UPDATE: Please see the important update at the bottom!
UPDATE II: I've asked Adam B for the chance to respond to the answers Sarah Johnson of Women's Voices gave to his front-page interview. They've given their side, I'd like to have a chance to respond to several inaccuracies in their statements on the front page. I am still waiting for Adam's response.
Following is a statement on the failure of Women's Voices Women Vote to address facts of my investigation published at Facing South, blog of the Institute for Southern Studies, and here at DailyKos.
Together, we've had a BIG impact: The investigation has been widely covered in blogs and the media (although still not enough!). Yesterday, the N.C. Attorney General demanded that Women's Voices cease and desist the illegal robo-calls. Sen. Obama addressed the charges in a news conference yesterday. Women's Voices was also persuaded to suspend their deceptive mailings in North Carolina after the bad publicity.
Thank you to the DailyKos community for helping bring this story to light, both through providing valuable pieces of information and helping spread the word. Please keep it up -- this story has not ended, and voters deserve to know the whole story. - Chris
Statement on Women's Voices Women Vote's failure to address facts of Facing South investigation
Chris Kromm
Facing South
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 yesterday 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 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.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: Thanks to readers, we have found a very important update to this story, which further suggests that these are far from "honest mistakes."
Women's Voices had promised to stop anonymous robo-calls in February, but didn't
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-Pilotreported:
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?"