As the voter suppression scandal involving Women's Voices Women vote continues to escalate, the group appears to be in serious CYA/spin mode. The WVWV board is reportedly having an emergency meeting; the group has trotted out some board members to make public statements of their full support for the group; WVWV got a piece written in Salon in which it claims their problems in NC are due to incompetence (plus they don't really focus on women anyway); and Julia Louis Dreyfus, who is featured in a WVWV PSA urging women to elect a woman as president, tries to explain away the video on Huffington Post. But all this smoke and mirrors leaves the most important questions unanswered, and raises even more questions that I have for WVWV.
(Note: If you haven't been following this scandal, I suggest that you read the important posts by ProgressiveSouth here, here and here, and my previous post here.)
Women's Voices, Women Vote, here are the top 10 key questions I would love to have you answer:
- In February, WVWV promised to discontinue making illegal anonymous robocalls after being investigated by Virginia state police, claiming it was due to an "accidental omission." Why, then, did you continue to make anonymous robocalls in North Carolina more than two months later? Was this just another accidental omission?
- If the goal of WVWV is to increase voter registration and participation, why would you engage in activities that your organization has admitted could be confusing to voters?
- Knowing that your calls could cause confusion with voters, why would you time your voter registation robocalls and mailings in Virginia and North Carolina right after the primary registration deadlines and right before the primary date in both of your states?
- Why didn't your voter registration calls and mailings in North Carolina inform people of the one-stop early voting option in that state, which allows people to register and vote at the same time without going through the two-step process of mailing in a registraton and then voting later. Since your calls and mailings were sent out after the state's mail-in registration deadline but before the final registration deadline, wouldn't your efforts have helped register a lot more voters if you had let them know about the one-stop early voting option, instead of just creating the type of confusion that you already knew could be caused by your calls and mailings?
- WVWV is headed by some of the most seasoned political professionals out there, who have worked for some of the most high-profile political campaigns in the nation. How could a group with so much political experience and talent continue to make basic mistakes such as sending out voter registration materials after a registration deadline has passed, and continually make key, basic errors in your robocalls and mailings that clearly violate federal law, month after month in state after state, even after you were warned about your "misleading and deceptive" practices back in November by the secretaries of state in Colorado and Arizona?
- You make it quite clear on your website that WVWV has "one goal in mind: Improving unmarried women's participation in the electorate and policy process." In fact, your entire website talks about nothing else except your focus on unmarried women. Why, then, are so many of your robocalls and mailings focused on men and African Americans of any gender?
- In your responses to Adam B's questions, you state that WVWV made two robocalls: one targeted to men featuring the voice of "Lamont Williams" and one targeted to women featuring a female voice. All the complaints so far seem to be linked to the call featuring Lamont Williams, and that is the only recorded call that I've seen available anywhere for listening. Can you provide us with a sample of your recorded call featuring the female voice, and tell us when and where this call was disseminated?
- In your PSA featuring Julia Louis Dreyfus, the actress is encouraging women to vote to put a woman in the White House. How could you NOT expect people to interpret this ad as a call to elect Hillary Clinton as President? Are there other women running for President right now that I'm not aware of?
- WVWV has paid nearly $800,000 for phone services to Integral Resources Inc., whose CEO and founder is Ron Rosenblith, the husband of WVWV president Page Gardner. When WVWV made the decision to award this contract to Integral Resources, what steps were taken to (a) ensure that nobody connected to Mr. Rosenblith (such as Page Gardner) were involved in the decision; (b) that the contract was the most competetive price available; and (c) that Mr. Rosenblith did not profit unduly from this contract?
- Ditto for the contracts you made to five members of your leadership team.
Those are the questions at the top of my mind right now. If you have other questions for WVWV, please share them below. I'm not holding my breath that any of these questions will be answered, but if WVWV truly is a legitimate organization I would hope that they would do so.