Yesterday, The Baculum King spoke for many here with a righteous rant against telephone operators masquerading as automobile drivers.

In the same non-political but nonetheless public-spirited vein, I'd like to say a few, short words about robocalls.  

Two days before the June 3 Democratic primary in Iowa, I received an automated push-poll, followed the next day by a second robocall containing "important information" for me. Both calls were hit jobs on Jerry Sullivan, the leading Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 59.

Many of us will receive similar calls between now and November. We need to be prepared to help the Democrats who will be targeted in this way.

My number one piece of advice is do not hang up the phone.

Do not hang up the moment you hear an automated voice on the other end.

Do not hang up the moment you are asked to participate in a brief survey.

Do not hang up the moment you realize that this is not a legitimate opinion poll.

Stay on the line and grab a pen and paper for taking notes.

Follow me after the jump for further instructions.

Kentucky's Secretary of State, Trey Grayson, has issued a warning to Kentucky residents that thousands of mailers sent by Women's Voices. Women Vote. include misleading and/or confusing information, asking residents to register to vote.

The deadline to register for the KY May primary passed on April 21st.

Note this portion of the press release, dated April 30 and posted May 5, referencing a previous press release dated March 27th--

At the time, Grayson stated that WVWV had been sending voter registration cards and letters to citizens stating that they are not registered to vote, when in fact, many of those citizens are registered.  

After my previous diary on the Women's Voices Women Vote robocall/voter confusion issues in which spokesperson Sarah Johnson responded to a series of questions, I was invited earlier this week to submit additional questions to WVWV President Page Gardner.

Ms. Gardner was able to answer some of my questions, but not all of them.  As a lawyer myself, I am loath to draw any inference from any non-answers.  Given the ongoing NC Attorney General investigation (PDF) and NAACP complaint, WVWV has every right to be cautious in what it says until it is confident it has determined what happened (among other reasons for restraint).  So while I'll note the non-answers below, I'm going to confine my commentary afterwards to the substantive responses.
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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.]

WVWV also released a statement this week offering an account what what has transpired.
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Reaction: I have tried to extend to WVWV the benefit of every doubt, but I have trouble accepting its answer to the first question.  There's a difference between making registration available to people at public sites, versus anonymously contacting them in their homes and suggesting that they've been specifically identified as folks who need to take additional steps in order to register to vote.  

This is especially the case with regards to the "Lamont Williams" calls to African American male voters.  Unlike the VPC calls to married women which stated "Hi, just a reminder: your voter registration form is in the mail and on its way to you. Your voice counts, and your vote makes them listen. Sign it, date it, and send it in. Thanks," the calls to these men was much more insistent on the need to take action with phrases like "need to do" and "then you will be able": "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."  Then, as in you can't yet.

Moreover, of course, WVWV was on actual notice that voters found the calls to be confusing, via the complaints and media articles in previous states.  So on the whole I just don't find this explanation plausible.

Here's a story I would find plausible, though I must stress that this is only my conjecture, based on what we know publicly and my private conversations with voter targeting professionals:  suppose WVWV's primary goal was not to register as many new voters as possible, but the slightly different goals of (a) reaching out to as many targets as possible and (b) generating as many voter registration forms being filed as possible.

Both goals would generate impressive-seeming statistics which can be used to impress funders as well as the board of directors, both of which are crucial as to the group's overall viability.  Assume it's true, as others have claimed, that you can generate a lot of responses from a call for registrations post-deadline, pre-primary.  But if that's the case, what WVWV was also generating was a number of false positives -- registered voters being contacted who don't need to re-register, but who will do so anyway because now they believe they have to.  Making robocalls and sending materials that looked official, that did not clearly disclose their source as non-governmental (certainly not the calls), and which did not make clear that already-registered-voters need do nothing ... well, that ends up furthering the goals -- if "boosting the number of forms sent in" supersedes voter confusion as a priority, and especially if boosting those numbers generates higher revenues to WVWV vendors with significant ties to the Board and leadership team.

In other words, voter confusion may have become a recognized, but undisclosed cost, accepted as necessary to maximize certain overall metrics  -- and to be fair, we have no idea just how extensively voters were confused here.  It could end up being a very small number -- or one which WVWV underestimated -- and we can certainly debate how much confusion might be an acceptable cost based on the number of successful new voter registrations generated.

I want to be clear about two things: (1) that's only a theory, so please don't treat it as proven; and (2) voter registration is hard, unglamorous and difficult-to-fundraise-for work.  Regardless of what may have happened this year, WVWV's past successes are undeniable, and it is incumbent upon all of us to support those groups like Project Vote and Rock the Vote which do this necessary work on the ground level.  This is especially true in the wake of the onerous voter ID laws now approved by the Supreme Court (with immediate dire, bizarre consequences).  I hope that Women's Voices Women Vote again gives me the confidence to include them again on such a list of righteous organizations, but they've got a lot of work to do first.

A Durham voter got another odd robocall about voting ....
(NOTE: If you follow the link, you can listen to an actual recording of the ROBOCALL ... Hah!!!)

This stuff is actually for real .... you gotta wonder about the ethics of folks who will stoop to any despicable level to achieve their goals ... this would be funny, if it weren't so sad. I would love to look one of these guys dead in the eye and confront them ... to ask them how they sleep at night.

We are in a street fight down here.  In the special election on May 13, Travis Childers has an oppurtunity to lay claim for the Democratic Party a congresssional district that voted 62% for Bush in 2004.  He is up against Republican Greg Davis who has offered nothing but vicious attack ads.  

Childers came within less than 400 votes of closing the deal in the special election, drawing 49.6% of the vote.  The seat was vacated by Roger Wicker, a typical Republican empty suit, when he was hand picked by Governor Haley Barbour to take over Trent Lott's seat.  Trent Lott retired just days before the new lobby laws took effect that would have barred him from the industry for two years.

Synopsis: In an effort to cover their asses after the North Carolina robocall scandal erupted, Women's Voices Women Vote (WVWV) planted an article in a small-town Colorado newspaper solely for the purpose of reposting it on the WVWV website.  Their intent was to mislead people into thinking WVWV had a multi-state press strategy aimed at voters to correspond with voter registration mailings.  In fact, their "press strategy" was aimed not at voters, but rather was part of a desperate PR strategy to quell the controversy exploding around them among the progressive blogosphere.

WVWV wanted to make it look like the NC catastrophe was in fact well planned out, so they created a press release after the fact (that conveniently addressed concerns about the timing of their mailings and calls in relation to the upcoming primary) and false implied that it had already been sent to the NC press.  Then, the next day, they planted an article in a Colorado newspaper to make it look like their press campaign was actually national.

Misleading robocalls in North Carolina from Womens Voices Women Vote a DC based non profit are targeting African American voters and telling them that they have not registered to vote.  As noted in the The Economist, this is a Clinton backed group

Guess which Democratic candidate WVWV's founder and president, Page Gardner, has donated $6,700 to (hint: it's not Barack Obama). Guess whose election campaign Joe Goode, WVWV's executive director, worked for (hint: it was in 1992, and it was a winning campaign). Guess whose chief of staff sits on WVWV's board of directors (hint: it was the president who served between two Bushes). And guess whose campaign manager was a member of WVWV's leadership team (hint: it's Hillary Clinton)

What do John Podesta and Julia Louis-Dreyfus have in common?  Both are trying to assist Women's Voices. Women Vote and their Voter Participation Center (and a cast of Clinton supporters and operatives) in a frantic attempt to put out the brush fires that are flaring up on DKos, Facing South, National Public Radio, The Economist and a few other outlets.

So what?  Julia is for Obama!  But here's where good people thinking they are doing good work get used by politicians to abet nasty and, in this case, illegal actions.

UPDATE: WVWV has this long story by Alex Koppelman at Salon on their own website.  Amazingly they are embracing the explanation that they are grossly incompetent rather than nefarious.  

More...

It is clear now that WVWV is engaging in a disinformation campaign to try to steer concerned people away from the idea that they're engaging in voter suppression among African Americans in North Carolina.  They have been using surrogates such as pro-Obama board members Mike Lux and William McNary, not to mention independent voter registration activists like James Rucker of ColorOfChange.org and Becky Bond of Credo Mobile/Active Matters to vouch for their character and steer us away from suspecting WVWV of anything untoward.

Today, their latest victim is Salon.com's Alex Koppelman.  

Details below the fold.

  As of 2pm EDT there is no lead ins or talk of the RoboCalls for the 4 TV stations in Charlotte NC. They talk about on WBTV "naughty" license plates and on WSOC they talk about more and more people getting bikes because of the high Gas Prices. Oh there is still talk about Rev. Wright.
 We here and other websites should let them know, that the RoboCalls IS news, and they best start covering the news.
 Below is contact info for the 4 major markets in NC. Let them know we want them to tell those in this State to talk about this.

Edit: some of the other areas are covering it, and I will point to the stations that are "hitting" on this story.

With all the news going around NC, the Robo Call that could disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters and why the State Election board isn't looking into this more, is making no noise in the MSM TV in NC, and it should be, so please help the great person ProgressiveSouth who has works so hard, as well as great work of Facing South get the word out, here is the contact info below

The Clinton campaign is robocalling Pennsylvania voters this weekend, warning them that Obama’s healthcare plan "imposes a $900 hidden tax on families."

It’s more than a bit of a stretch.  The $900 figure is based on a 2005 study by Ken Thorpe, a professor at Emory University, who estimated that $1 out of every $12 spent on health care premiums goes indirectly to pay for health care for the uninsured. Families USA estimated the cost to the average family at $922.

Clinton’s conclusion that her plan would then save the average family $922 over Obama’s plan does not bear scrutiny

As we all know, corporations argued tooth and nail against the federal do not call list. They made the "first amendment applies to corporations" arguement, which is expected. But should the same do not call directory be applied to political campaigns as well? I would argue yes.

On top of all the other problems with Hillary's conveniently timed outburst about Obama mailers that have been out of weeks -- the fact that the mailers are 100% accurate, the fact that she showed no outrage over them before (or even when Obama made similar points in the debate about "garnishing wages"), the fact that she seems to claim nobody has the "right" to criticize her  -- we need to remember that Clinton has benefited from some Rove-style tactics of her own.  

It's quite amazing when a candidate claims to be the victim of campaign attacks that she herself has been doing for months.

Today's voting day in Wisconsin, and after this past week, I think I know who I'm voting for.

John McCain, because he loves me.  Look at all the attention I received!

Candidate	Number of phone calls begging for my vote
John McCain	4
Mike Huckabee	2
Cindy McCain	1
Barack Obama	0
Hillary Clinton	0
Bill Clinton	0
Chelsea Clinton	0
Socks Clinton	0

Of course, it could be because John McCain had polled me, and I told him I was voting for Mike Huckabee because of his policy on immigration.  Apparently, John likes it when I play hard to get.

It's funny, though --- not a single call from a Democratic candidate, in what could be an important state for the primary.

Such is life when you're a blue person in a dark red county in a purple state.  Well, time to go vote!  

This is interesting. While John McCain may take a slightly more moderate tone in his highly anticipated speech at CPAC this week, he has been dialing up Conservatives with an obsequious and pathetic robocalling operation promising to tow the line on all the conservatoive pet causes including appointing nutjob ideolgical Judges like Roberts and Alito.

Dear Hillary,

This is a painful letter to write.

We've known each other a long time, and I like to think that we've meant something to each other.  But we've both changed over the years, and we just don't see things the same way anymore.  

It's not you.  It's me.  

Well, that's not entirely true.  The fact is, there's someone else.