Goode previously worked as a pollster for Bill Clinton, and that WVWV board member John Podesta is the former chief of staff for President Clinton as well as a Hillary Clinton donor.

There are other connections that we did not mention, but that have been pointed out in comments here and at other sites. For example, Maggie Williams is a former member of WVWV's leadership team, according to Sourcewatch.org; she also served as chief of staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton and to the Clinton Foundation in New York, and she was named the manager of Clinton's campaign in February. And Holly Schadler, WVWV's attorney, helped set up the Back to Business Committee in 1994 to defend Bill and Hillary Clinton from attacks by political enemies.

But one of the most striking connections between WVWV and the Clinton campaign -- and one particularly relevant to a story involving what appear to be voter suppression efforts right before an election -- was pointed out to us by a reader. He notes that the firm in charge of voter outreach for WVWV is MSHC Partners, whose president is Hal Malchow. Sourcewatch.org reports that Malchow was a member of WVWV's leadership team.

At the same time, MSHC also does direct mail and outreach for the Hillary Clinton campaign. In fact, the campaign owes MSHC $807,000, according to Politico.com.

Labels: facing south, hillary clinton, MSHC, north carolina primary, Page Gardner, robo-calls, voting rights, women's voices women vote